Narrative of a Voyage to India of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh

Cramp, W. B.Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.7
Word count
103K words
Chapters
11

Tags

English Originals Documentary Literature Adventure JourneyFate and FortuneShipwreckLife PhilosophyGeography ScienceDocumentary NarrativeVoyage Narrative19th CenturyExotic CultureSocial Observation

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh;Author: Cramp, W. B.,Language: English, Class: G: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation, Release Date: Nov 1, 2008

Editor's review

This is a typical nineteenth-century voyage narrative: Crump recounts a journey to India that ended in shipwreck aboard the Lady Castlereagh. The appeal of such texts lies not in literary polish but in immediacy—the routines of the voyage, the sudden catastrophe, and the responses of crew and passengers are all preserved in plain prose, making the book a primary source for the study of maritime history, colonial transportation, and shipwreck writing. It is short, clearly structured, and readable in a single sitting, while also serving as a sample of nineteenth-century English narrative prose for language learners. As a free eBook from Project Gutenberg, it makes an obscure historical document readily accessible. Readers might note what the narrator chooses to observe—which details he records and whose voices he leaves out—for this is itself an entry point into colonial travel writing. Those interested in seafaring, shipwreck, or the history of transport in British India will find concrete historical texture in this small book.

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Reading tips

  1. Read through once to grasp the sequence of events, then reread the maritime and shipwreck passages for detail.
  2. Read alongside a nineteenth-century map of the India route to make the voyage and the site of the wreck more concrete.
  3. Note the narrator's vocabulary for describing people and settings as a sample of nineteenth-century English prose.
  4. Compare with other shipwreck narratives of the same period to observe the conventions shared by such texts.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11

FAQ

Is this book a fictional story or a true account? It is a first-person record of the author's real voyage and shipwreck—a work of nonfiction rather than a novel. The people, ships, and voyage described are specific and identifiable, though, having been written in the nineteenth century, the narrative carries the stylistic conventions and personal viewpoint of its time.
Is it long? How long does it take to read? It is a short narrative with a single storyline and a steady pace; readers with a reasonable command of English can usually finish it in a few evenings. If you are reading it closely, paragraph by paragraph, for language study, you may slow down and work through it chapter by chapter.
Can I understand it without any knowledge of sailing? Yes. The author writes for general readers and does not pile on technical jargon; most nautical details serve the telling of events. Skipping over the names of rigging and maneuvers will not affect your grasp of the main thread—look them up later if you are curious.
How good is the electronic edition, and what should I watch out for when citing it? The book is distributed free by Project Gutenberg and has been proofread by volunteers; overall it is readable. The electronic text may, however, contain formatting differences or occasional errors, so for formal citation you should check an authoritative published edition and note the source of the electronic version.

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About the author

Cramp, W. B. Author

W. B. Cramp is the author of Narrative of a Voyage to India of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh. Public information about him is limited, and his full English name, nationality, and dates of birth and death are not clearly recorded. Judging from the surviving work, the book is a first-person sea narrative recounting a voyage to India and the shipwreck of the Lady Castlereagh, placing it within the tradition of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English maritime literature and shipwreck accounts. Works of this kind usually follow the eyewitness observer, combining details of navigation, the circumstances of the crew, and foreign observations, with both documentary value and readability. As only this one work is held in the collection, it is difficult to assess the author's overall style or later influence; his life and full body of work await further material.