A Year in a Yawl: A true tale of the adventures of four boys in a thirty-foot yawl. From the log of Capt. Ransom. A Year in a Yawl is the true tale of four adventurous boys who spend a year sailing a thirty foot yawl. The four teenagers sailed from Lake Michigan to New Orleans, around Florida, up the East coast to the Erie Canal, and back home. The yawl, two-masted sailing ship, was designed and built by the Captain, and crewed by his friends.
This version of the book was published in 1901 and written by Russel Doubleday.
Many people believe that the (re)discoverer of Machu Picchu, Hiram Bingham III was the real-world model for Indiana Jones – and whether or not that is true, well, who knows?
Actually, Bingham was not an archeologist by training. But he was a seasoned traveler and well acquainted with South America, when he by equal measure chance and stubbornness stumbled upon the ruins of the famous Inca city in 1911.
He had, in fact, traveled the continent of South America extensively in the years before. His travels resulted in this book “Across South America – An Account of a Journey From Buenos Aires to Lima By Way of Potosi.”
It’s a really great book, well written and illustrated with many of the photos taken during the journey.
The Journey of Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca. This expedition was a total disaster. The story has it all. Great expectations, five Spanish galleons and 600 men heading for the New World with guns, golden dreams and civilisation building ambitions. In April 1528 they landed near St. Petersburg. This was the first mistake. They believed they were in Mexico. Instead they were in the midst of severely hostile natives. A storm destroyed their fleet and the group began wandering north, still with no clue where the were. Next the reached the land of the Apalachee indians in the merciless swamps of Florida. Again many men lost their lives and commander Pánfilo de Narváez decided to get the hell out of there on improvised rafts. Then a hurricane hit the gang. Only 86 survived and they reached another bad decision: To walk to Mexico in search for Spanish settlements. It took them 8 years only 4 survived the hunger, enslavement by indian tribes and all the abominations you can possibly imagine. #shouldhavestayedhome
Download the free e-book about the expedition here (262 pages/9.2MB):
“I want to go around the world! I want to go around in eighty days or less. I think I can beat Phileas Fogg’s record. May I try it?”
When investigative reporter Nellie Bly approached her editor in 1889, he was not excited about the idea at all. But, in the end, she did travel around the world.
On her adventure, she met Jules Verne – whose story had inspired her – and many, many others. The result is this book.
The endeavor became an international story almost overnight, and Nellie, whose real name was Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, became a celebrity herself.
Her travel around the world in a record-setting 72 days is the most remembered of her feats today, but she was a pioneer in several other fields, too. For instance, Bly practically invented investigative journalism, when she lived undercover in a mental institution and uncovered horrible conditions to the public.
Around the World in Seventy-Two Days is not only a testament to the will of an extraordinary person, who became a role model for girls around the world. It is also very well written and entertaining indeed.
Download Around the World in Seventy Two Days as PDF for free here:
The Gift – Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies is the anthropological classic on economy, society and sociology by the french sociologist Marcel Mauss. The book investigates the gift as predecessor for modern societies economies by comparing habits from a range of traditional societies all over the world. Marcel Mauss describes how the people of Polynesia used gifts as a donation of authority and circulation of wealth and tributes. He compares the habits between eskimo tribes from North-East Siberia and West Alaska shows how gifts are the foundation for everything from marriage, war and peace and even religion in the form of sacrifices to the Gods. Marcel Mauss concludes: “In any society it is in the nature of the gift in the end to being its own reward.”
From the book:
“I have never found a man so generous and hospitable that he would not receive a present, nor one so liberal with his money that he would dislike a reward if he could get one. Friends should rejoice each others’ hearts with gifts of weapons and raiment, that is clear from one’s own experience. That friendship lasts longest—if there is a chance of its being a success—in which friends both give and receive gifts. A man ought to be a friend to his friend and repay gift with gift. People should meet smiles with smiles and lies with treachery.”
THE VOYAGES OF THE NORSEMEN TO AMERICA is an impressive historical presentation of the travels by the Vikings to America. The book was written by the dane William Hovgaard and published in English in 1914. His aim was to collect all the historical facts and evidences from various sources, and up to today Voyages of Norsemen is the authoritative compilation of historical descriptions of the travels of the Vikings to Iceland, Greenland and Vinland. The book is richly illustrated with maps and photos from expeditions to places where the Norsemen according to the sagas have been. William Hovgaard has many interesting points and for instance he draws similarities between popular folk games played by Norsemen in Iceland and Inuit games, and thereby supports written sources about Viking travels to remote parts of Greenland and Canada. The book goes into details of the following Viking voyages to America:
List of Viking voyages to America:
Bjarni’s Voyage (985 or 986)
Leif’s Return Voyage from Norway (1000)
Leif’s Voyage of Exploration to Vinland (1001)
Thorvald’s Voyage
Thorstein’s Voyage
Karlsefni’ s Expedition
Download the free PDF e-book here (408 pages/28MB):
Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau is possibly the most famous, beloved, and influential book about living in and close to nature. Which is what Thoreau did for two years, two months, and two days (1845-1847). From the book:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Thoreau lived in a small cabin built by himself by Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts, where he spent his time in the woods reflecting upon human development and human nature while living according to simple living and self-sufficiency ideals.
Today, a parking lot is placed close to his cabin, and the pond is a popular – and quite beautiful – destination for the citizens of Concord to go swimming on hot summer days.
But the book itself appears as fresh and inspiring today as when written in the middle of the 19. century.
