Overview

Compelling stories of shipwreck, adventure, and death on the high seas, now back in print. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a time of great colonial expansion, marked by a mercantile frenzy of ships carrying merchants, aristocrats, missionaries, sailors, Inquisitors, botanists, and statesmen pursuing the spoils of empire. Among the narratives that chronicled these voyages, those of the Portuguese are unequaled. C. R. Boxer's fascinating translations of famous Portuguese shipwreck stories detail the disasters and terrors plaguing the perilous sea trading route between Portugal and India. In the tradition of Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Defoe, and Poe, these dramatic stories of shipwreck-and those who lived to tell about it-represent existence and survival pushed to the limits. They describe disastrous turns of fate and miraculous rescues, heroism and cowardice, and offer the exhilaration and sheer emotive appeal of a tale of adventure well told. Often circulated in pamphlet form, these stories recounting the dangers and terrors of storm-tossed ocean voyages and the fate of castaways in distant lands were a popular genre, rife with compelling and often gory details. This first ever paperback edition includes a new translation of the tragic tale of Captain Manuel de Sousa Seplveda, shipwrecked with his family on the sands of Africa in 1552, the previous English versions of which have long been unavailable. Vividly descriptive and engrossing, these tales of selfishness, cruelty, despair, pirates, mayhem, and harrowing storms will captivate readers.

Full Product Details

9780816638901

Table of Contents

Reviews

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the round voyage between Lisbon and Goa, the Carreira da India, was a perilous but lucrative highway of Portugals maritime empire. Ships returning from the east laden with cargo were wrecked with such frequency that a literary fashion for shipwreck narratives developed in the form of popular, cheaply printed pamphlets that reproduced in stark detail the tragedy and horrors suffered by the poor crews of these vessels. This book collects together both editions of C R Boxers long out-of-print translations of these pamphlets. Something of an adventurer himself, with a colourful 23-year military career in the Far East, Boxer has also written a spirited and accessible introduction drawn from the lifetime of research he has brought to bear on the subject. As accounts of the most extreme human drama they retain the power to grip the imagination of the modern reader as much as they did their original audience. Storms literally rip ships apart, casting the survivors onto the unexplored African coast with no option but to attempt to walk hundreds of miles to the nearest Portuguese trading post through inhospitable terrain and often hostile native tribes. During these epic journeys of endurance they experience bravery, greed, cowardice, kindness, betrayal, tragic death and unexpected salvation. Sheer drama aside, the stories represent very valuable historical source material offering first-hand insights into the prosecution of early modern imperialism, what was endured to achieve empire and what was inflicted on others in its pursuit. From another perspective they also offer the first literary reports of the African peoples of Natal and Mozambique that the castaways encountered during a period of southwards expansion by the Bantu. With over 600 pages recounting the most appalling tragedy imaginable, often provoked as much by human greed and cruelty as the forces of nature, this makes for intense and fascinating reading. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

C. R. Boxer (1904-2000) was an expert on the perils of the high seas. During his colorful twenty-three-year career in the military, he served as an interpreter and intelligence officer in the Far East, where he was imprisoned by the Japanese from 1941 to 1945. A prolific writer, autodidact, and bon vivant, he was also a celebrated collector of rare books and professor of Portuguese studies at universities in his native England and the United States. Josiah Blackmore is associate professor of Portuguese at the University of Toronto.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available