A Furnace Afloat

Description

When an accident with an open oil lantern set the American clipper Hornet alight in 1866, the 31 passengers and crew were forced to abandon ship. Cast adrift in three small lifeboats, they had less than 10 days' rations to share between them. They were over 1,000 miles from the nearest island. Over the next six weeks they were to encounter every danger the Pacific could throw at them. They were attacked by sharks and swordfish. They endured storms, and even tornadoes. Their hunger became so intense that they resorted to eating their clothes, and later, half-mad from the effects of drinking sea water, were driven to the edge of cannibalism. Of the 31 men who abandoned ship, only 15 ever saw land again. The newspapers of the time were quick to hail the survivors as heroes; however, as Joe Jackson shows, there was much about the behavior of the castaways that was far from heroic. In the confined space of the open boats tensions between the men ran so high that the threat of violence was constantly present. There was open talk of mutiny, even of murder, and gradually the normal rules of society began to break down. Here, for the first time, is the true story of the men who survived the wreck of the Hornet. Written by Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Joe Jackson, it is one of the rare great historical survival tales from the dying days of the age of sail. - Jacket flap.

First Sentence

LATER, WHEN THE HEAT and thirst grew so torturous that his tongue swelled in his mouth; when his skin shriveled black and salt-water boils dotted it like smallpox; when Captain Mitchell complained of hearing strange music and the men in the bow stared at him in hunger; then and only then did Henry Ferguson recall his first glimpse of the Hornet and the drift ice crunching against her sides.

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