Abaft The Funnel

MP3 Audio CD. Abaft The Funnel

On Voyage

Having decided to return to England in order to move beyond the limits of Indian journalism, he sailed from Calcutta on 9 March 1889 in company with his American friends from Allahabad, Professor ‘Aleck’ and Mrs ‘Ted’ Hill. Their voyage took them via Malaya, Singapore, China, and Japan to San Francisco in the U.S.A., arriving on 28 May aboard the S.S. City of Peking. Here the party split up and whilst the Hills went directly to Beaver City, Northern Pennsylvania, Kipling travelled up the western seaboard of the U.S.A. before striking across country and eventually reaching Beaver on 24 July. From here he travelled around the eastern seaboard before sailing on the Inman Line S.S. City of Berlin from New York on 25 September to dock in Liverpool, England, on 5 October.

During this seven month journey, Kipling wrote the series of ‘Letters’ for the Pioneer, most of which were collected in From Sea to Sea. Ten concern the period before arriving in Japan, thirteen are about Japan, and twenty relate to North America. At the same time, as can be seen from the summary of the contents of Abaft the Funnel (above), he was writing pieces of fiction based on his experiences which were printed in the Civil and Military Gazette. The output for this period is at least 54 stories or ‘Letters’.

London

Kipling travelled down from Liverpool to London in October 1889, and arranged to take rooms in Villiers Street, just off the Strand, on 23 October. From his writings, he does seem to have been genuinely dismayed by the London fogs, which are frequently mentioned in the stories reprinted in Abaft the Funnel. It must be remembered though, that these, as well as all the other stories written before he reached London, are aimed at his Anglo-Indian audience, and that his objective was to interest and amuse that audience.