Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley

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Authors: Kenneth Roberts,Jack Bales,Richard Warner

Tags: #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc., #Nottingham (Galley) - Fiction, #Transportation, #Historical, #Boon Island (Me.) - Fiction, #Boon Island, #18th Century, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc - Fiction, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc, #Shipwrecks, #Fiction, #Literary, #Sea Stories, #Historical Fiction, #Shipwrecks - Maine - Boon Island - History - 18th Century - Fiction, #test, #Boon Island (Me.), #General, #Maine, #History

BOOK: Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley
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title
:
Boon Island : Including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley
author
:
Roberts, Kenneth Lewis.; Bales, Jack.; Warner, Richard H.
publisher
:
University Press of New England
isbn10 | asin
:
0874517443
print isbn13
:
9780874517446
ebook isbn13
:
9780585229515
language
:
English
subject
 
Shipwrecks--Maine--Boon Island--History--18th century--Fiction, Survival after airplane accidents, shipwrecks, etc.--Fiction, Nottingham (Galley)--Fiction, Boon Island (Me.)--Fiction, Historical fiction, Sea stories.
publication date
:
1996
lcc
:
PS3535.O176B66 1996eb
ddc
:
813/.52
subject
:
Shipwrecks--Maine--Boon Island--History--18th century--Fiction, Survival after airplane accidents, shipwrecks, etc.--Fiction, Nottingham (Galley)--Fiction, Boon Island (Me.)--Fiction, Historical fiction, Sea stories.
Page i
Boon Island
Including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley
 
Page ii
 
Page iii
Boon Island
Including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley
Kenneth Roberts
Edited by
Jack Bales and Richard Warner
University Press of New England
Hanover and London
 
Page iv
University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755
The novel,
Boon Island
: Copyright © (
MCMLV
), by
Kenneth Roberts and Anna M. Roberts
Richard Warner, Preface; Philip N. Cronenwett, "Going to the
Sources for Historical and Literary Explanation"; Richard
Warner, "Captain Deane and the Wreck of the
Nottingham
Galley
"; Jack Bales, "Kenneth Roberts and
Boon Island
:
A Study of Historical and Literary Perception"; and this
compilation
©
1996 by University Press of New England
Published by arrangement with Doubleday, a division of
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
The novel,
Boon Island,
originally published by Doubleday &
Company, Inc., January 2, 1956
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1
CIP
data appear at the end of the book
 
Page v
CONTENTS
Preface
Richard Warner
vii
Going to the Sources for Historical and Literary Explanation
Philip N. Cronenwett
ix
Part I
The Wreck of the Nottingham Galley
Captain John Deane and the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley
Richard Warner
3
The Jasper Deane Account (1711)
22
The Langman Account (1711)
42
The John Deane Account (Revis'd) (1726)
66
Part II
Kenneth Roberts and Boon Island
Kenneth Roberts and Boon Island: A Study of Historical and Literary Perception
Jack Bales
93
Boon Island
Kenneth Roberts
103
 
Page vii
PREFACE
In 1710 the trading vessel
Nottingham Galley
set out from London bound for Boston on a perilous, late season voyage. Before making port, it encountered severe storms and struck Boon Island, a desolate rock off the Maine coast. All hands got ashore but the ship and cargo were lost. Devoid of food, shelter, and fire, the crew suffered terribly and was obliged to cannibalize a dead man before being rescued.
Captain John Deane, the master of the ill-starred ship, wrote his account of the disaster, which was rushed to publication by his brother, Jasper, to refute a conflicting account by the first mate, Christopher Langman. His reputation ruined, Captain Deane disappeared into Russian naval service for eleven years. He afterward returned to England, where he entered a new career as a spy and diplomat and cultivated his unavoidable celebrity with frequent reprints of his narrative.
The wreck of the
Nottingham Galley
thus became as well known in the first half of the eighteenth century as the mutiny on the
Bounty
did in the second half. Though its notoriety has since faded, modern readers still know the sea disaster as the subject of
Boon Island,
the gripping novel written by Kenneth Roberts in 1956.
In 1992, a colleague and I had a most curious scholarly intersection when, unbeknownst to each other, our research brought us both to Captain Deane's shipwreck at Boon Island. In the late
 
Page viii
summer, reference librarian Jack Bales was completing the final chapter of his biography of the novelist Kenneth Roberts, dealing with the author's last book,
Boon Island
. At the same time, I was searching archives in London and St. Petersburg to reconstruct the career of Captain John Deane, a British officer who served in the Russian fleet in the era of Peter the Great. Though I had found Deane's service records and materials about his later activities, I was perplexed about his early life until I discovered the Captain's account of his shipwreck at Boon Island, Maine, in 1710.
I had read Roberts's novel and knew Bales's work. In the fall I brought up the intersection of our research. We immediately realized the value of a collaboration and embarked upon the project that has resulted in the production of this unique collection of the original narratives, scholarly essays, and historical fiction.
RICHARD WARNER
FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA
SEPTEMBER 1995
 
Page ix
GOING TO THE SOURCES FOR HISTORICAL AND LITERARY EXPLANATION
Philip N. Cronenwett
The line between historical events, historical fact, and historical fiction never has been clear. Often it has been seen as a Maginot Linean impregnable wall that clearly defines and separates truth from fancy. As we all know, the Maginot Line was not impermeable. Defining historical fiction and setting it off from "history" presents some interesting problems. Charles T. Wood, in a provocative essay on the beginnings of historical fiction, has suggested that "neither historians nor literary critics have ever precisely defined the boundary separating history from historical fiction."
1
He further suggests that, from the seventeenth century to the present, the genre of historical fiction grew to uphold larger historical truths, that the lessons and the nature of the human condition remain the province of writers of fiction.
2
Finally, Wood suggests that new critical theories, borrowed from literary studies, are offering new interpretive tools. "If such theories prevail, the distinction between history and historical fiction will again become one less of kind than of degree."
3
Definition is paramount. One recent student of the genre has used the terms nonfiction novel, factual fiction, documentary novel, pseudofactual novel, and historical novel
4
to attempt to define, or perhaps confine, the novel that uses fact as a basis for

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