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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Cruise of the Pelican," H. Bedford-Jones delivers a captivating narrative steeped in adventure and intrigue. This novel unfolds within the rich tapestry of early 20th-century maritime exploration, blending vivid descriptions of the sea with pulse-quickening action. Bedford-Jones employs an engaging prose style that evokes the era's adventure tales while inviting readers to ponder the human spirit in the face of peril'—themes of bravery and exploration resonate throughout the text, as characters confront both the grandeur and the treachery of the ocean. H. Bedford-Jones, known as the 'King of Pulp Fiction,' has an extensive background in writing that transcends mere entertainment. His own adventures and travel experiences deeply inform his storytelling, allowing him to reflect on the peculiarities of human nature and the camaraderie forged in dangerous circumstances. Bedford-Jones crafted tales steeped in authenticity, drawing from his intimate knowledge of marine life and navigation, which adds layers of depth and realism to "The Cruise of the Pelican." I highly recommend this exhilarating journey for readers who cherish classic adventure narratives. Bedford-Jones's masterful storytelling and rich characterizations encourage a deep connection with the protagonists as they navigate treacherous waters. This book is not just for fans of sea adventures, but for anyone seeking a thrilling literary exploration of resilience and camaraderie in uncharted territories. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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The Cruise of the Pelican
Table of Contents
Introduction
Set against an unforgiving ocean that mirrors the choices of those who sail it, The Cruise of the Pelican is a voyage narrative in which a hard-driven passage forces a diverse crew to reckon with courage, loyalty, and judgment as they contend not only with storms and shoals but with ambition, duty, and the costs of command; through uncertainty, isolation, and the fine line between prudence and daring, their passage turns the sea into a testing ground where survival and honor are measured by choices made under pressure and by the bonds they forge when charts end and hazards mount.
H. Bedford-Jones, a prolific Canadian-born writer active in the early twentieth century, built his reputation on swift, atmospheric tales of adventure, and The Cruise of the Pelican belongs to that maritime tradition. The novel is a sea-going adventure set aboard the vessel Pelican and along coasts and harbors that challenge seamanship and resolve. Emerging from the adventure-fiction milieu of roughly the 1910s–1930s, it reflects the period’s appetite for brisk pacing, clear conflict, and tangible settings. Readers can expect the tangible world of watches, weather, and wayfinding, with a focus on how people conduct themselves when distance, time, and risk compress decision-making.
The premise is straightforward and inviting: a purposeful cruise sends the Pelican outward from familiar waters into a chain of uncertain encounters, where natural hazard and human design intersect. Within this frame, Bedford-Jones delivers an experience marked by momentum and clarity, steering from taut passages of suspense to measured interludes that deepen character and motive. The voice favors action grounded in concrete circumstance, yet leaves room for reflection as responsibilities accumulate. The mood is bracing, often tense but never despairing, animated by the knowledge that skill, judgment, and cooperation can turn narrow margins into survival, and setbacks into hard-won resolve.
Leadership and its burdens stand near the center of the book, set against the egalitarian demands of life at sea, where every hand matters and every error echoes. The narrative explores how authority is earned, tested, and maintained, and how loyalty can both inspire and complicate sound judgment. It weighs necessity against principle, asking what codes hold when safety and success pull in different directions. The sea functions as a neutral yet implacable judge: it rewards discipline, punishes complacency, and exposes pretenses. Knowledge itself—charts, bearings, experience—emerges as a moral resource, shaping choices when rumor, suspicion, and conflicting interests cloud the horizon.
For contemporary readers, the book’s questions resonate beyond its historical frame. Leadership under uncertainty, the ethics of risk, and the need to coordinate diverse skills toward a common goal are as current as ever. In workplaces, communities, and personal crises, the same calculus applies: imperfect information, limited time, and consequential outcomes. The narrative also reminds us of humility before complex systems—weather, tides, markets, or human tempers—that no single person fully controls. Its attention to cooperation without sentimentality, and to courage without bravado, offers a bracing counterpoint to cynicism, suggesting that integrity is practical as well as principled when conditions turn rough.
Bedford-Jones’s craft emphasizes clarity of action and tactile immediacy. Scenes unfold with a visual crispness that makes distances, bearings, and looming weather intelligible without technical fuss. The structure tends toward compact arcs—approach, contact, consequence—stacked to build momentum while allowing characters to reveal themselves under stress. Dialogue serves purpose, charting shifting alliances and hidden aims, while descriptive passages keep attention on what can be seen and done: the state of the hull, the feel of the deck, the behavior of gear and instruments, the line of the horizon. The result is a clean, propulsive read that invites steady, immersive progress.
Taken as a whole, The Cruise of the Pelican offers a compact embodiment of why sea narratives endure: they condense fate and character into a moving, bounded world where consequences arrive swiftly. Bedford-Jones channels that appeal with professional assurance, giving readers an adventure grounded in credible detail and animated by human stakes. For those seeking a classic voyage story—one that weighs duty against desire and caution against daring—this book promises both momentum and meaning. It asks for attention and rewards it with atmosphere, tension, and moral clarity enough to carry readers from first cast-off to landfall, and beyond in thought.
Synopsis
The story opens in a bustling harbor where the schooner Pelican is being readied for sea. A practical voyage is planned, part cargo run, part exploratory cruise through little-visited waters. The skipper leads a compact, capable crew that includes an earnest young officer whose perspective frames much of the action. Backers on shore set firm expectations but leave room for discretion at sea. Instructions emphasize sound seamanship, vigilance along shifting coasts, and a willingness to take on auxiliary tasks for profit. With charts newly corrected and stores secured, the Pelican clears the breakwater, the crew alert to weather, currents, and the untested rhythm of a long passage.
Before departure, men and ship are matched to their strengths. The narrative details rigging, provisions, and the quiet discipline that governs a well-run deck. A sealed packet from the owners hints at contingencies beyond routine trade, to be opened only when specified conditions are met. The crew drills in sail handling and watch rotation, learning one another's habits while the young officer absorbs the skipper's measured approach. Responsibilities are assigned with an eye to character and competence. The Pelican's mission promises profit, but not at any price; the captain insists on prudence. With lines cast off, shore fades astern and the sea asserts its orderly demands.
The first leg tests both hull and crew. A sudden gale hardens canvas and puts tools and temper to proof, but teamwork steadies the schooner. In the blow's aftermath they sight wreckage and render assistance where they can, finding a small cache of papers that allude to a previous, troubled cruise in the same quarter. The discovery is quietly logged and retained, not yet altering course but sharpening attention to the waters ahead. The sea settles into a productive routine of soundings, trade calls, and constant maintenance. The young officer's understanding of command grows as he weighs duty to contract against the pull of a deepening mystery.
At a tropical port the Pelican takes on fresh water and information. Officials require declarations; merchants talk in guarded tones about reefs, currents, and a schooner reported to be sniffing after the same track. A local pilot adds detail to rumors that tie back to the papers recovered at sea. The captain balances speed against caution, choosing a circuitous route that promises better soundings and fewer unknowns. The crew notes a strange sail on the horizon, sometimes present, sometimes gone. Business ashore remains straightforward, but the sense of being measured by unseen competitors adds quiet tension as the Pelican shapes a new, more deliberate course.
The middle voyage carries the Pelican through island chains where navigation becomes a daily test. Leadsmen chant depths while the helmsman watches tide rips and feathering shoals. Fragmentary clues—scratches on a cairn, a name half-ablated on a buoy, entries in a weathered log-slip—suggest someone else passed recently and in haste. The sealed packet is opened at last, authorizing investigation and salvage should lawful opportunity arise. Differences of opinion aboard are handled without rancor; the captain invites argument, then decides. A darker hull looms at dusk more than once, keeping safe distance yet signaling interest. The crew appreciates that chance and choice are about to converge.
