"Dismasted Vessel at Sea" for Daniel Defoe's "Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1863-64)

Dismasted Vessel at Sea (page 221) — the volume's fifty-eighth composite wood-block engraving for Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Related by himself (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1863-64). Part II, The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Chapter I, "Revisits Island." Full-page, framed: 14 cm high x 21.8 cm wide.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Crusoe once again intervenes to prevent disaster

It was in the latitude of 27 degrees 5 minutes north, on the 19th day of March 1694-95, when we spied a sail, our course S. E. and by S. We soon perceived it was a large vessel, and that she bore up to us, but could not at first know what to make of her, till, after coming a little nearer, we found she had lost her main-topmast, fore-mast, and bowsprit; and presently she fired a gun as a signal of distress. The weather was pretty good, wind at NNW. a fresh gale, and we soon came to speak with her. We found her a ship of Bristol, bound home from Barbadoes, but had been blown out of the road at Barbadoes a few days before she was ready to sail, by a terrible hurricane, while the captain and chief mate were both gone on shore; so that, besides the terror of the storm, they were in an indifferent case for good mariners to bring the ship home. They had been already nine weeks at sea, and had met with another terrible storm, after the hurricane was over, which had blown them quite out of their knowledge to the westward, and in which they lost their masts. They told us they expected to have seen the Bahama Islands, but were then driven away again to the south-east, by a strong gale of wind at N.N.W., the same that blew now: and having no sails to work the ship with but a main course, and a kind of square sail upon a jury fore-mast, which they had set up, they could not lie near the wind, but were endeavouring to stand away for the Canaries. [Chapter II, "Intervening History of the Colony," page 219]

Commentary

In the present illustration William Luson Thomas (1830-1800) subtly unites the two halves of the Crusoe narrative, recalling Crusoe's having survived the shipwreck and arriving on the island without any material assistance except that of Providence. Now, as with the survivors of the recent destruction of the French merchantman, he acts as an agent of Providence rescuing the passengers and crew of the dismasted merchant ship as he had the aboriginal elder and the Spaniard from the cannibals in Crusoe rescues the Spaniard in Chapter XVI, "Rescue of the prisoners from the Cannibals."

Thus far in the narrative-pictorial sequence, the house artists have provided five large-scale illustrations of shipwrecks and shipping disasters:

Indeed, if one regards shipping, shipwrecks, the sea, and sailors as a construct behind the illustrations, about thirty per cent of the Cassell's illustrations are associated with such a motif. A further twenty percent of the narrative-pictorial series involves foreigners and foreign locales. These melancholy events do not merely represent threats of the colonial and imperial enterprise and its inherent perils; they underscore the power of nature to frustrate human designs. Lest 21st century readers regard this repetition of maritime catastrophes with some skepticism, such periodicals as The Illustrated London News during the mid-Victorian period attest to the frequency of such wrecks, often as a result of storms. The year 1859 had proven especially perilous for British shipping.

What distinguishes this particular seascape from the others in the book is that it does not depict a wreck, but a vessel in distress as a consequence of a hurricane. However, as the text indicates, the weather is now fair; no waves engulf the vessel, and drowning sailors do not cling to the spars floating in the foreground. As Crusoe had come to the rescue of Friday, the Spaniard, and the victims of the mutiny in Part One, he extends his sympathy to the oppressed and suffering. The seascape prepares the reader for Crusoe's coming to the assistance of those on the dismasted vessel with supplies, although the illustration does not reveal the nature of the distress of the passengers and crew, which apparently is the result of some sort of tropical virus, a shortage of food, and near-starvation.

Related Material

Relevant illustrations from the other 19th c. editions, 1831 and 1891

Above: George Cruikshank's small-scale realisation of the disaster aboard the Quebec vessel, Crusoe sees a ship on fire at sea (1831). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Above: Wal Paget's effective lithographic rendering of the desperation of the crew of the dismasted vessel, "I found the poor men on board almost in a tumult." (1891). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Above: Cruikshank's small-scale realisation of the suffering of the French passengers and crew, The French survivors of the fire aboard the Quebec Merchantman (1831). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Bibliography

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Related by himself. With upwards of One Hundred Illustrations. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1863-64.

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Exciting Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, as Related by Himself. With 120 original illustrations by Walter Paget. London, Paris,and Melbourne: Cassell, 1891.

Last modified 26 March 2018