A Furnace Afloat: The Wreck of the Hornet and the Harrowing 4,300-Mile Voyage of Its Survivors

New York: Free Press - A Division of Simon & Schusteer, Inc., 2003. First Printing . Hard Back. Very Good/Very Good. 6 1/4" X 9 1/2. 269 Pages Indexed. No marks or stamps to this unread book with flawless interior text pages.The $25 jacket flap price is unclipped. This book is the story of the American clipper ship Hornet, which went down in flames in 1866, casting its crew adrift for forty-three days on the open ocean. The Hornet disaster was once one of the country's most infamous naval disasters. the crew of which barely survived for six weeks on ten days of rations and shoe leather, drifting 4,300 miles in a single lifeboat as they all slowly weakened and became delirious or mad. The ship had left her home-port of New York in January 1866, and embarked on a routine voyage to San Francisco around Cape Horn. She enjoyed an exceptionally smooth passage until the morning of May 3. On that day, the first mate went below to draw some varnish from a cask and accidentally set the cask afire. Within minutes the entire ship was engulfed. The ship's company of thirty-one men escaped into three small boats, set adrift in the Pacific Ocean to watch helplessly as the burning Hornet sank beneath the waves. Their ordeal was harrowing. Half of the Hornet's crew disappeared; the survivors were stalked by sharks and waterspouts, desiccated by heat, driven mad by lack of food and water. Soon the social divisions in the boat erupted into class war. The crewmen accused the captain of hoarding food, water, and even gold, and they plotted mutiny. With no hope left they planned cannibalism and on the day they were to draw straws, they reached Hawaii. By chance, a young, little-known Samuel Langhorne Clemens was in Hawaii. He wrote an account of the voyage that would make the crew famous, and Mark Twain a household name. Drawing on extensive primary sources, including survivors' diaries and letters, as well as newspaper accounts and Twain's reporting, Jackson has created a gripping narrative of the horrors and triumphs of men against the sea. Contents in 13 Chapters: The Picnic Cruise, Dead Reckoning, The Doldrums, Chimeras, The Stalking Sea, The First Parting, The Second Parting, Alone,, The Theft, The American Group, Delirium, The Lottery, The Island. Plus Preface, Prologue A Fire at Sea, Three Appendices - Daily Position of the Hornet's Longboat, The Hornet's Crew List and Glossary, Notes, and Bibliograpohy.