The turning point arrives in a night of squalls when lights appear and vanish among rain curtains. The Pelican maneuvers under shortened sail to avoid collision and to deny advantage, using tide and shoal knowledge gleaned over weeks. Signals are exchanged that confirm a rival's presence. An accident aloft forces a brief retreat to effect repairs; the delay proves fortunate when a hard blow sweeps the area. The schooner rides out severe weather through disciplined work and calm command. In the gale's wake the sea is changed, channels shifted, markers missing, and yet a clear path opens toward the heart of the developing affair.
A remote anchorage offers shelter and answers. While spars are fished and sails restitched, the crew searches a beaching ground and finds evidence that reframes the quest. What seemed a hunt for mere value reveals obligations to people and to law. The rescued papers align with inscriptions ashore, shaping a lawful course of action that preserves both safety and honor. The captain shares the full story with his officers, and consensus forms: see the matter through despite risks and despite competitors. With the Pelican refitted and provisions stretched, the schooner stands out again, committed to a plan that depends on timing, tide, and steady nerves.
The climax unfolds in a hazardous inlet where surf breaks over bars and currents run like rivers. The Pelican executes a precise, unflamboyant plan: stake out soundings, wait on the turn, and slip across when wind and water permit. What follows is a blend of seamanship and restraint. The rival is managed without melodrama, and necessary aid is delivered where it must be. The schooner's holds are not stuffed for greed; instead, her decks carry the proper proof and persons toward an orderly settlement. The presence of authorities settles questions deferred at sea, while the narrative keeps final dispositions just beyond the frame.
The homeward run is quieter, the voyage's labors giving way to formalities. Owners examine logs, officials review statements, and credit is apportioned fairly. The crew disperses with wages and experience, their bond to ship and skipper strengthened by weather, work, and measured decision. The story's closing pages affirm that sound seamanship includes ethical judgment, and that steady purpose outlasts sudden opportunity. The Pelican returns to her berth ready for another charter, her reputation burnished not by legend but by competence. The book's central theme is clear: in uncertain waters, character and craft together chart the safest, most honorable course.
Historical Context
The Cruise of the Pelican situates readers in the late sixteenth century, during Elizabeth I’s reign (1558–1603), when English ventures pushed into oceans dominated by Spain and Portugal. The narrative ranges from Plymouth on England’s southwest coast across the Atlantic to Patagonia, the Strait of Magellan, and up the Pacific littoral of Spanish America, before sweeping west through the Moluccas and home by the Cape of Good Hope. Its immediate timeframe mirrors Sir Francis Drake’s enterprise of 1577–1580, when his flagship Pelican—soon renamed the Golden Hind—circumnavigated the globe. Ports such as Port St. Julian, Valparaíso, Callao, Guatulco, and the sheltered bay he called Nova Albion anchor the story, while the court politics of London and the garrisons of Peru and New Spain form its political horizon.
Bedford-Jones’s canvas is shaped by the Anglo-Spanish rivalry born of the Reformation and imperial expansion. After the 1568 debacle at San Juan de Ulúa, when Spanish forces mauled the English slaving fleet of John Hawkins and the young Francis Drake, English policy hardened. Pope Pius V’s bull Regnans in Excelsis (1570) excommunicated Elizabeth I, adding religious sanction to political conflict with Philip II of Spain. In 1572–1573 Drake raided Nombre de Dios and seized part of a silver train crossing the Panamanian isthmus, learning the rhythms of Spain’s treasure system. The book mirrors these tensions by casting the Pelican’s voyage as both reprisal and reconnaissance, a private enterprise licensed by the crown to probe and plunder Spain’s guarded Pacific routes.
