Stories of survival at sea have captured people’s curiosity and imagination throughout history. The struggles that some seafarers have faced while drifting on the open sea are remarkable. “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane is the story of four crew members trying to survive on the open sea while in a dinghy after their ship sank. Throughout the story, Crane describes how man and nature react with one another. By his description of their reactions, Crane makes it clear that nature does not care about man’s well being.…
Raymer’s main argument or emphasis conveyed was of the many hazards that were presented to the salvage and rescue divers during the aftermath of the hectic attack. The general concept was of the intensive salvage operations that were conducted which equated to over 20,000 man-hours underwater. Several interesting facts are described by Raymer which the average person would have no idea about, such as the dangers of entering a room that was once sealed but contains rust due to the fact that the iron oxide components of rust deplete oxygen which would suffocate an unprepared diver upon entering. The dangers of the job of a diver are clearly substantiated and validated in Raymer’s book, and successfully serve great justice to divers who worked in the harshest conditions. Raymer does an excellent job…
Source 3 – ‘storm at sea’ is a very different and more intense read about a woman who is sailing alone across the Atlantic. The whole read has a feel of uneasiness as it is described how scared and frustrated the woman would have been. There is also a sense of hope that the day will get better but disappointment is obvious when things take a turn for the worse.…
Storms shaking. Rodents skittering. The journey was home sickening. Subsequently, diseases and sickness overcame the boat. Hofstadter disclosed the severe and atrocious conditions of the passengers as “racked with fever or lying in their own vomit”, having “only begun to feel the anguish of the early American experience”, explaining how the boats reeked of death with its “high mortality”. Being open to foreign pathogens, the foreigners were severely affected. Additionally, Frethorne’s story of people dying of sickness by “scurvy or the bloody flux” reinforces Hofstadter’s view of the high death total. Frethorne accounted of the twenty they came with, half of them were dead where they “look every hour when two more should go”. With most boat passenger already dead, Frethorne points out how death awaits them inland as well when foretells the eighty murders that happened due to rogues. With detailed reports of death that occurred, Frethorne outstandingly supports Hofstadter’s outlook on the substantial deaths that comprised the experience of…
In Act V of The Tempest, Prospero begins to speak about giving up his beloved magic. He recounts the acts he was able to perform with magic fondly saying, “I have bedinn’d the noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds, and ‘twixt the green sea and the azured vault.” (lines 10-11) Prospero refers to his magic gratefully calling it a “potent art” in line 18. Magic allowed Prospero to perform many great acts and allowed him to confront those who wronged him in years past. However, Prospero makes the decision to give up his power as he plans to head back to Milan.…
“Poseidon has struck their well-rigged ship on the open sea with gale winds and crushing walls of waves, and only a few escape, swimming, struggling out of the frothing surf to reach the shore, their bodies crusted with salt but buoyed up with joy as they plant their feet on solid ground again, spared a deadly fate. So joyous now to her the sight of her husband, vivid in her gaze,…
Some of the most intriguing stories of today are about people's adventures at sea and the thrill and treachery of living through its perilous storms and disasters. Two very popular selections about the sea and its terrors are The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and "The Wreck of the Hesperus" by Henry Longfellow. Comparison between the two works determines that "The Wreck of the Hesperus" tells a more powerful sea-disaster story for several different reasons. The poem is more descriptive and suspenseful than The Perfect Storm, and it also plays on a very powerful tool to captivate the reader's emotion. These key aspects combine to give the reader something tangible that allows them to relate to the story being told and affects them strongly.…
There are two main similarities between the two novels. The first of these similar themes is that the books are both set in war time. The second similarity is that the protagonists in both of the stories are all children. They therefore have no adults for support, guidance or supervision.…
Death was forecasted as we propelled through the storm that awakened at our wrongdoings. “The bows went plunging at the breeze, sails cracked and lashed out strips in the big wind.” (p. 1048) Even the simple thought of one surviving through the maelstrom was inconceivable. Nine days we “drifted on the teeming sea before dangerous high winds.” (p. 1048) On the tenth day, we “came to the coastline”.…
Another subject I would like to talk about is what these two writings are based on. This is more of a contrast. In The Wreck of the Hesperus it is a fictional story based on just an imaginary storm and a horrible tragedy, of the captain losing his daughter. In The Perfect Storm it is based on a storm that happened in North America in October of 1991. Although it is based on a true story some of the information is a little bit changed. Like for one, everyone survives.…
Larson expertly captures the power the storm’s power and the catastrophic consequences of the unpredictable intersection of natural force and human choice. Unlike Mr. Larson’s other books this book does revolve around a famous murder, but instead focuses on the way things were run at the turn of the…
return is when the father doesn’t answer the daughter. There is a common bond between the skipper and his daughter. “It was the schooner Hesperus, /that sailed the wintry sea; / and the skipper had taken his little daughter/ to bear him company” (Lines 1-4) The falling action in The Wreck of the Hesperus is the continuation of the hurricane and discovering the dead girl. In resolution, the narrator implores Christ to save us from a death like this. In the poem, there was an allusion based on Christ. “And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, / on the Lake of Galilee.” (Lines 55-56)…
D. This book is about the horrible hurricane of September 8, 1900 on Galveston Texas that destroyed the entire city. The story is written through the eyes of a local meteorologist named Isaac Cline who studies everything about weather and knows just about everything. The storm wipes out the entire city of Galveston Texas, but Isaac would save thousands of people in his actions before the storm. He is faced with multiple challenges throughout the story and many mysteries…
Peanut butter and tuna fish; some things are not meant to be together. In his book, The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger tries to write both as a journalist and as the narrator of separate stories about a sword fishing boat, a three person sailboat, and U.S. Coast Guard Cutter stuck in the middle of colliding weather systems. While his skill in each style individually is exceptional, the way he switches between the two interrupts his flow and the contrasting styles do not fit together well. Junger combines styles as an attempt to broaden his audience and to keep the writer interested, but for me, he was unsuccessful. While he tries to appeal to the reader through the three forms of rhetoric, (pathos, logos, and ethos) his desire to also tell parts of the story as a narrator and to connect the reader to the characters did not blend well with other sections of the book.…
“The weather turned fearful; someone who has not seen the sea as turbulent as we saw it cannot picture it; no one can imagine those mountains of water that surround you and suddenly engulf the whole ship, or the wind that makes the rigging whistle and is so powerful at times that the sails ahave to be hauled in…”…