The Cruise of the Snark

Jack London (1876 - 1916)

The Cruise of the Snark (1913) is a memoir of Jack and Charmian London's 1907-1909 voyage across the Pacific. His descriptions of "surf-riding", which he dubbed a "royal sport", helped introduce it to and popularize it with the mainland. London writes:

Through the white crest of a breaker suddenly appears a dark figure, erect, a man-fish or a sea-god, on the very forward face of the crest where the top falls over and down, driving in toward shore, buried to his loins in smoking spray, caught up by the sea and flung landward, bodily, a quarter of a mile. It is a Kanaka on a surf-board. And I know that when I have finished these lines I shall be out in that riot of colour and pounding surf, trying to bit those breakers even as he, and failing as he never failed, but living life as the best of us may live it.

(Excerpted from Wikipedia)

Genre(s): Memoirs

Language: English

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 01 Chapter I -- Foreword Bryan Ness
00:22:23
Play 02 Chapter II -- The Inconceivable And Monstrous Bryan Ness
00:31:31
Play 03 Chapter III -- Adventure Bryan Ness
00:17:25
Play 04 Chapter IV -- Finding One's Way About Bryan Ness
00:23:12
Play 05 Chapter V -- The First Landfall Bryan Ness
00:15:11
Play 06 Chapter VI -- A Royal Sport Bryan Ness
00:24:20
Play 07 Chapter VII -- The Lepers Of Molokai Bryan Ness
00:30:42
Play 08 Chapter VIII -- The House Of The Sun Bryan Ness
00:29:06
Play 09 Chapter IX -- A Pacific Traverse Bryan Ness
00:35:49
Play 10 Chapter X -- Typee Bryan Ness
00:30:51
Play 11 Chapter XI -- The Nature Man Bryan Ness
00:27:49
Play 12 Chapter XII -- The High Seat of Abundance Todd Lennon
00:38:29
Play 13 Chapter XIII -- The Stone-fishing of Bora Bora Pam Burton
00:15:15
Play 14 Chapter XIV -- The Amateur Navigator Roger Melin
00:40:05
Play 15 Chapter XV -- Cruising in the Solomons Jim Allman
00:38:45
Play 16 Chapter XVI -- Beche de Mer English kayo
00:15:39
Play 17 Chapter XVII -- The Amateur M.D. Todd Lennon
00:39:03
Play 18 Back Word kayo
00:10:04