The Long Voyage is a New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...

 short story by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

. It was originally published in the 31 December 1853 issue of Household Words

Household Words

Household Words was an English weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens in the 1850s which took its name from the line from Shakespeare "Familiar in his mouth as household words" — Henry V.-History:...

magazine.

Plot summary

It is about a man alone on New Year's Eve, who loves to "sit by the fire, thinking of what I have read in books of voyage and travel" while he himself has never been "around the world, never has been shipwrecked, ice-environed, tomahawked, or eaten."

Some of the books he has read concern Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

, James Bruce

James Bruce

James Bruce was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who spent more than a dozen years in North Africa and Ethiopia, where he traced the origins of the Blue Nile.-Youth:...

 who searched for the source of the Nile

Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...

, John Franklin

John Franklin

Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin KCH FRGS RN was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. Franklin also served as governor of Tasmania for several years. In his last expedition, he disappeared while attempting to chart and navigate a section of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic...

 who made an "unhappy overland Journey" and was lost searching for the northwest passage in the Canadian Arctic, "Men-selling despots" and the Atlantic slave trade

Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...

 and Mungo Park

Mungo Park (explorer)

Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of the African continent. He was credited as being the first Westerner to encounter the Niger River.-Early life:...

, a Scottish explorer (1771-1806) who wrote "Travels in the Interior of Africa", and other adventure stories. He also touches on the "one awful creature" by the name of Alexander Pearce

Alexander Pearce

Alexander Pearce was an Irish convict who was transported to Van Diemen's Land for theft. He escaped from prison several times, but eventually was captured and was hanged and dissected in Hobart for murder....

 who escapes from a penal colony on an island - and cannibalizes his fellow escapees. He then tells the story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

Mutiny on the Bounty

The mutiny on the Bounty was a mutiny that occurred aboard the British Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty on 28 April 1789, and has been commemorated by several books, films, and popular songs, many of which take considerable liberties with the facts. The mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian against the...

, and of Thursday October Christian

Thursday October Christian

Thursday October Christian may refer to:*Thursday October Christian I , son of Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian and his wife Mauatua*Thursday October Christian II , his son, magistrate of Pitcairn Island...

, the son of Fletcher Christian

Fletcher Christian

Fletcher Christian was a master's mate on board the Bounty during William Bligh's fateful voyage to Tahiti for breadfruit plants...

, who mutinied against Captain Bligh leaving Bligh to fend for himself on the open sea.

He then reads about the sad fate of the Halsewell, a shipwreck on rocks off the Isle of Purbeck

Isle of Purbeck

The Isle of Purbeck, not a true island but a peninsula, is in the county of Dorset, England. It is bordered by the English Channel to the south and east, where steep cliffs fall to the sea; and by the marshy lands of the River Frome and Poole Harbour to the north. Its western boundary is less well...

 where 160 people died. Captain Pierce stayed to comfort the his daughters, even though he could have saved himself. Finally, he recounts the exciting story of the Grosvenor

Grosvenor

-Baronets/Marquesses/Dukes of Westminster::*Sir Richard Grosvenor, 1st Baronet *Sir Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Baronet , son of 1st baronet*Sir Thomas Grosvenor, 3rd Baronet , grandson of 2nd baronet...

, an English bound Mercantile ship that ran aground on 4 August 1782 in South Africa - and of the 125 who made it on shore - only 13 survived the trip back to civilization.

After meditating on these stories he comes to a startling realization about The Long Voyage looking into the fire on that first of January 1853.

Other New Year's Eve Stories by Charles Dickens

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