London-The Sea-Wolf

Hailed by critics as one of the greatest sea stories ever written this rousing adventure offers a fascinating combination of gritty realism and sublime lyricism in its portrayal of an elemental conflict. Jack London began his career at sea and his shipboard experiences imbue The Sea-Wolf with flavorful authenticity.In the story the gentleman narrator Humphrey Van Weyden is pitted against an amoral sea captain Wolf Larsen in a clash of idealism with materialism. The novel begins when Van Weyden is swept overboard into San Francisco Bay and plucked from the sea by Larsen's seal-hunting vessel the Ghost. Pressed into service as a cabin boy by the ruthless captain Van Weyden becomes an unwilling participant in a brutal shipboard drama. Larsen's increasingly violent abuse of the crew fuels a mounting tension that ultimately boils into mutiny shipwreck and a desperate confrontation.Read and loved around the world this 1904 maritime classic has influenced such writers as Hemingway Orwell and Kerouac.