The Great Blue Heron Adventure

Every so often in life we encounter an opportunity to take a shortcut, to circumvent the traditional path, and attempt to reach our goals without the customary planning, patience, and hard work that invariably goes into any worthwhile endeavor. One such opportunity presented itself in the late summer of 2007, when I was hired to deliver the 38-foot Island Packet cutter Guinevere from Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, to Bradenton, Florida. By then I had over thirty years’ experience as a licensed captain, ocean yacht master, and certified sailing instructor, and so when I was persuaded to take a shortcut through Passage Key Inlet and ran aground, I immediately realized I should, all along, have trusted my training and instincts.

Childhood is arguably the most exciting time of a person’s life. One has few responsibilities or cares, and the smallest events can seem monumentally thrilling. Often, people reflect on the memories of their youth with fondness and appreciation for the lessons they learned. Sarah Orne Jewett captures this essence perfectly in the excerpt from “A White Heron.” Jewett uses many literary devices, including diction, imagery, narrative pace, and point of view to immerse the reader in familiar feelings of nostalgia and wonder, and dramatize the plot.

Female roles in society have often been minute. In Jewett’s “A White Heron” and Freeman’s “The Revolt of Mother”, Sylvia and Mother demonstrate feminine empowerment. These two prominent female protagonists overcome the male influence in their life and society. Both defy social expectations of women and the obstacles that come with it. The authors express this through their similar use of symbolism and alienation. Jewett and Freeman use different examples of poverty, the motivation of society, and speech in their stories.

One’s view on something often changes when you look at it from more than one point of view. Morality plays a significant role in any decision making process. It is hard to justify any decision that is not moral. Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron” has many elements of nature, and of the preservation of what Sylvia holds dearly. The thought provoking short story evokes emotions of caring, loving, and fear. All of these emotions are shown by different settings and characters in the story.

In Cold Mountain and "A Poem for the Blue Heron", tone is established in a multitude of ways. These two pieces of literature describe the characteristics and actions of a blue heron, both aiming for the same goal. However, Charles Frazier and Mary Oliver approach their slightly differing tones employing organization, metaphoric language, and diction.

That cruise with Charles Doggett was memorable as the brig rescued the mutineers of the Bounty. For the next several years, as Driver sailed, his “Old Glory”

George Pocock is a name recognized amongst several people with connections to Seattle, the University of Washington, and the rowing community around the United States. He is looked upon as one of the greatest boat builders of all time and has numerous accolades because of his astounding boat building skills. Despite George’s successes and accomplishments throughout his life, the journey that led him to such a successful career was one full of struggle and relentless desire to chase a lifelong dream.

     Billy Pritty in The Shipping News does not use recorded scientific methods to chart his way in the water, as one who studies history might. Rather he relies on oral tradition to keep his boat from hitting known sinkers. Enveloped in thick fog, Billy uses a rhyme from the time when people sailed without modern aides such as charts or lights:

Journeys on boats are usually long and fraught with dangers that are overcome. Boats are also related to islands, since crew is isolated from the regular rules of society.

Jane Curry’s arguments were what life was truly like for riverboat workers and their adaptions of new technology and moderations to life on the river. The entire book consisted of interviews of men and women telling of how certain technology came to be, and stories of what happened on the river. There was little to no arguments by Jane whether or not their information was exaggerated or incorrect. “ When most of the veterans began their boating days, they received little or no official time off.(Curry 81) Curry backed the information she was given with conclusions of her own, rather than contradicted them. Jane used several images followed by text to better explain life on river boats.(Curry 196-199)

Nathaniel Philbrick was an author who wrote many books about voyages at sea. His interest in writing so often about historical adventures on the ocean can only be because he himself, in 1978, was the first intercollegiate All-American sailor for Brown University. His book “Mayflower,” being one of his bestsellers, is an interesting book that not only presents the over told story of the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower in the year 1620, but it also digs deep into the many struggles they faced after finally reaching the New World.

It is now the morning of December the 27th 1831, H.M.S. Beagle, with a crew of seventy-three men, we sailed out of Plymouth harbor under this calm wind and drizzly rain. I became seasick almost instantly and I am starting to have second thoughts about the voyage. The Beagle arrived near Madeira Island, its first port-of-call, on 4 January 1832. Unfortunately a violent gust of wind coming from the west prevented our ship from making port. I took little notice of this turn of events, as I felt too ill to even leave this cabin.

Hughes’s gesture of throwing his own personal collection of books overboard at the start of The Big Sea before embarking for Africa as a merchant seaman on the S. S. Malone offers an immediate and provocative challenge to the

The North Inn bar was a sleepy little place, the kind of shabby pub that locals liked to congregate in to trade gossip and visit with one another without having to fight scores of inebriated preppies for a table. Memorial Day meant that summer had officially arrived, and even if the town was obscure and unknown, the seasonal swell of tourists to the East End brought a good number of visitors who found themselves within the city limits, and several new establishments had begun to cater to this crowd. But not the North Inn. The well drinks were strong and cheap, and other than a decent view of the water, that was pretty much all it had going for it.

As a young man, Neil followed in his father’s footsteps and sought a life at sea. Little is known of his maritime exploits except those that are recounted by Inglis: