Frank Richard Stockton

The Adventures of Captain Horn Annotated Frank Richard Stockton

The Adventures of Captain Horn is an 1895 adventure novel by Frank R. Stockton that was the third-best selling book in the United States in 1895. A sequel, Mrs. Cliff's Yacht, was released in 1897. Stockton's tale of the adventures of Capt. Horn is a great read. It tells a gripping tale set in the world of the nineteenth century. The prejudices and unthinking harshness of man to man are mitigated by the author's subtle sarcasm towards these mores of his day. Early in the spring of the year 1884 the three-masted schooner Castor from San Francisco to Valparaiso was struck by a tornado off the coast of Peru. The storm which rose with frightful suddenness was of short duration but it left the Castor a helpless wreck. Her masts had snapped off and gone overboard her rudder-post had been shattered by falling wreckage and she was rolling in the trough of the sea with her floating masts and spars thumping and bumping her sides.