London Jack

Jack London, "The Cruise of the Snark" annotated manuscript and signed check


Lot consists of 3pp 1st revision typed manuscript of The Cruise of the Snark with 25+ handwritten edits/words in Jack London's hand; along with a signed check dating from the era of the Snark's construction.


In the spring of 1907, Jack London (1876-1916), along with his wife Charmian (1871-1955) and a small crew, set out for a modern maritime adventure aboard the Snark, their 45' long custom built sailboat. Over the next 2 years, the Londons would sail west and south across the Pacific Ocean, exploring Hawaii, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tahiti, Australia, and other tropical locales. London later recounted his travel experiences in a non-fiction illustrated account called The Cruise of the Snark, published by The Macmillan Company in New York in 1911.


These typed manuscript galleys correspond to pages 266-272 of London's final 1st edition of The Cruise of the Snark. This excerpt, from Chapter XV: "Cruising in the Solomons," describes dynamiting fish near a man-built island and avoiding belligerent bushmen pirates. At this point of the journey, the Londons were sailing on a heavily armed Australian yacht named the Minota.


The galley proofs are oversized, measuring 9.25" x 12" on average overall, and have generously sized margins to accommodate handwritten author's edits. The pages are in near fine condition with expected wear including paper folds and isolated light soiling. The manuscripts dates circa spring 1911.


London's edits throughout the manuscript are in pencil and blue pen. London has inserted a comma between "whale-boat" and "each" on the second page. Interestingly, this edit was never made; London's coma is missing from this same section of the published version. London deleted the word "had" on page three. Throughout, London has drawn arrows pointing to text blocks where he wished corresponding illustrations to appear. Other possibly publisher's edits in red are found throughout.


London hand-inscribed captions to 3 remarkable black and white photographs that would become Illustration 90, "Four old rascals," Illustration 91, "The two handsomest men in the Solomons," and Illustration 92, "Island of Uru - hand-manufactured - Malaita." 


The manuscript pages correspond to the following published text found in The Cruise of the Snark. Areas affected by London's edits are in bold.


"--in a sea-way.  When one dislikes sliding down upon the lee-rail barbed wire, and when he dares not catch hold of the weather-rail barbed wire to save himself from sliding, and when, with these various disinclinations, he finds himself on a smooth flush-deck that is heeled over at an angle of forty-five degrees, some of the delights of Solomon Islands cruising may be comprehended.  Also, it must be remembered, the penalty of a fall into the barbed wire is more than the mere scratches, for each scratch is practically certain to become a venomous ulcer.  That caution will not save one from the wire was evidenced one fine morning when we were running along the Malaita coast with the breeze on our quarter.  The wind was fresh, and a tidy sea was making.  A black boy was at the wheel.  Captain Jansen, Mr. Jacobsen (the mate), Charmian, and I had just sat down on deck to breakfast.  Three unusually large seas caught us.  The boy at the wheel lost his head.  Three times the Minota was swept.  The breakfast was rushed over the lee-rail.  The knives and forks went through the scuppers; a boy aft went clean overboard and was dragged back; and our doughty skipper lay half inboard and half out, jammed in the barbed wire.  After that, for the rest of the cruise, our joint use of the several remaining eating utensils was a splendid example of primitive communism.  On the Eugenie, however, it was even worse, for we had but one teaspoon among four of us—but the Eugenie is another story.

 



Our first port was Su’u on the west coast of Malaita.  The Solomon Islands are on the fringe of things.  It is difficult enough sailing on dark nights through reef-spiked channels and across erratic currents where there are no lights to guide (from northwest to southeast the Solomons extend across a thousand miles of sea, and on all the thousands of miles of coasts there is not one lighthouse); but the difficulty is seriously enhanced by the fact that the land itself is not correctly charted.  Su’u is an example.  On the Admiralty chart of Malaita the coast at this point runs a straight, unbroken line.  Yet across this straight, unbroken line the Minota sailed in twenty fathoms of water.  Where the land was alleged to be, was a deep indentation.  Into this we sailed, the mangroves closing about us, till we dropped anchor in a mirrored pond.  Captain Jansen did not like the anchorage.  It was the first time he had been there, and Su’u had a bad reputation.  There was no wind with which to get away in case of attack, while the crew could be bushwhacked to a man if they attempted to tow out in the whale-boat.  It was a pretty trap, if trouble blew up.

 



“Suppose the Minota went ashore—what would you do?” I asked.

 



“She’s not going ashore,” was Captain Jansen’s answer.

 



“But just in case she did?” I insisted. 

 



He considered for a moment and shifted his glance from the mate buckling on a revolver to the boat’s crew climbing into the whale-boat each man with a rifle.

 



“We’d get into the whale-boat, and get out of here as fast as God’d let us,” came the skipper’s delayed reply.

 



He explained at length that no white man was sure of his Malaita crew in a tight place; that the bushmen looked upon all wrecks as their personal property; that the bushmen possessed plenty of Snider rifles; and that he had on board a dozen “return” boys for Su’u who were certain to join in with their friends and relatives ashore when it came to looting the Minota.

