The Sea and the Jungle

by H. M. Tomlinson

Paperback, 1961

Status

Available

Call number

828.91203

Genres

Nonfiction

Collection

Your library

Publication

Signet / New American Library (1961), Paperback, 253 pages

Description

Travel. Nonfiction. HTML: One rainy morning in the winter of 1909, a man with an altogether average look about him quit his job at the London Morning Leader, kissed his wife and children goodbye, and took a train to Swansea in Wales, where he talked his way aboard a freighter bound for the upper reaches of the Amazon. Three years later, Tomlinson published a book about his adventures. This book made him famous. "The Sea and the Jungle," wrote David McCord, "is an invitation to a new experience. It is more than that: an invitation to a new attitude toward life. Sadness perhaps, but no harshness; concern, but no diminution of spirit; doubt, but no hauling down the ensign. 'The right good book,' says Mr. Tomlinson, 'is always a book of travel: it is about a life's journey.'".… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Stbalbach

A travel narrative classic about the first English "tramp steamer" to traverse up the Amazon river, going nearly 2000 miles. Great insights on life, the jungle, the early days of Amazon pioneer settlements. Some of the personal insights, themes of civilized man versus the wild man, mans

exploitation of the environment and each other. Written with a very cheeky humor, parts are absolutely hillarious (fishing with dynamite is a highlite). Parts are very atmospheric, right out of Heart of Darkness, such as the story of the old man in the gin bar. Wonderful sense of place and time, natural lore and human emotion, well worth the journey. Authentic Indian Jones period.

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LibraryThing member hailelib

In the fall of 1909, Tomlinson "chucked" his job at a London newspaper and signed on to the crew of the steamship Capella as purser. The ship was bound for the upper Amazon bearing a load of coal to the men building a railroad in the interior of the continent. This is his account of that journey,

first published in 1912. In the beginning, I found The Sea and the Jungle a bit slow but once I became accustomed to Tomlinson's style the book picked up and I enjoyed the journey. He sprinkles his account with tales (some of the tall variety) told by his shipmates and later those told by some of the people he met after reaching the Amazon. This was worth reading for both his descriptions of life at sea and of the Amazon region as it was a hundred years ago.

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LibraryThing member markm2315

A great travelogue recounting a sea voyage from Britain to Porto Velho on the Amazon river system in 1909 - 1910. I found it through James Mustich’s 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die. It was published in 1912 and is free as an e-book. As much as I liked it, be warned that I sometimes struggled

with the author’s florid Edwardian prose. He can wax poetical when describing the Amazon, but also when discussing not much at all. His sentences may run on and sometimes run backward. There are scattered words that are no longer used much, if they were then, and a few are not in the dictionaries I have access to. You may need to bear with him until he is well at sea. Here is a suggestive example:
From our narrow and weltering security, where the wind searched through us like the judgment eye, I know, looking out upon the wilderness in turmoil where was no help, and no witness of our undoing, where the gleams were fleeting as though the very day were riven and tumbling, that I saw the filmy shapes of those things which darken the minds of primitives.
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Watch out for the story within the story that reads like a miniature version of Heart of Darkness.

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