Walter Runciman’s The Shellback’s Progress is an entertaining memoir of a life at sea in the nineteenth century, told with the salty humour and direct observation of a man who started before the mast and rose eventually to own a shipping empire. A ‘shellback’ is a seasoned sailor who has crossed the equator — the term signals a lifetime of hard seafaring adventure and hard-won experience.
Colourful, generously anecdote-rich, and genuinely funny when it wants to be, this is ideal reading for anyone with a love of the maritime world and the remarkable characters it consistently produced. Download this free EPUB and put to sea with Runciman.