 



The first work of the whale-boat was to take the “return” boys and their trade-boxes ashore.  Thus one danger was removed.  While this was being done, a canoe came alongside manned by three naked savages.  And when I say naked, I mean naked.  Not one vestige of clothing did they have on, unless nose-rings, ear-plugs, and shell armlets be accounted clothing.  The head man in the canoe was an old chief, one-eyed, reputed to be friendly, and so dirty that a boat-scraper would have lost its edge on him.  His mission was to warn the skipper against allowing any of his people to go ashore.  The old fellow repeated the warning again that night.

 



In vain did the whale-boat ply about the shores of the bay in quest of recruits.  The bush was full of armed natives; all willing enough to talk with the recruiter, but not one would engage to sign on for three years’ plantation labor at six pounds per year.  Yet they were anxious enough to get our people ashore.  On the second day they raised a smoke on the beach at the head of the bay.  This being the customary signal of men desiring to recruit, the boat was sent.  But nothing resulted.  No one recruited, nor were any of our men lured ashore.  A little later we caught glimpses of a number of armed natives moving about on the beach.

 



Outside of these rare glimpses, there was no telling how many might be lurking in the bush.  There was no penetrating that primeval jungle with the eye.  In the afternoon, Captain Jansen, Charmian, and I went dynamiting fish.  Each one of the boat’s crew carried a Lee-Enfield.  “Johnny,” the native recruiter, had a Winchester beside him at the steering sweep.  We rowed in close to a portion of the shore that looked deserted.  Here the boat was turned around and backed in; in case of attack, the boat would be ready to dash away.  In all the time I was on Malaita I never saw a boat land bow on.  In fact, the recruiting vessels use two boats—one to go in on the beach, armed, of course, and the other to lie off several hundred feet and “cover” the first boat.  The Minota, however, being a small vessel, did not carry a covering boat.

 



We were close in to the shore and working in closer, stern-first, when a school of fish was sighted.  The fuse was ignited and the stick of dynamite thrown.  With the explosion, the surface of the water was broken by the flash of leaping fish.  At the same instant the woods broke into life.  A score of naked savages, armed with bows and arrows, spears, and Sniders, burst out upon the shore.  At the same moment our boat’s crew, lifted their rifles.  And thus the opposing parties faced each other, while our extra boys dived over after the stunned fish.

 



Three fruitless days were spent at Su’u.  The Minota got no recruits from the bush, and the bushmen got no heads from the Minota.  In fact, the only one who got anything was Wade, and his was a nice dose of fever.  We towed out with the whale-boat, and ran along the coast to Langa Langa, a large village of salt-water people, built with prodigious labour on a lagoon sand-bank—literally built up, an artificial island reared as a refuge from the blood-thirsty bushmen.  Here, also, on the shore side of the lagoon, was Binu, the place where the Minota was captured half a year previously and her captain killed by the bushmen.  As we sailed in through the narrow entrance, a canoe came alongside with the news that the man-of-war had just left that morning after having burned three villages, killed some thirty pigs, and drowned a baby.  This was the Cambrian, Captain Lewes commanding.  He and I had first met in Korea during the Japanese-Russian War, and we had been crossing each ether’s trail ever since without ever a meeting.  The day the Snark sailed into Suva, in the Fijis, we made out the Cambrian going out.  At Vila, in the New Hebrides, we missed each other by one day.  We passed each other in the night-time off the island of Santo.  And the day the Cambrian arrived at Tulagi, we sailed from Penduffryn, a dozen miles away.  And here at Langa Langa we had missed by several hours.

 



The Cambrian had come to punish the murderers of the Minota’s captain, but what she had succeeded in doing we did not learn until later in the day, when a Mr. Abbot, a missionary, came alongside in his whale-boat.  The villages had been burned and the pigs killed.  But the natives had escaped personal harm.  The murderers had not been captured, though the Minota’s flag and other of her gear had been recovered. "


In addition to the hand-corrected manuscript is an unnumbered check inscribed overall and signed “Jack London” on the payee line. Issued from the Central Bank of Oakland, California on June 27, 1905 in the amount of $1.00 payable to “Rozelle Mfg. Co.” The plain cream check is stamped in blue, maroon, and purple recto and verso, and bears a x-shaped cancellation mark at center. The first letter of the manufacturer's name and the money amount are slightly smeared, otherwise in near fine condition with expected folds and wrinkles. Check measures 6.5" x 2.875".


The July 1905 issue of The Business Man's Magazine and The Book-Keeper listed New York City-based Rozelle Manufacturing Company as a purveyor of office supplies, such as its automatic envelope moistener.  "Save your tongue, your life would be miserable without it," a period advertisement for Rozelle's Columbia Envelope Moistener urged consumers. The product moistened paper glues with water instead of human saliva, thus safeguarding its consumers from the contraction of "cancer and blood poison"!


The author must have required an inexhaustible supply of writing materials and office supplies, if one considers the considerable output produced over London's short lifetime. In the year 1905 alone, London published one novel, one essay, three short stories, and three poems. He must have also responded to lots of fan mail.


London grew up in Oakland, California. He attended elementary school through high school there, and studied at a local waterfront bar named Heinold's First and Last Saloon; the proprietor later lent him tuition money to Berkeley.


Jack London wrote dozens of poems, short stories, essays, and novels over a prolific career curtailed by chronic ill-health. With income generated from adventure classics like Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906), London was able to purchase a ranch and outfit the Snark.

 

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