There are several good reasons to read this. It's a funny first-person yarn by a happy-go-unlucky societal misfit that's reminiscent of Mark Twain. It's a brilliant sendup of governments and bureaucracies. It's a slice of maritime history that will give you a detailed experience of working life aboard an early steam freighter, written in the colorful lingo of the time but without sacrificing readability. It presents a moving psychological portrait of an outcast who never loses spirit to keep going in a cruelly exploitative world. And finally, it casts a revealing light on systems in which we are all complicit that can in the name of efficiency doom good people to non-personhood.

If you haven't read any B. Traven, that's another reason to read this book. ( )

What happens when it's World War I and countries are being divided up, and you are not in the city you belong to because you are serving on a ship? What happens if the ship you work on took off in the middle of the night while you were sleeping in Port? Now, both of you have no papers to prove where you belong, and no country will let you stay. You get on a "Death Ship. This is a ship that no longer makes$ for its owners and so needs to be sunk for the insurance it will bring in. This book is about two"drags": coal shovelers/Ash haulers/furnace and boiler stickers for whom this devilish work is the only thing left for sailors with no papers. B. Traven is an amazing author who I don't blame at all for hiding from the human race in Mexico. ( )

This was the 1st Traven bk I read. He's most known for "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" wch was made into a film by John Houston starring Humphrey Bogart. "The Death Ship" starts out humorously enuf as a comedy-of-errors: sailor gets separated from ship, doesn't have papers, etc. However, the real content of the bk is a critique of a world full of borders & capitalist corruption. There aren't any spoilers in this little review. I'll just say that the situation goes from bad to worse until the comedy has turned into clear-cut tragedy. Traven's one of the best political novelists I've ever read. ( )

The death ship I am on,
All I have lost is nothing to win
So far off, sunny New Orleans
So far off, lovely Louisiana.
(from "Song of An American Sailor")

This was B. Traven's first novel, published in 1934, and it is my favorite of his works. It is a sea story unlike any other in that it is a story of men at sea as a metaphor for men against what Jack London infamously referred to as the "Iron Heel" of modern industrialism. It is a novel with hypnotic power, timelessness, universality, and authenticity. In this work, Traven approaches the ability of Joseph Conrad to make the sea come alive for the reader.

The main figure who doesn't have a name—at least not a true one—isn't a victorious hero. He is an ordinary person who is struggling. His tale alternates between being hysterical and really somber at points. The reader is made to feel like his existence is pointless and that he has nowhere to fit in. It's interesting to note that B. Traven, the author, published under pseudonyms and declined to have his works recognized. His identification has never even been adequately confirmed due to the extent of this. Maybe that's why I found the writing to be so captivating. It was, in part, the author's way of venting his dissatisfaction with the world he witnessed.

Bruce Catton called the book "a startling novel about the horrible things that can happen to a man in the cock-eyed post-war world of Europe if he can't prove he is who he says he is. Our sailor is entangled in a world gone mad, a world in which justice and sanity have simply ceased to exist." A few decades later and several wars as well, and the world seems at times to be just as cock-eyed, no more just or sane.

What intrigued me, perhaps even more than this mesmerizing first novel, is the mysteriousness with which B. Traven hid his personal life. Even after many more novels, including the great Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Traven continued to hide behind a post office box in Mexico City. However, that does not matter since his novels stand for themselves as exciting and daring adventures into the world of men and nature. This reader found The Death Ship to be a novel with hypnotic power, timelessness, universality, and authenticity. ( )

Wry humour, wonderful conversational tone, historically interesting and lots of political comment. Generally a very good read and I am surprised this didn't become better known. ( )