Before the Wind: The Memoir of an American Sea Captain, 1808-1833 Hardcover - 1999

From the publisher

In the current wave of seafaring literature -- from Patrick O'Brian to C. S. Forester -- no fictional sailor's story can match this true, real-life adventure. Growing up in Boston with the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Tyng first followed the call of the sea at age thirteen, going, to China and back as a ship's boy. Over the next twenty-five years he rose through the ranks and made his fortune as a captain and ship owner in the tea and sugar trade.

Before the Wind reads like a novel: the rich, wry observations of a curious mind wedded to a sensitive soul and a toughened body. With Tyng we roam the world of the early nineteenth century: sighting the first Atlantic steamship bound for Russia, visiting Lord Byron in Italy and opium dens in Hong Kong, and skirting Napoleon's prison isle of St. Helena. We sail into Havana Harbor and meet King Kamehameha of Hawaii and his three queens. We learn to shin up the rigging, pump out a leaky brig, siphon rum from the captain's cask, and allay its aftereffects with pepper sauce. From pirates and mutinies to shipwrecks and cholera, Tyng's eye for detail is sharp and his storytelling as fresh as an offshore breeze. Armchair travelers, history buffs, and lovers of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm will long to run away to sea with Before the Wind.