Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley (20 page)

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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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Page 101
Pepperrell, that he, Captain Dean, and Henry Dean must return to England to defend themselves against Langman's expected attacks, he explains: "'Colonel,' I said, "we know people like yourselves and these wonderful friends we've made in Portsmouth wouldn't believe Langman; but people in England aren't like that. Those around the docks believe anything they hear about people of property or position. They're too ignorant to investigateto find out the truth'" (368).
"Telling the truth" is a common theme in virtually all of Roberts's novels. In
Rabble in Arms,
for example, his narrator's purpose is "to tell the truththe truth as to why wars are fought, and how they are bungled and protracted, while those who fight them lose their lives and fortunes" (577). In
Boon Island,
however, Roberts's "finding the truth'' theme refers to an abstract, motivating force as well as to "what actually happened." As Roberts concludes in his book: "How many of us have our Boon Islands? And how many have our Langmans? But doesn't each one of us have an inner America on which in youth his heart is set; and ifbecause of age, or greed, or weakness of will, or circumstances beyond his poor controlit escapes him, his life, to my way of thinking, has been wasted" (372).
Thus, Roberts, a fervent nationalist all his life, maintains that America allows individuals to accomplish whatever they are capable of attaining. And while America also symbolizes the goals people wish to achieve, for Roberts Boon Island represents the courage and integrity that a person needs to confront and overcome life's inevitable adversities so he can reach these goals. Roberts summed up his feelings in a memo, written a few weeks before his death in July 1957. It read: "Boon Island is us fighting the world. We ain't got a Chinaman's chancebut with guts we can somehow lick the world."
14
 
Page 102
Notes
1. Page numbers cited in text refer to the present edition.
2. Kenneth Roberts,
Rabble in Arms
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1947), 577, hereafter cited in text;
March to Quebec: Journals of the Members of Arnold's Expedition,
compiled and annotated by Kenneth Roberts (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1953), 43.
3. "Roberts Shocks Portsmouth: Famous Author Stirs Warner House Asc.,"
Kittery (Maine) Press,
August 13, 1937, 1, 5.
4. Kenneth Roberts, "Notes for a Discussion with Booth," August 24, 1934, Adams Manuscript Collection, Indiana University, Lilly Library.
5. Lewis Nichols, "A Visit with Mr. Roberts,"
New York Times Book Review,
1 January 1956, 3.
6. Alice Dixon Bond, "Kenneth Roberts' New Novel Proves Own View, That Writer Must Have 'Stood Up to Live,'"
Boston Herald,
January 15, 1956, sec. 1, p. 2.
7. Ibid.
8. Lewis Gannett, "Book Review,"
New York Herald Tribune,
January 2, 1956, 11.
9. John Deane,
A Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Nottingham Galley, & c
. Publish'd in 1711. Revis'd, and reprinted with additions in 1726, by John Deane, commander. [London, 1726], 28; reprinted herein; page numbers refer to the present edition; hereafter cited in text as Dean, Roberts's spelling of the name throughout
Boon Island
. Roberts's annotated copy is in the Kenneth Roberts Collection of the Dartmouth College Library.
10. Kenneth Roberts,
I Wanted to Write
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1949), 187.
11. Christopher Langman, Nicholas Mellen, and George White,
A True Account of the Voyage of the Nottingham-Galley of London, John Dean Commander, from the River Thames to New-England, Near which Place she was cast away on Boon-Island, December 11, 1710, by the Captain's Obstinacy, who endeavour'd to betray her to the French, or run her ashore; with an Account of the Falsehoods in the Captain's Narrative
(London: Printed for S. Popping, 1711), 52; reprinted herein; page numbers refer to the present edition; hereafter cited in text as Langman.
12. Herbert Faulkner West, "The Work of Kenneth Roberts,"
Colby Library Quarterly
6 (September 1962): 98.

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