Posts by Richard King
Kipling, Rudyard
Captains Courageous (1897)
Read MoreKing, Stephen
by Richard J. King (2000) KING, STEPHEN [EDWIN] (1947- ). Although Stephen King sets much of his best-selling fiction in Maine, the New England coastal state of his birth and residence, he rarely writes about the sea. King has written dozens of horror, fantasy, and science fiction novels, novellas, short stories, and screenplays, including Carrie (1974;…
Read MoreKincaid, Jamaica
by Olivia Raymond (2022) KINCAID, JAMAICA (1949 – ). Jamaica Kincaid is an award-winning author and essayist of Caribbean descent. Born Elaine Potter Richardson in St. John’s on the island of Antigua, she moved to the United States in 1965 at the age of sixteen to work as an au pair, later attending Franconia College. In…
Read MoreJudson, Edward Zane Carroll (“Ned Buntline”)
by Margarita Rigal-Aragon (2000) [JUDSON, EDWARD ZANE CARROLL], “NED BUNTLINE” (1823-1886). Edward Zane Carroll Judson, better known by his pseudonym Ned Buntline, was born on the Atlantic coast in Stamford, New York. The family moved to Bethany, Pennsylvania, and then to Philadelphia about the time Judson was a teenager. The docks of this port impressed…
Read MoreKesey, Ken
by Christopher Lee (2000) KESEY, KEN [ELTON] (1935-2001). Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and soon moved to Oregon, where he now lives. He developed a love of hunting and fishing as a child, and much of his writing employs the lush natural settings and small towns of the Pacific Northwest as fitting places…
Read MoreKent, Rockwell
by Doug Capra (2000) KENT, ROCKWELL (1882-1971). Rockwell Kent, painter, writer, adventurer, graphic artist, and political activist, was born in Tarrytown Heights, New Jersey. He trained as an architect at Columbia University and studied painting under William Merritt Chase, Robert Henri, Abbott Thayer, and Kenneth Hayes Miller. In 1905 Henri introduced the young socialist to the…
Read MoreJones, Justin (“Harry Hazel”)
by Boyd Childress (2000) [JONES, JUSTIN] “HARRY HAZEL” (1814-1889). Justin Jones, who wrote under the pseudonym Harry Hazel, authored more than forty dime novels about Boston, war, life at sea, and other adventure. His career as a fiction writer covered the 1840s and 1850s, for the most part, although he edited a newspaper as early…
Read MoreKenney, Susan
by Mira Dock (2000) KENNEY, SUSAN [McILVAINE] (1941- ). Born in Summit, New Jersey, Susan Kenney teaches at Colby College and has written two works with nautical themes: Sailing (1989) and One Fell Sloop (1990). Both are based on her experiences steering boats and her apprehension about sailing. Sailing follows middle-aged Sara and Phil Boyd in…
Read MoreJones, John Paul
by Kay Seymour House (2000) JONES, JOHN PAUL (1747-1792). Born in Scotland, John Paul went to sea as an apprentice at age twelve. After inheriting property in Virginia, he added “Jones” to his name and became a lieutenant in the Continental navy in 1775. His was the first vessel to fly the Continental flag. After reporting…
Read MoreJohnson, Irving
by Mary K. Bercaw Edwards (2000) JOHNSON, IRVING [McCLURE] (1905-1991). Irving Johnson grew up on a farm in the Connecticut River valley of Massachusetts. Inspired by Jack London’s novels, he had an unswerving desire to go to sea and work with his hands. Johnson spent summers working aboard yachts along the New England coast. In 1929…
Read MoreJohnson, Electa [Exy] Search
by Eleanore MacLean (2014) JOHNSON, ELECTA [EXY] SEARCH (1909-2004). Exy Johnson was born in Rochester, New York, in 1909. She attended Smith College, graduating after three years in 1929, and went on to the University of California, Berkeley, for a year of study in French. In 1932 Exy sailed from Le Havre, France, to Boston…
Read MoreJewitt, John Rodgers
by Mary Malloy (2000) JEWITT, JOHN RODGERS (1783-1821). An Englishman who served aboard the American merchant vessel Boston, John Jewitt became famous as a “captive” of the Indians of Nootka Sound, off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, when he survived the destruction of his ship and massacre of its crew in 1803. Born in…
Read MoreJewett, Sarah Orne
by John F. Hussey (2000) JEWETT, SARAH ORNE (1849-1909). Sarah Orne Jewett was born and raised in South Berwick, Maine, a dwindling shipping and manufacturing center. As a girl she listened to her paternal grandfather’s tales of life as a sea captain, skirting the embargo of 1807; some fifty years later South Berwick still reviled…
Read MoreJennings Jr., John Edward (“Bates Baldwin”)
by Debra Glabeau (2000) [JENNINGS, JOHN EDWARD, JR], “BATES BALDWIN” (1906-1973). John Edward Jennings Jr., historical novelist, was born in Brooklyn, New York. The son of a surgeon, he began his seafaring in 1925 as a foremast hand aboard a tramp steamer traveling in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Jennings attended the Colorado…
