The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism, Volume 3

Frederick WhymperProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
965K words
Chapters
97

Tags

English Originals World HistoryDocumentary Literature Historical ReappraisalMaritime LiteratureNature ObservationLegendary LivesAdventure JourneyMaritime ExplorationHeroismIllustrated GuideDocumentary NarrativeExotic Culture

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.The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3 by WhymperAuthor: Whymper, Frederick,Language: English, Class: GC: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation: Oceanography, Release Date: Apr 1, 2012

Editor's review

This is Volume 3 of Frederick Whymper's sea-themed work, a public-domain eBook from Project Gutenberg catalogued under oceanography and geography. Its value lies in presenting, through adventure, peril, and heroism, how people in and around the nineteenth century understood and conquered the sea, making it both popular ocean knowledge and a sample of period attitudes. The prose has the clear flavor of Victorian popular reading: strongly narrative and suited to fragmented reading. Note that its explanations of marine phenomena and its judgments of people carry period limitations and should not be treated as a modern ocean-science text. Suitable as supplementary material for maritime cultural history, popular-writing studies, or English extensive reading.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read chapter by chapter; each chapter is relatively self-contained, so there is no need to read straight through
  2. When encountering descriptions of marine phenomena, annotate them against modern oceanographic knowledge, distinguishing period understanding from scientific fact
  3. Excerpt typical adventure narratives as samples for popular writing or cultural-history analysis
  4. For English extensive reading, read titles and opening paragraphs first to gauge difficulty, then decide whether to read closely or skim

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
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97

FAQ

Is this book an ocean-science work? Not in the strict sense. It is closer to popular narrative centered on sea adventure, peril, and heroism. It contains ocean knowledge but reflects nineteenth-century understanding, so it suits maritime cultural reading rather than a science textbook.
Do I need to read the first two volumes before Volume 3? Usually not. Such volumes are often compiled by theme or chapter, and each is relatively independent. Readers can start with the table of contents and choose chapters of interest; those interested in the author's narrative arc can then read the earlier volumes.
How difficult is the English? The original is nineteenth-century English with long sentences and period vocabulary, making it moderately to considerably difficult overall. Readers with college-level English can work through it with a dictionary; beginners are advised to read short chapters or use a translation alongside.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Frederick Whymper Author · British · 1838–1901

Frederick Whymper (1838–1901) was a British artist, traveller and writer. His life was a wide-ranging one: he travelled in Alaska, British Columbia and California, worked for the newspaper Alta California, and helped found the San Francisco Art Association, dying in London in his later years. His writing excelled in subjects of seafaring and exploration, and his representative work is the four-volume The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism, which vividly recounts maritime adventures, dangers and heroism, combining documentary colour with an inspirational tone and often classified under inspirational growth in Chinese book catalogues. Public information about him is limited, and the details of his life can only be glimpsed through the experiences and works described above.