ANCIENT MARINER, BY KEN McGOOGAN REVIEWED (2005): Ice cold and Coleridge

 |   |  1 min read

ANCIENT MARINER, BY KEN McGOOGAN REVIEWED (2005): Ice cold and Coleridge

In the middle of the 18th century only 20 per cent of ordinary sailors in the Royal Navy were volunteers, the rest had been press-ganged into service. The reasons why so few willingly joined were simple: the money was lousy, the conditions woeful - on a typical frigate there would be two or three floggings a week.

A Navy career also tested the immune system.

During the entire Seven Years' War against France, 1500 British sailors were killed in action, another 133,700 died of illness or disease. 

This was the environment Samuel Hearne entered at age 12.

Hearne was lucky, he joined a vessel under the captaincy of Samuel Hood whose enlightened and educated regime was lighter on the lash than many of his peers. As a young gentleman, Hearne learned the ways of navigation, saw many men killed and, by 18, was back in London looking for work. It came from an unusual source and allowed Hearne to write himself into history. 

He took a position with the Hudson Bay Company and found himself based at the remote Prince of Wales Fort, one of the most important fur-trading posts in Canada. But while his boisterous companions drank and gambled - there seemed little else to do - he learned the languages and dialects of the numerous Native American tribes in the region. 

His books and journals recount journeys through snowdrifts and barren country to find a passage through the Northwest and to where, rumour had it, there were enormous untapped copper reserves. 

He charted much of this territory, took a wife on his return to the fort and was made its governor, and then was taken prisoner when French vessels arrived. The explorer, naturalist and navigator still wasn't 40, yet his adventures would continue. 

His book A Journey to the Northern Ocean inspired fellow explorers and thrilled the English literary world. And, according to Ken McGoogan his biographer here, his story-telling - which was often haunted by horrific memories and guilt - would inspire The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and other poems by Coleridge. 

Samuel Hearne lived an extraordinary and demanding existence, was an anthropologist before the word existed, and McGoogan brings his dangerous world and the admirable man to life again in these detailed, exciting and often terrifying pages. 


Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Writing at Elsewhere articles index

JOHN LENNON, THE LIFE by PHILIP NORMAN (2008): Just gimme some truth

JOHN LENNON, THE LIFE by PHILIP NORMAN (2008): Just gimme some truth

John Lennon -- who would have been 68, had he lived, at the time of this pubication -- did not have an unexamined life. In countless hours of drugs, meditation and therapy he analysed himself.... > Read more

MARILYN by ANDRE de DIENES: Little girl heading for the big time

MARILYN by ANDRE de DIENES: Little girl heading for the big time

For those who came of age after her death, Marilyn Monroe belongs to that generation of American males whose idea of cool was smoking a pipe and reading Playboy. That seems pretty tame to those... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

WOMAD TARANAKI CONSIDERED (2014): Three days of love, peace and percussion

WOMAD TARANAKI CONSIDERED (2014): Three days of love, peace and percussion

The glee-cum-concern with which weather forecasters last week announced the impending tropical cyclone doubtless accounted for “calm before the storm” being heard as often on Friday,... > Read more

THE WHO'S QUADROPHENIA ON DVD (2001): The Mods will ride again

THE WHO'S QUADROPHENIA ON DVD (2001): The Mods will ride again

Quadrophenia -- the story and music written by Pete Townshend of the Who -- shifted the focus back to pre-Beatles Britain, to the world of Mods and Rockers, of battles on Brighton Beach... > Read more