Read MoreJeffers, Robinson
by Gregg Allen Walker (2000) JEFFERS, [JOHN] ROBINSON (1887-1962). Robinson Jeffers, best known for his verse narratives set on California’s rugged northern coast, was born in Pennsylvania. In 1903 he moved with his family to Los Angeles and entered Occidental College, where he studied geology, astronomy, and biblical literature, graduating in 1905. In 1913, after graduate…
Read MoreJames, Henry
by Greg W. Zacharias (2000) JAMES, HENRY (1843-1916). Henry James made nineteen Atlantic crossings and lived for much of his life in seacoast cities and villages. In his longer fiction, scenes near the English Channel in What Maisie Knew (1897) and in Venice in The Aspern Papers (1888) and The Wings of the Dove (1902, film…
Read MoreIsaacs, Nicholas
IRVING, WASHINGTON (1783-1859). by James J. Schramer
Read MoreIrving, Washington
by James J. Schramer (2000) IRVING, WASHINGTON (1783-1859). The first American to succeed as a professional author, Washington Irving was born in New York City in the last year of the American Revolution. Although he is best known today as the author of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1819-1820), short tales that…
Read MoreIngraham, Joseph Holt
by Christina L. Wolak (2000) INGRAHAM, JOSEPH HOLT (1809-1860). Born in Portland, Maine, Joseph Holt Ingraham was a teacher, minister, and popular writer who produced more than 100 novels, 25 in 1845 alone at the peak of his career. Until the late 1840s Ingraham wrote popular historical romances, many about pirates and sea adventures. After…
Read MoreHughes, Langston
by Christopher C. De Santis (2000) HUGHES, [JAMES MERCER] LANGSTON (1902-1967). Langston Hughes, the prolific African American writer whose work in multiple genres endeared him early in his career to the black American community and later to a broad, international readership, first prepared to set sail in 1922, when he signed on as a messboy aboard…
Read MoreHowells, William Dean
by Udo Nattermann (2000) HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN (1837-1920). A native of Ohio, William Dean Howells began to work in his father’s printing shop at age nine. A self-taught student of languages and literature, he early entered a career in journalism. After writing a campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln, Howells was appointed American consul to Venice, where…
Read MoreHowe, Tina
by David R. Pellegrini (2000) HOWE, TINA (1937- ). Obie-award-winning playwright Tina Howe often employs sea imagery as metaphoric devices in her plays. Born in Boston and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, Howe began to have her works professionally produced in the early 1970s; her plays often reflect her love of the New England seashore. For…
Read MoreHouston, James
by Boyd Childress (2000) HOUSTON, JAMES [ARCHIBALD] (1921-2005). James Houston has made his mark in writing, art, film illustration, film and documentary production, and design. Winner of numerous awards, Houston has written several children’s books and novels on the Arctic, Arctic seas, and the Inuit people. Houston was born in Toronto in 1921, the son of…
Read MoreHough, Henry Beetle
by Wesley T. Mott (2000) HOUGH, HENRY BEETLE (1896-1985). Editor of the Vineyard Gazette on the island of Martha’s Vineyard from 1920 almost until his death, Henry Beetle Hough was the grandson of a sea captain. He was born and raised in the whaling city of New Bedford, where his newspaper-editor father serialized Moby-Dick (1851) in…
Read MoreHolmes, Oliver Wendell
by Stephen Curley (2000) HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL (1809-1894). Oliver Wendell Holmes, a writer and distinguished academic physician, spent his life around Boston. He was the social leader of a group of intellectual luminaries that included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his day a well-known wit and after-dinner speaker, Holmes…
Read MoreHigginson, Thomas Wentworth
by Jane Donahue Eberwein (2000) HIGGINSON, THOMAS WENTWORTH (1823-1911). This Harvard graduate and versatile man of letters felt at home in water from his early childhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While ministering to the Unitarian church at Newburyport, Massachusetts, he then formed friendships on the Isles of Shoals. Later, he sailed to Fayal in the Azores…
Read MoreHersey, John
by James F. Millinger and Jill B. Gidmark (2000) HERSEY, JOHN [RICHARD] (1914-1993). The prolific author John Hersey was born in China and moved to the United States in 1925, when his family decided to return. He was educated at Yale and Cambridge Universities and served for a time as secretary to Sinclair Lewis before becoming…
Read MoreHerne, James A.
