Showing results for "The Sea Wolf" in Classics

When the San Francisco ferry called Martinez collides with another ship in the fog and sinks, Humphrey Van Weyden, an intellectual and well-known literary critic, is one of the “lucky” survivors, set adrift in the Bay. He is eventually found by "Wolf" Larsen, the brutal and cynical sea captain of a seal-hunting schooner called the Ghost.

He is a man capable of abandoning two sailors in an open boat, yet he is an avid and thoughtful reader of the moral philosophers. He is Wolf Larsen, captain of the seal-hunting Ghost and the unforgettable protagonist of one of the world's great sea novels. Tormented by his own convictions, Larsen is an enigma both fascinating and repellent to his reluctant crewman, Humphrey Van Weyden.

The Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by American writer Jack London. The book's protagonist, Humphrey van Weyden, is a literary critic who is a survivor of an ocean collision and who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea captain who rescues him. Its first printing of forty thousand copies was immediately sold out before publication on the strength of London's previous The Call of the Wild.

"The captain, or Wolf Larsen, as men called him, ceased pacing and gazed down at the dying man. So fierce had this final struggle become that the sailor paused in the act of flinging more water over him and stared curiously, the canvas bucket partly tilted and dripping its contents to the deck. The dying man beat a tattoo on the hatch with his heels, straightened out his legs, and stiffened in one great tense effort, and rolled his head from side to side."

Humphrey van Weyden es un joven intelectual e idealista que, tras naufragar a bordo de un ferry en aguas del pacífico, es rescatado por un barco dedicado a la caza de focas, capitaneado por Wolf Larsen, el prototipo del "lobo de mar", cruel, despiadado y sin escrúpulos. Brutal y cínico, pero también muy inteligente. Un autodidacta que gobierna su barco y aterroriza a la tripulación con sus puños de acero.