N by E
Rockwell Kent (Wesleyan University Press, 1930)
Block print by Rockwell Kent from N by E Weslayan University Press, 1930. From the library of the Saltwater People Historical Society. |
There is, in fact, an alternate version of the story available. After the later untimely death of the voyage’s skipper, Sam Allen’s ship’s log and other documents were compiled and privately published by his father’s friends as Under Sail to Greenland, Arthur S. Allen, Jr., (The Marchbanks Press, 1931). The book was republished in 2002 by DN Goodchild (http://www.dngoodchild.com/0218.htm). (As it is not part of the story of the voyage of the DIRECTION, Kent doesn’t tell us how Allen died, only that he did.)
N by E, as written by Kent, tells its story as a kind of extended prose poem, with the tone of a tale perhaps translated from another language, such as the Odyssey. Indeed, interspersed with the narrative are retellings of Danish and indigenous folk tales from Greenland. Although the relevance of the tales to the adventure at sea may not always be clear, as Kent tells the reader in his preface, these stories and the voyage as he recounts it make sense to him. “And if an author in recording what has interested himself differs from editors—so everlastingly concerned with what may interest others, he may no less…hope that a hundred thousand souls will see him as the mirror of themselves—and buy his book.” Not a very pragmatic attitude to producing and marketing a book, but one that sets Kent’s story apart as a timeless work of art rather than an evanescent memoir.
Block print by Rockwell Kent from N by E Weslayan University Press, 1930. |
But what is N by E about? Ostensibly it’s about a sea voyage but more than that it’s about the possibilities of being young and alone on the ocean, with ample time to contemplate the night sky. “In the half light of the early morning of July the fifth all hands bestirred themselves, got up; we came on deck. It was cold. The silent town lay dark against the eastern sky; the land was black, and stranded bergs glowed pale against it. Clear heavens strewn with stars, and a fair wind S by W! Noiselessly, as if stealing away, we hoisted sail, weighed anchor and bore out. And so, without tumult and the clamor of leave takings, quietly as the coming dawn, we entered the solitude of the ocean. And if we were not annihilated by the contemplation of such vast adventure it was by grace of that wise providence of man’s nature which, to preserve his reason, lets him be thoughtless before immensity.”
So the book is about existential contemplation. But it is alternately about moments and days of terror, freezing water, unpredictable tides, dense fog, exhaustion, and complete concentration on the object of survival. And about rumination on the historic voyages taken by earlier travelers, such as Leif Ericsson. About the limits of technological advancement. And about the difficulties of living in a very small space with two other men, one of them characterized as having the expression of a “petulant potato” and grating in his every word and deed (culminating in his being asked, by the governor of Greenland, to leave the island immediately upon his rescue).
Block print by Rockwell Kent from N by E Weslayan University Press, 1930. |
This review is kindly submitted to our Log by Allison Hart Lengyel, writer and mariner from San Juan County. Please scroll down to 13 November 2011 to read her piece on The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea by Philip Hoare (HarperCollins, 2008)
Examples of Rockwell Kent's artistic illustrations coming soon.
N by E book search––
Examples of Rockwell Kent's artistic illustrations coming soon.
N by E book search––
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