Drake’s 1577 expedition sailed from Plymouth on 13 December with five vessels—the Pelican (flagship), Elizabeth, Marigold, Swan, and the pinnace Benedict—under a secret commission to venture into the South Sea. After storm delays and refitting at the Cape Verde Islands, the squadron reached Port St. Julian in Patagonia in June–July 1578, where Drake convened a court-martial and executed Thomas Doughty for mutiny and insubordination. In August 1578 the fleet traversed the Strait of Magellan; storms then scattered the ships, and only the Pelican survived to enter the Pacific. Drake’s mariners observed open water south of Tierra del Fuego, undermining the myth of a southern continent. Around this time he renamed the Pelican the Golden Hind in honor of his patron Sir Christopher Hatton—a ceremonial pivot dramatized in the novel.
Once in the Pacific, Drake struck Spain’s lightly defended coastal trade. He raided at Valparaíso (Chile) and Arica, scouted Callao (Lima), and on 1 March 1579 intercepted the treasure ship Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, nicknamed Cacafuego, off the coast of present-day Ecuador. The prize yielded approximately 26 tons of silver, chests of coined reales, jewels, and about 80 pounds of gold. He careened at Guatulco (Oaxaca) in April, then ran north to a harbor he named Nova Albion—often associated with today’s Point Reyes, California—where in June 1579 he repaired, traded with Indigenous people, and claimed possession for Elizabeth. Crossing the Pacific via the Moluccas, he returned to Plymouth on 26 September 1580 and was knighted aboard the Golden Hind at Deptford on 4 April 1581. The book’s episodes reflect this arc.
Spain’s imperial logistics supplied Drake’s targets. Silver extracted from Potosí (discovered 1545) and Porco in Alto Peru moved to the Pacific port of Callao, then north in coastal vessels to Panama, where mule trains crossed to the Caribbean before convoys sailed to Spain. The viceroyalties of Peru (established 1542) and New Spain (1535) administered these flows, guarded by isolated forts and occasional galleons. Annual fairs at Nombre de Dios, and later Portobelo, regulated the exchange of bullion and European goods. The novel’s pursuit of prize ships and coastal raids mirrors English exploitation of this timetable, showing how intelligence about the silver train and seasonality allowed a nimble raider like the Pelican to strike where Spanish defenses were thin.
The voyage unfolded within contested legal geographies. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) and the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529) divided Atlantic and Pacific spheres between Spain and Portugal, claims England did not recognize. Elizabeth’s ministers, notably Sir Francis Walsingham, balanced deniability and profit by extending covert commissions rather than formal letters of marque against Spain. Spanish officials, from the Viceroy of Peru to local corregidores, issued warrants to pursue the English as pirates, while Madrid protested diplomatically after the booty-laden Golden Hind returned. The narrative reflects this twilight of legality, portraying the Pelican’s cruise as both an assertion of English sovereignty on the high seas and a provocation that helped set the stage for open war in the 1580s.
The enterprise intersected with Indigenous societies and Asian polities. At Nova Albion in June 1579, Drake’s crew encountered Coast Miwok communities; contemporary English accounts describe ceremonial exchanges and a symbolic bestowal of authority on the foreign captain, which the book recasts to illuminate cross-cultural misunderstanding. In the Moluccas later in 1579, Drake sought cloves at Ternate, ruled by Sultan Babullah, who was then resisting Portuguese hegemony after the assassination of his father in 1570. The Golden Hind nearly wrecked on a reef near the Celebes before crossing the Indian Ocean and rounding the Cape of Good Hope. These episodes anchor the story in the wider currents of the spice trade and the shifting alliances that shaped the late-sixteenth-century world.
As social and political critique, the book exposes the contradictions of an age that sanctified private plunder as national policy. By juxtaposing courtly sanction with the brutalities of shipboard discipline—exemplified by the Doughty affair—and the dispossession implicit in claiming Nova Albion, the narrative interrogates imperial legitimacy. It highlights class divisions between officers, gentlemen adventurers, and common seamen, the precarious legal status of mariners labeled pirates or heroes by fiat, and the economic extraction that funneled wealth from Potosí to European treasuries. In dramatizing encounters with Indigenous peoples and colonial officials, it critiques the rhetoric of civilizing mission and religious zeal that masked geopolitical and commercial ambitions across the Atlantic and Pacific.