Christopher Columbus – And how he received and imparted the spirit of discovery by Justin Windsor (1831-1897) was published in 1891. The book is nearly 700 pages long and because of the many images and photos of letters, maps, and images of people I could not compress it to less than 90 MB. So please be patient while downloading.
The book aims at being the exhaustive biography of Cristopher Columbus and his travels. And it does well. All his known letters and all existing writings about him have been analyzed and put in contexts. Anecdotes from other sources are discussed and we get a vivid picture of a complex man and time. For sailors, the book will be interesting for its detailed descriptions and historical discussions about navigation and mapping of the Atlantic shores and Islands. From the book:
They that go down to the sea in ships,
that do business in great waters, these
see the works of the Lord and his wonders
in the deep. -Psalms, cvii. 23, 24
Peru Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas by E. George Squier, U. S. Commissioner to Peru. This book was published in 1877 and it is a thoroughly work on the Peru, its people, geography, climate, political life and ancient cultures. E. George Squier travelled Peru and went many places where no other foreigner had ever gone before to document the monuments of the Incas. One fine day he even shot a Condor:
One day, while I was sketching alone on the top of the ruins, a shadow suddenly fell upon my drawing, and I heard a sharp report like the noise of two boards together. Looking up, I saw an immense condor, not more than fifteen feet above me, apparently ready to pounce upon me. I sprung to my feet, drew my pistol, and hastily fired. I do not know whether I hit him or not, hut he sailed off, “ on mighty pens,” a few hundred yards, and then turned back and poised himself directly over my head, but at a more respectful distance. I now had a chance for a fair shot at him, and the ball cut out one of the feathers of his wing close to the socket. It measured two feet four inches in length. It is hardly necessary to say that I saw no more of my feathered friend for the remainder of the day.
Download the free PDF e-book here (652 pages/51MB):
Life and Adventure in the South Pacific is the first hand account of five years of hard work on the whaling ship Emily Morgan of New Bedford in Massachusetts. The book draws on two young mens logbooks and recollections from the often dramatic and dangerous expeditions and it goes into details about whaling tools, strategies for hunting whales and the organisation and daily life aboard a whaling vessel. Also the art of butchering and preserving the whales after the hunt is described.
How to butcher af whale
Emily Morgan visited a number of remote harbors in the Pacific, for instance Guam, the Hawaiian Islands,Tonga, Juan Fernandez, and Formosa.
The morning of the twenty-second commences with light breezes from the northeast; pleasant weather. Suddenly, about 9 A.M., the monotony is broken by
the welcome cry from masthead:
” T-h-e-r-e she b-l-o-w-s ! T-h-e-r-e she b-l-o-w-s !”
“Where away ?”
“Four points off the lee bow, sir.”
“How far off?”
“About two miles, sir.”
“What does it look like ?”
“Sperm whales, sir.”
Av, ay ; sing out every time you holler.”
Life and Adventure in the South Pacific was written under the pseudonym “A Roving Printer” and published by Harper & Brothers in 1861. The book is in the Public Domain and you can download the entire work here, for free (373 pages/16MB) :
Paradise in the Pacific with the subtitle A Book of Travel, Adventure and Fact in the Sandwich Islands is the account from a journey by ship to the Hawaiian Islands by William R. Bliss in the 1870s. Bliss describes in details the nature and daily life of the native Hawaiians. There is also accounts of the volcanic activity and the sometimes problematic political situation on the islands. The author is fascinated by the people of Hawaii and a reoccuring theme for him is their simple living and how little they work. He writes: “That religious teachings, and intercourse with the white people, have generally improved the Hawaiian race, no one will deny But the moral and physical condition of the natives, which I have already portrayed, shows that there is yet great room for their improvement..”
The book starts out with this poem by Tennyson:
“Mariner, mariner, furl your sails, For here are the blissful downs and dales, And merrily, merrily carol the gales, And the 1pangle dances in bi11ht and bay, And the rainbow forms and flies on the land, Over the islands free. Oh I hither, come hither and furl your sails, And 1weet shall your welcome be.”
Paradise in the Pacific is well-written and easy to read with many interesting observations. If you are visiting Hawaii you will be well prepared to understand a part the islands’ history, but keep in mind that this was written at another time. Download the free PDF e-book here:
A Day with a Tramp and other days. In the summer of 1891, the young Walter A. Wyckoff set out on a journey. He took on the roads from Connecticut to California with not a dollar in his pocket to get a better knowledge of the people and the country. Walter A. Wyckoff was a smart kid, he later became Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University, and he kept a notebook of his travels that became this book. He earned his living as a day labourer and continued it until, in the course of eighteen months, he had worked his way from Connecticut to California.
Download A Day with a Tramp and other days here (82 pages/1.2MB):
Best Railway Stories edited by L. T. C. Rolt. Heres a goodie for adventurous boys and girls at all ages. Dramatic stories from the heydays of railroads. This fascinating collection of stories captures its essence superbly and is as colourful, as lively, and as varied as the railways themselves. Death, mystery and disaster rise through the steam of the stories by – to name a handful – Dickens, Conan Doyle, Freeman Wills Croft and Robert Aickman and comedy, politics and fanaticism rattle through those by ‘Q’, Raymond Williams and Doug Welch.
L. T. C. Rolt- and there is no one better qualified to do so-has put together an anthology to keep the traveller awake from Euston to Inverness, or a man from his own pillow far into the night.
Download Best Railway Stories here (10,2 MB/254 pages):
Free Public Domain PDF e-books about adventurers, explorers, sailors and mountaineers from all over the world – and exciting novels of adventure. Be inspired and learn how the world was discovered.