by Attilio Favorini (2000) HERNE, JAMES A[HERN]. (1839-1901). James A. Herne was an actor, manager, and playwright whose early reputation as a successful melodramatist was established on the basis of his collaborations with playwright/producer/director David Belasco. Later in his career, however, he made a transition to a more realistic style, winning the approval of William Dean…
Read MoreHerbert, Henry William (“Frank Forester”)
by R. D. Madison (2000) [HERBERT, HENRY WILLIAM], “FRANK FORESTER” (1807-1858). Born in England and arriving in America in 1831, Henry William Herbert initiated a career as a writer of romances: his best-known fiction, Ringwood the Rover, was serialized in 1839 and published as a “cheap” novel in 1843. Under the name “Frank Forester,” he…
Read MoreHearn, Lafcadio
by Christopher Lee (2000) HEARN, [PATRICIO] LAFCADIO [TESSIMA CARLOS] (1850-1904). Lafcadio Hearn was born in Greece and migrated to the United States, where he drifted from New York, to Cincinnati, to New Orleans. In New Orleans he wrote Chita: A Memory of Last Island (1888), a fictionalized account of a hurricane in 1850 that…
Read MoreHenson, Matthew
by Emma Bonanomi (2021) MATTHEW ALEXANDER HENSON (1866-1955) was a Black American explorer who came to fame after United States Navy Commander Robert E. Peary’s 1908-1909 expedition to the North Pole. He may have been one of the first men to reach the North Pole on April 6, 1909, alongside Peary and Inuit guides Odaq,…
Read MoreHazel, Harry (Justin Jones)
Hayden, Sterling
by James F. Millinger (2000) HAYDEN, STERLING [RELYEA WALTER] (1916-1986). Born in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, Sterling Hayden quit school at sixteen to join the crew of a sailing ship. He served as seaman aboard fishing vessels and sailing ships out of New England ports from 1932 to 1936, was first mate on Irving Johnson’s…
Read MoreHayden, Robert
by Fred M. Fetrow (2000) HAYDEN, ROBERT [EARL] (1913-1980). A long-neglected African American poet, Robert Hayden (born Asa Bundy Sheffey) climaxed his career with two successive terms as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress (1976-1978), the position now known as poet laureate. His ten volumes of poetry show a consistent interest in African…
Read MoreHawthorne, Nathaniel
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL (1804-1864). Born in Salem, Massachusetts, when the town was still one of the most active seaports in America, Nathaniel Hawthorne spent most of his youth within sight of the town’s busy wharves. His grandfather, Daniel, had been a shipmaster and achieved minor distinction as a privateer during the Revolutionary…
Read MoreHawes, Charles Boardman
The Great Quest (1921)
Read MoreHavighurst, Walter
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) HAVIGHURST, WALTER [EDWIN] (1901-1994). Walter Havighurst is known primarily as a historian of the Midwest, but he also wrote fiction, much of it influenced by his experiences at sea in the 1920s. Havighurst worked as a deckhand on Great Lakes freighters and Pacific lumber schooners before going to college and…
Read Morede Hartog, Jan
by James F. Millinger (2000) DE HARTOG, JAN (1914-2002). Born in Holland, Jan de Hartog ran off to sea when he was ten years old. Six years later he enrolled in Amsterdam Naval College and became a junior mate in the Dutch oceangoing tugboat service. Escaping to London under the German occupation, he served as…
Read MoreHarte, Bret
by Nathaniel T. Mott HARTE, [FRANCIS] BRET[T] (1836-1902). Born in Albany, New York, Bret Harte rose to literary prominence as editor of the Overland Monthly (first pub. 1868), a San Francisco-based magazine of western lore. In this forum Harte produced his best sketches, stories, and poems, including “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (August 1868), “The…
Read MoreHarper, Michael S.
