Bullen rose from poverty and sea service to become a successful author whose work captured the dangers faced by merchant sailors. The selected episode follows a steamer leaving revolutionary Haiti amid blockade-running and a lethal yellow-fever outbreak. Disease killed officers, engineers, sailors, and stewards with frightening speed and forced repeated burials at sea. The biography's narrative character makes the merchant-maritime world unusually immediate.
Chapter · 3:04:19-3:08:18
Frank Bullen's merchant-sea life and writing
A biography of sailor-author Frank Bullen opens a vivid route into nineteenth-century merchant service, whaling, disease, and port life.