Redburn: His First Voyage

By Herman Melville

The life of a sailor isn’t all its cracked up to be.
 
Wellingborough Redburn cannot find employment in his native New York, and so signs aboard the merchantship Highlander, on its journey to Liverpool. He discovers that he is a “boy,” the lowest rank among the crew, and has to contend with the worst, most offensive duties, and the abuse of the seaman Jackson. Redburn proves to be a quick study at both the craft of seafaring and the surprisingly intricate social dynamics among the crewmembers, but will it be enough to turn his voyage around? Drawing equally on Melville’s experiences at sea and his talent for cleverly poking fun at human foibles, this is a wonderful treat from a spectacular writer.
 
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9780735253209

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet who received wide acclaim for his earliest novels, such as Typee and Redburn, but fell into relative obscurity by the end of his life. Today, Melville is hailed as one of the definitive masters of world literature for novels including Moby Dick and Billy Budd, as well as for enduringly popular short stories such as Bartleby, the Scrivener and The Bell-Tower.

Reviews for Redburn

[markbstephenson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wellingborough Redburn comes from a large and illustrious New York mercantile family which has recently become impoverished because of the bankruptcy and death of his father. Needing to support himself, he decides to find employment where employment is available - the sea. This novel, like Melville's earlier Typee and Omoo, is a sort of fictionalized memoir based upon his own experiences at sea - this time his first voyage in 1839. This was not aboard a whaling ship but on a merchant vessel carrying goods and passengers from New York to Liverpool and back. Redburn is far more advanced in literary matters than his co-workers but this counts for nothing until he has learned (literally) the ropes and how to manage sails with them. His self-deprecating humor as this process begins and continues is a good deal of what makes this novel so entertaining. He suffers much but learns through what he suffers and because of his outstanding literary gifts and capacities for close and discerning observation gives us a very vivid view of his fellow crew members, their ship and their very arduous lives. Once in Liverpool we are treated to some very touching scenes of the poverty and vice there at that day and Henry Bolton, a young Englishman in comparable circumstances to Redburn's own is introduced. Henry joins the return trip to New York seeking to emigrate to America, but sadly comes to a tragic end despite Redburn's efforts on his behalf. This and Redburn's many speculative (i.e. Melvillean) flights of fancy ultimately turn this into quite a deep and serious work.

[ganeshaka · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Moby Dick! Moby Dick! Moby Dick....forget about Moby Dick! It's a magnum opus. Thank you John Huston/Gregory Peck for the iconic movie. Thank you John Bonham for the drum solo. But if you really want to peer inside the mind of Herman Melville, read Redburn instead.Why? For starters, you will see that magnum opus in its beta format. Redburn is a first person fictional account of Melville's first sea voyage...a round trip from New York to Liverpool. The narrator, Redburn Wellingborough, even refers to himself as Ishmael. There are two prototypes of Ahab. Captain Riga, a man with a split personality - deceptively charming to recruits, at port, and aloof as a Chinese emperor, at sea. And there's a crew member, Jackson, who bullies and dominates his crew mates by the sheer force of his irascible personality. Despite his terminal illness and average size, he is intimidation personified.But Redburn is more than just a Two Years Before the Mast (Richard Dana's classic), replete though it is with sea lore. It is a glimpse inside young Melville's mind, revealing his analytic intelligence, his attention to detail, his compassion for the unfortunate, his sensitivity to social undercurrents, his wide ranging curiosity, and his wry humor.A good percentage of the novel concerns Redburn's explorations, while on leave, of Liverpool. Melville writes with the clarity of journalist, and probes like an investigative reporter. In one section, he is heartrending in his description of Redburn's unsuccessful attempts to get aid for a starving, dying woman and her three children. In another section, he is compelling in his argument for changing shipping safety laws to protect immigrant steerage passengers on trans-Atlantic voyages. And in a chapter revealing his naivete - in relying on a fifty year old guidebook - he is charming with self deprecating humor.I picked this book off a store shelf on a whim, partly intrigued by the Edward Gorey cover illustration, and partly because I recalled a quote from the movie Adventureland, to the effect that Melville died in obscurity and the New York Times misreported his first name. Having finished Redburn, I am inspired to read the rest of Melville's oeuvre. His personality, his halo, his soul flashes in Redburn, like - well OK then - St Elmo's fire in Moby Dick!

[corinneblackmer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Redburn Wellingborough, a young man who idealizes his Revolutionary War era father, decides to go to sea, leaving his bereaved mother and sister and taking with him a journal written by his father that he regards as sacrosanct. The moment he leaves home, however, he is ridiculed for his antique clothing, and we become aware that we are in the Jackson Era, during which most Revolutionary Era pieties, institutions, and assumptions, including the assumption of having a prosperous family farm, have been exploded. Redburn is an outcast, a fact which is underscored when he encounters mean bullies in New York City and, even worse, the malignant Captain Riga, a Russian who defrauds him mercilessly. He acquires a friend on the voyage to Liverpool and, when there, he discovers that his father made his money from the slave trade. He attempts to get food for a starving mother and her children and, eventually, makes his way back to the boat for the voyage back to New York City. He has a friend who is ruthlessly and unspeakably bullied--made to engage in the most debasing sexual and social rites--and keeps a measured distance from the victim of the relentless Jackson. When he arrives back in New York, he deserts his friend, who he later learns has died.

[dmarsh451 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Melville is one of the writers I 'saved for later'. I wanted to be able to crack open the occasional unread heavy hitter. It was a risky move. Anything goes wrong now, I will never read 'Moby Dick', and if that car in St-Lazare had driven rather than skidded into my bike back in '04, I would never have read 'Moby Dick' or 'Redburn'. That would be a pity. I would have missed watching Wellingborough, cringe green at the start, learn his ropes. It is complicated, physically taxing work that Melville describes through the young man's apprentice eyes. These are some beautiful pictures, as elegant as snowflakes and as phantom.
"There is no counting the names, that surgeons and anatomists give to the various parts of the human body; which, indeed, is something like a ship; its bones being the stiff standing-rigging, and the sinews the small running ropes, that manage all the motions."
Here is a passage about navigation that in the era of GPS gives me shivers, "The ship lay gently rolling in the soft, subdued ocean swell; while all around were faint white spots; and nearer to, broad, milky patches, betokening the vicinity of scores of ships, all bound to one common port, and tranced in one common calm. Here the long, devious wakes from Europe, Africa, India, and Peru converged to a line, which braided them all in one."