by Fred M. Fetrow HARPER, MICHAEL S[TEVEN]. (1938-2016). Few of Michael S. Harper’s challenging poems draw upon the sea for either setting or theme, but when his strong interest in history intersected with even stronger feelings about racial justice, he infrequently employed sea imagery for thematic impact. For example, one of his most quietly dramatic…
Read MoreHalyard, Harry
by Joseph Flibbert “HALYARD, HARRY” (dates unknown). “Harry Halyard” is the pseudonym of the unknown author of twelve novels published in the mid-nineteenth century. Five of them were intended to exploit public interest in the Mexican War: The Chieftain of Churubusco (1848), The Heroine of Tampico (1847), The Mexican Spy (1848), The Ocean Monarch (1848),…
Read MoreHall, Lawrence Sargent
by Joseph Flibbert HALL, LAWRENCE SARGENT (1915-1993). Lawrence Sargent Hall was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Following completion of his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1941, he served for four years as an officer in the U.S. Navy, including three years of sea duty. In 1946 Hall took a teaching position at his undergraduate alma mater,…
Read MoreHaley, Alex
by Robert Shenk HALEY, ALEX (1921-1992). Alex Haley joined the Coast Guard as a “mess boy” at seventeen after two years of college. During World War II, aboard the cargo ship U.S.S. Murzim, he sent story after story to national magazines, with no luck. But an illiterate first-class steward’s mate set Haley to writing love…
Read MoreHains, Thornton Jenkins (“Captain Mayn Clew Garnett”)
by Bert Bender (2000) [HAINS, THORNTON JENKINS], “CAPTAIN MAYN CLEW GARNETT” (1866-1953). Named for his maternal grandfather, Admiral Thornton Jenkins, U.S.N., Thornton Jenkins Hains had a career of indefinite length as a working seaman and was licensed in both England and the United States as a navigator for large oceangoing vessels. He began a writing…
Read MoreGuterson, David S.
by Jeffrey Cass (2000) GUTERSON, DAVID S. (1956- ). Born in Seattle, and residing on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound, David S. Guterson is well aware of the nuanced lives of his fellow islanders. His haunting novel Snow Falling on Cedars (1994) vividly captures both the hard agrarian work of inland strawberry farmers and the…
Read MoreGoodrich, Marcus
by C. Herbert Gilliland (2000) GOODRICH, MARCUS [AURELIUS] (1897-1991). Novelist Marcus Goodrich was born 28 November 1897, in San Antonio, Texas. Enlisting in the navy in 1916, he served initially in the Philippines aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Chauncey. With the outbreak of World War I, the Chauncey was sent to the Atlantic, and Goodrich was…
Read MoreGlaspell, Susan
by Attilio Favorini (2000) GLASPELL, SUSAN [KEATING] (1876-1948). Associated with the Provincetown Players, a group that included Eugene O’Neill, Jig Cook, and Floyd Dell in the early years of their illustrious collaboration (1916- 1922), Susan Glaspell is best known for her novels and the play Trifles (1916). The only one of her plays in which…
Read MoreGarland, George (Garland Roark)
See Roark, Garland.
Read MoreGarnett, Capt. Mayn Clew (Thornton Jenkins Hains)
Fuller, Margaret
by Robert Beasecker (2000) FULLER, [SARAH] MARGARET (1810-1850). Born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, Margaret Fuller was the eldest of nine children. Her father, a lawyer and congressman, educated her at home, and under his demanding regimen she developed her remarkable intellectual gifts. She later taught school in Boston, where she met Ralph Waldo Emerson and entered…
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