This book was surprisingly interesting. It grabbed me from the beginning and was hard to put down. My wife, who doesn't read history, was also fascinated by it and read it cover to cover in just a few days.
Though it describes his experiences from the early-mid 1800s, the book was first published in 1887, then reprinted in 1924, and the Naval Institute has just brought out a new edition. It gives an excellent sense of what it was really like to be on the old sailing ships of a bygone era. Technically, the book is an autobiography, an amazing true story about a boy who ran away from home around age 11 and became a sailor on the capricious, romantic, very dangerous sailing ships. He had many harrowing experiences, from storms, to friends washed overboard, to dealings with pirates. He eventually worked his way up to become one of the youngest independent captains, then the long term captain of the "Dreadnought" a famous, fast 'Packet Ship' (sometimes called a 'light' Clipper Ship), well known on the run from New York to Liverpool. As a famous captain of a well known Packet Ship, Samuel Samuels was actually something equivalent to a 'Rock Star' of his era. Songs were sung about him and his ship on the streets of New York and many a young man imagined himself as the famous Captain Samuels.
This book is full of charming old language and nautical terms that vanished with the sailing ships that he lived on. I thought it would be dull and dry but found it to be delightful and packed full of interesting and amazing things on every page. If you want to understand life from the 1800s better, or if you want to understand the whole culture of the vanished sailing ships, then this book is for you. Sections of this book are extensively quoted in other books such as, "The Gigantic Book of Pirate Stories," and, "The Best Pirate Stories Ever Told." Mr. Samuels actually wrote it for an 'average' reader of his day and did a surprisingly good job of it. And, as it says in the introduction, this book really does prove that truth is stranger than fiction.
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