Visitors to Sydney Harbour
by Jack Clark
The unhappy visit of
Part 3
Jack London
If you’ve followed the Writers Walk around
Circular Quay, you will have noticed the
name of Jack London, a writer you may
not know. In his time he was a hands-on
travel writer, and the world’s best seller for
many years.
L
ondon was famous not only for his writing – novels,
short stories, socialist polemics, and poetry – but for his
adventures. During a very short life he sailed as a seaman
on a sailing ship, prospected for gold in Alaska, designed
and built a number of houses, as well as his yacht Snark. In
the fantasy poetry of Lewis Carroll, the Snark, an imaginary
animal which is being hunted, turns out to be a Boojum!
Perhaps if London had called his yacht Boojum he might
have had an easier voyage?
Born in San Francisco in 1876, Jack London left school
at 15, and began writing articles for local newspapers. He
joined the Socialist Labour Party in 1896 and remained
a Socialist for the rest of his life. Spurred on by his own
adventures, he churned out articles, short stories and novels
at a furious rate.
His novels included White Fang, Call of the Wild, SeaWolf and The Adventures of Martin Eden. All were filmed,
most many times, from the silent days into the seventies.
Both Clark Gable in 1935, and Charlton Heston in 1972,
starred in versions of Call of the Wild.
With his wife Charmian, London nurtured an ambition to
cruise his own yacht round the world, in the footsteps of his
idol Joshua Slocum. Despite having no qualifications in the
field, he resolved to build a yacht to his own plan.
Jack London.
Although London had never seen a ketch, he built
Snark as a ketch, at first proposing to spend only $7,000
on a 12.19m boat. Begun in 1906, she was lengthened to
13.71m and cost him $30,000, but he could blame nobody
but himself because he kept changing the design and always
demanded the best materials. When he finally sailed her to
Hawaii to be finished, he declared her to be ‘an unfinished,
internal wreck’.
London and Charmian had very little knowledge of
seamanship or navigation, and hired a captain, crew and
navigator to sail the Snark. Charmian quickly became
proficient as both seaman and navigator, leaving Jack to
write the articles that would finance the trip.
On this first stage of the cruise, the Londons discovered
serious faults in the design and construction of Snark. Her
Snark.
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AFLOAT.com.au
October 2004
Illustration of plaque from the Writer’s Walk at Circular Quay.
decks and planking leaked badly; she wouldn’t answer
the helm in some situations; the watertight compartments
weren’t up to scratch; the ‘bathroom’ fittings fell apart, most
of the ironwork was shoddy, and the fresh produce brought
aboard was inedible.
They made it to Hawaii where they spent some months
working on the boat, then the voyage resumed in October
1907. They reached the Marquesas in December, then Tahiti,
and Samoa. There Jack and Charmian made a pilgrimage
to the grave of Robert Louis Stevenson, another of Jack
London’s heroes.
Jack had not been well since Hawaii, and his ailments
were by now so serious that when they reached the Solomon
Islands it was clear they had to abandon the cruise.
In November 1908 he went with Charmian by steamer
to Sydney and into hospital. There he had treatment for
a mysterious malady, a form of tropical ulcer. The illness
affected mainly his hands and feet, which swelled so they
became twice their normal size, with their skin constantly
peeling off. At times his toe-nails grew thick and long and
if they were cut they grew back again within twenty-four
hours.
After five weeks in hospital without much success, he
came out and spent five months recuperating before returning
by steamer to Oakland. The aborted cruise had cost far
more than he had expected, so he was forced to work hard
at a large number of other writing projects.
The Californian medical experts decided that Jack must
have an inherited disposition to the damaging effects of harsh
light which he had endured on the tropical cruise. Back in
the milder climate of California his symptoms subsided,
and he recovered slowly.
THE MARINE EXCHANGE
Jack London and his wife Charmian aboard the Snark.
One of Jack London’s writing projects after his return
was his overall account of the voyage, Cruise of the Snark,
which he published in 1911. In The Log of the Snark,
Charmian’s own version published in 1916, she was much
easier on Jack than he had been on himself in the 1911
book. Together they probably provide a balanced picture
of the whole sad episode.
Before his death only seven years later, London continued
to turn out large numbers of novels, short stories, and
other publications, and a further eight volumes appeared
posthumously.
Throughout his life Jack London had suffered a great
many illnesses and his early death was brought on by stroke
and heart failure. It was indeed a remarkable life, and we
can only regret that he saw so little of Sydney in his six
months here that he was unable to leave us his picture of
ourselves.
FINAL NOTE: This is probably my last article for Afloat for
the time being. I have enjoyed these years writing them, and
I hope you have enjoyed them too. The responses you have
given me suggest that you have and I thank you for those
warm comments. My best wishes to you all, to this outstanding
magazine and to our wonderful Sydney Harbour. Jack Clark.
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