REMINISCENCES OF A WANDERER

AUTHOR - An Able Seaman (Robert Cunningham Bruce)

PUBLICATION - Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd, 1914

CONDITION - Very good condition. First edition. Cloth-spined hardback without dustwrapper in very good condition. Brown printed boards are in fine condition, with almost no bumping to corners, and no bends, stains or tears. Rich brown cloth spine has one tiny (5mm) fray on the front edge, otherwise has almost no signs of wear at all. Binding is tight and straight, and pages are clean bar foxing and a couple pencil notes on the endpapers.

PRICE - $40

DESCRIPTION - In the 19th century R.C. Bruce spent many years sailing on British, colonial and American merchant ships, interspersed with spells on the Otago and Queensland goldfields. His 1914 memoir, `Reminiscences of a Wanderer' is a ripping yarn of a nomadic labouring life at sea and on land. Born in Scotland in 1843, Bruce went to sea at the age of 14 and spent the next two decades sailing ‘before the mast' (a a deckhand) around the world. He tried his luck on the Otago goldfields in the early 1860s before returning to the sea for a further 15 years, including a spell on the American Great Lakes. His Reminiscences recount tales of saloon brawls on the ‘Barbary Coast', San Francisco's notorious sailortown; a narrow escape from floods on the Arrow River in Otago; ‘bucko' (cruel) officers on Yankee ‘blood boats', including one who shot a crewman; encounters with bushrangers on the Queensland diggings; surviving a bout of malaria in Batavia (Jakarta); a crew terrorised by a deranged, violent shipmate, who disappeared mysteriously at sea one dark night; street battles with knife-wielding Irish 'packet rats' in New York; discussing Shakespeare and the Bible with Japanese shipmates; various sweethearts won and lost; and storms by the dozen.

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