George Fetherling

At a low point in his life, the prolific Canadian writer Douglas Fetherling sought to clear his head by taking the kind of trip that many of us dream about – going round the world on one of the last of the tramp freighters. The four-month voyage carried him (and a handful of other travellers) some thirty thousand nautical miles, from Europe via the Panama Canal to the South Pacific, a region with a future as fragile as its past is romantic. There the ship, a converted Russian ice-breaker show more renamed The Pride of Great Yarmouth, traded at some of the most fabled – and some of the most disreputable – ports in the southern hemisphere. The return voyage, by way of Singapore, Indonesia, the Indian Ocean, and Suez, was just as memorable.

Written with dash, colour, and droll humour, Fetherling’s narrative is peopled by a rich cast of characters, from the Foreign Legionnaires of French Polynesia to the raskol gangs of Papua New Guinea. Most memorable perhaps are the men and women who continue to follow the millennia-old life of the sea. This is the world of Ordinaries and Able-Bodied Seamen, but also of hopeful young officer cadets – to say nothing of, in this particular instance, a temperamental cook, a computer genius with a nose-ring, and a young Russian woman who believes herself the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.

Fetherling captures the reality of life aboard a working cargo ship – the boredom, the seclusion, the differences of nationality and culture that isolation and cramped quarters seem to exaggerate. But he also describes how the routine of loneliness or tranquillity is punctuated by moments of near-panic – shipboard fires, furniture-smashing storms, even a brush with pirates in the Strait of Malacca.

Running Away to Sea is literary travel-writing in the grand old tradition. show less

I had to read this for school, and with all reviews of school books, my review will be tainted with the fact that I hate to be *forced* to read books.

This book is a selection of various memoirs by Canadian authors mostly set throughout the 20th century. While they are famous authors, and the memoirs are very well-written, most of the stories were more disturbing than entertaining. Because everything was an excerpt from a longer piece, nothing was wrapped up. The stories just captured a show more moment in time, without the "closure" the author originally included in a longer story. show less

Begins well and sustains it through most of the book, but the ending is a little flat. Writing is good but the change of narrators makes the plotting choppy.

A very well written book about a time and place, during and after the American Civil War, about the great American poet Walt Whitman.