{"title":"Seafarers' Voices Ser","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"galley-slave-book-jean-marteilhe-9781848320703","title":"Galley Slave","description":"This remarkable memoir tells of the miseries of Jean Marteilhe of Bergerac, 'a Protestant condemned to the Galleys of France for his Religion', who, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, attempted, like so many French Huguenots, to escape to the more sympathetic Protestant countries bordering France. In 1700, heading through the Ardennes towards Charleroi, he was captured by French Dragoons and thrown into gaol.  In 1707 he then found himself, like so many Huguenots, condemned to serve in the French Mediterranean galleys. Little is known of life as a galley slave on these oared vessels. Certainly no accounts have come down to us from ancient Greece or Rome, though a little is known from the time of the Crusades. So Marteilhe's racy account represents the only authentic record of the miseries of a galley slave who experienced all the horrors of 'whips and chains' and the dreaded 'bastinado' - foot whipping.  For six years he pulled his oar, often seeing friends and co-religionists lashed - sometimes to death - under the whips of the overseers. He himself sustained almost fatal injuries in a bloody engagement with the British off the mouth of the Thames before being released under a general amnesty in 1713.  Galley Slave brings vividly to life the sufferings and conditions on the  seventeenth- and eighteenth-century galleys and is  a unique and unforgettable account. JEAN MARTEILHE was born in 1684 into a Huguenot family, just one year before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Captured while trying to leave France in 1700, he was to be subjected to six years as a galley slave. He published his memoir France in 1757 and died in Holland in 1770.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49527012131089,"sku":"GOR011429785","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49528657903889,"sku":"GOR003755829","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49648456597777,"sku":"CIN1848320701G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53266660065553,"sku":"CIN1848320701VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1848320701.jpg?v=1751217590"},{"product_id":"life-of-a-sailor-book-frederick-chamier-9781848320970","title":"Life of a Sailor","description":"Chamier was a Royal Navy officer, who like his exact contemporary Captain Marryat is best remembered for a series of naval novels. The Life of a Sailor was his first publication and is usually catalogued as fiction, which may be a tribute to Chamier's story-telling skills but it is wrong - the book is an exact account of his naval career, with every personality, ship and event he describes corroborated by his service records. By the time he went to sea in 1809, the heroic age of Nelson was over, but the war was far from won, and he was to see a lot of action, from anti-slavery patrols off Africa to punitive raids on the American coast during the War of 1812. His descriptions of the latter were to prove highly controversial. Like many liberal officers, he deplored the strategy of bringing the war to the civilian population, and the book was much criticised by more senior naval officers for saying so. Chamier represents a new generation of post-Nelsonic naval officer, more gentlemanly, better educated and perhaps more open-minded - he certainly got on well with Lord Byron, whom he met in Constantinople - and his sympathies generally look forward to the Victorian age. He was too young to rise to high rank, and after the Napoleonic War, like many others, he was condemned to a life on half-pay and perhaps forced into a literary career, but out of it came one of the era's most authentic accounts of a junior officer's naval service.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49582951366929,"sku":"GOR003580052","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50326298984721,"sku":"CIN1848320973G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":50401165902097,"sku":"CIN1848320973LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1848320973.jpg?v=1750724807"},{"product_id":"whale-hunter-book-nelson-cole-haley-9781848320963","title":"Whale Hunter","description":"This is the narrative of a harpooner in the whale-ship Charles W Morgan, whose four-year voyage in 1849-1853 took him from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to the South Pacific and on around the world. Before the days of the whale-gun and its explosive warhead, whaling was a dangerous and far from one-sided pursuit - indeed, one of Haley's earliest experiences was the destruction of his boat by a whale attack, and even when the harpoon hit the target, the whaleboat would be towed at speed until the wounded whale was exhausted, a terrifying experience that was known to whalemen as a 'Nantucket sleigh ride'. Haley's narrative covers all the excitements and dangers of the business - like trying to work on a slippery whale carcass, while the surrounding waters seethed with sharks - but also encompasses the long hours of boredom, when sailors entertained each other with tall tales. Many are recounted, and, surprisingly, some of the least likely can be corroborated. In fact, Haley's anecdotes of the South Seas in transition form one of the great appeals of the book. On the one hand there were still hostile islands with murderous inhabitants, while others had been so strongly influenced by Christian missionaries that pleasures of the flesh were now entirely off-limits. Whaling was, in effect, the first oil industry, a high-risk business where huge fortunes were to be made. Haley's is the authentic voice of those that chose its dangers.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49592804049169,"sku":"GOR003703927","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50713567658257,"sku":"GOR008799410","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50961339089169,"sku":"CIN1848320965VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52107321737489,"sku":"CIN1848320965G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1848320965.jpg?v=1751092547"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/seafarers-voices-ser-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}