"Captains Courageous": A Story of the Grand Banks

Rudyard Kipling spent four years (1892 - 1896) at home in Vermont with his American wife Carrie and their young family. There, in 1896, he wrote CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS: A STORY OF THE GRAND BANKS. It was first serialized then appeared in book form, with many revisions from the manuscript -- which is still preserved. Much background Kipling derived from a local doctor with hands on fishing experience three decades earlier. Together the two friends visited harbors of Boston and Gloucester to speak with fishermen, boat owners and sea captains. ***This is mainly the story of a few months (late May-late August) aboard a fishing boat in the life of Harvey Cheyne, age 15. When we first see him, Harvey is quick-witted, neglected by his immensely wealthy, generally absent railroad tycoon father, and beyond the control of his adoring, neurotic, underappreciated mother. Mother and son are steaming across the Grand Banks toward schooling for the latter in Europe. Harvey intrudes himself into the evening relaxation of male passengers and makes a pompous pest of himself. Given a never before tried cigar to replace his cigarette, he becomes sick, staggers out on deck, falls into the sea and is given up by his mother for drowned. *** Harvey's fall is, however, seen by Manuel, a Portuguese cod fisherman alone in a small dory. Harvey comes to consciousness on top of a pile of Manuel's fish, is delivered to the 70-ton fishing schooner We're Here owned by Captain Disko Troop. As soon as he is able, Harvey arrogantly demands that Troop sail him at once to New York where Harvey's father will lavishly recompense the Captain and crew of the We're Here. As Harvey continues to insist, Captain Troop, judging the boy's tale of wealth either a lie or a product of involuntary delirium, gets Harvey's attention by bloodying his nose. Instantly, Harvey is transformed. Out with the old, in with the new. *** Inspired by the Captain's 16 year old son Daniel Troop, Harvey pitches in and day and night after day and night doing his rishing share of work till reunited with his parents in Gloucester in late August. Sensing Harvey's keen intellect, Captain Troop teaches him to use the sextant and to record ship's finances. In later years, as soon as Harvey graduates from college, he takes over management of the fleet of speedy tea merchantmen that his father had just acquired at novel's beginning. And Dan, Harvey's greatest chum, rises to become skipper of one of the finest clippers in that fleet. *** Sounds simple, right? Just for kids? Wrong. *** Kipling wrote an anything but shallow novel of America's immigrant past (the thousand multi-national fishing boats on the Grand Banks) and Gilded Age cutthroat capitalist future then emerging. The two principal captains of CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS are sea captain Disko Troop and land captain, railroad tycoon, Harvey Cheyne, Senior. The episode in which Mr and Mrs Cheyne are whisked at record-breaking speed from California to Boston in a private car on a private train across lands until recently only sparsely inhabited by Indians is one of the most celebrated passages in railroad fictional literature. *** Moreover, symbolism abounds in this tale of a young man's quasi-religious conversion. Wretched young Harvey will either be drowned by the sea or saved by it. If his falling off the steamer and rescue by a fisherman is his baptism by sea water, then his confirmation comes soon after, via the bloody nose administered by Captain Troop -- reminiscent of a bishop's symbolic tap on the cheek when the sacrament is administered. *** CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS is a stronger, deeper book than a quick reading might make you think. I therefore recommend that you read or consult a scholarly edition with explanatory notes. -OOO-