The Cruise of the Snark

A collection of travel writings from the author of the classic novels The Call of the Wild and White Fang. In 1907, world-renowned writer Jack London, his wife, and two crew members set sail for the South Pacific aboard the Snark, a 45-foot yacht built specifically for the trip. In this account of their voyage, he details the beleaguered construction of the boat and the enterprise in it that followed, as the group departed from San Francisco and ventured everywhere from Tahiti and Bora Bora to Fiji and the Hawaiian archipelago, where he tried the "royal sport" of surfing and traveled to the leper colony on Molokai. While their plan to spend seven years traversing the globe was derailed by illness-which hospitalized London for five weeks in Sydney-the journey recounted is a fun and informative adventure, filled with details on the ins and out of sailing and celestial navigation.