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Before the
Wind
The Memoir of an
American Sea Captain, 1808-1833
by Charles Tyng, et al
Synopsis
Down to the sea and around the world in a
nineteenth-century salt's exotic, witty, and rousing
remembrances.
In the current wave of seafaring literature--from Patrick
O'Brian to C. S. Forester--no fictional sailor's story can
match this true, real-life adventure. Growing up in Boston
with the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Tyng first
followed the call of the sea at age thirteen, going to China
and back as a ship's boy. Over the next twenty years he rose
through the ranks and made his fortune as a captain and ship
owner in the tea and sugar trade.
Before the Wind reads like a novel: the rich, wry
observations of a curious mind wedded to a sensitive soul and
a toughened body. With Tyng we roam the world of the early
nineteenth century: sighting the first Atlantic steamship
bound for Russia, visiting Lord Byron in Italy and opium dens
in Canton, and skirting Napoleon's prison isle of St. Helena.
We sail into the Sandwich Islands and meet King Kamehameha of
Hawaii and his three queens. We learn to shin up the rigging,
pump out a leaky brig, and siphon rum from the captain's
cask. From pirates and mutinies to shipwrecks and cholera,
Tyng's eye for detail is sharp and his storytelling as fresh
as an offshore breeze. Armchair travelers, history buffs, and
lovers of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm will
long to run away to sea with Before the Wind.
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