A High Wind in Jamaica
Encyclopedia
A High Wind in Jamaica is a 1929
novel
by Richard Hughes
, which was made into a film of the same name
in 1965
. The book was first published in the United States under the title of its successful stage adaptation, The Innocent Voyage.
in Jamaica
at an unspecified time after the emancipation of slaves in Britain (1837). It is a time of technological transformation, and sailing ships and steamers coexist on the high seas. A hurricane destroys their home, and the parents decide the children must leave the island to return to their original home in England. Accompanied by two creole children from Jamaica, Margaret and Harry Fernandez, they leave on the Clorinda, a merchant ship under the command of Captain Marpole. The Clorinda is seized by pirates shortly after leaving Jamaica.
The pirates first pretend they need to seize the ship's cargo and will refund the price of the goods taken, but when the lie becomes obvious, they menace Captain Marpole by threatening to shoot the children if he does not disclose where the Corinda´s safe is kept.
The ship is ransacked, and the children are brought aboard the pirate schooner
for dinner. Captain Marpole, thinking under cover of darkness that the children have been murdered, flees the scene unknowingly abandoning the children to the pirates. Marpole writes a letter to Mr and Mrs Thornton informing them that their children have been murdered by the pirates.
The children quickly become part of life aboard the pirate ship and treat it as their new home. They are treated with some indifference, though a few crew members – José the cook and Otto the chief mate
– care for them and become fond of them, and Captain Jonsen, the pirate captain himself, becomes very fond of Emily.
The pirates stop at their home base of Santa Lucia to sell the seized goods. Captain Jonsen tries unsuccessfully to convince a rich woman to take care of the children. During the night, José takes John, Edward, and Margaret ashore, and John accidentally falls to his death. He is immediately forgotten by his own siblings. The pirate captain seems to be the last one to forget him.
While drunk, Captain Jonsen approaches Emily. She bites his hand before harm can be physically done, but the girl is tormented by the look in the pirate's eye as he reached for her. From this point, Margaret, the eldest of all the children, seems to be distressed and particularly afraid of the pirates. The author gives no explicit details about the reason, just a veiled description from Emily's point of view. Emily is later injured on her leg in an accident caused by Rachel and is confined on the captain's cabin.
Having made no further captures, the pirates quickly take the first ship they finally see, a Dutch vessel transporting some wild animals. The captain of this ship is tied up and left in the cabin with Emily. Everyone else on the pirate ship boards the Dutch vessel to watch a fight between a lion and a tiger. The Dutch captain does all he can to get Emily to free him but is unable to communicate with her. Finally, seeing a knife, he rolls towards it. Emily, injured and terrified, screams, but no one is near her to hear. She pounces at the last second and stabs the captain multiple times. He soon dies. Margaret, oldest of the children, witnesses this event. When the crew returns to the ship, the pirates mistake Margaret for the murderer and without ceremony throw her overboard, only for her to be rescued by other pirates heading back to the ship.
From that point on, the crew grows tired and scared of the children. Jonsen arranges for them to transfer to a passing steamer. Disguised as a British merchant vessel, the captain claims that some pirates abandoned the children on the Cuban shore and that he then picked them up to bring them to England. Before sending them on board the steamer, Otto instructs Emily not to disclose the truth about what has happened to them in the past months. He chooses Emily rather than Margaret, as the latter seems to have lost her sanity.
Once aboard the steamer, the children are delighted with the boat's luxury and the loving treatment by the passengers, who knew already of the story of the children told by Captain Marpole.
Despite her fondness for Captain Jonsen and the fact that she promised not to tell about what really happened, Emily quickly tells the truth to a stewardess. The pirate ship is pursued and seized by British authorities.
Back in London, the children are reintegrated into their families. They seem completely unaffected by their traumatic experiences aboard the ship, apart from Margaret who has lost her sanity. Emily is only half aware herself of the crime she has committed. The younger children have distorted and contradictory memories of the facts, and after unsuccessfully attempting to extract any information from then, the family solicitor decides that only Emily should testify at the trial against the pirate crew and only to repeat a statement written by him.
Under the pressure of the courtroom. she abandons her carefully memorized statement and cries out that the Dutch captain died before her very eyes. Her testimony is taken as evidence that the pirates committed the murder and they are subsequently executed.
On the way home from the trial, the narrator seems to imply that Emily tells the truth about the Dutch captain's murder to her father.
The book ends with Emily playing with her schoolmates. She is so similar to them that "only God" could tell them apart.
Others lauded Hughes for contradicting the Victorian romances of childhood by expressing the children without emotional reduction. The book is often given credit for influencing and paving the way for novels such as Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
.
In 1998, A High Wind in Jamaica was included as number 71 in the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, a list of the best English-language novels of the 20th century.
1929 in literature
The year 1929 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Candide by Voltaire is declared obscene by the United States Customs and seized in 1930....
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Richard Hughes
Richard Hughes (writer)
Richard Arthur Warren Hughes OBE was a British writer of poems, short stories, novels and plays.He was born in Weybridge, Surrey. His father was a civil servant Arthur Hughes, and his mother Louisa Grace Warren who had been brought up in Jamaica...
, which was made into a film of the same name
A High Wind in Jamaica (film)
A High Wind in Jamaica is a 1965 film, based on the novel of the same name, and directed by Alexander Mackendrick for the 20th Century-Fox studio. It starred Anthony Quinn and James Coburn as the pirates who capture the children....
in 1965
1965 in film
The year 1965 in film involved some significant events, with The Sound of Music topping the U.S. box office.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:...
. The book was first published in the United States under the title of its successful stage adaptation, The Innocent Voyage.
Plot
The Bas-Thornton children (John, Emily, Edward, Rachel, and Laura) are raised on a plantationPlantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
in Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
at an unspecified time after the emancipation of slaves in Britain (1837). It is a time of technological transformation, and sailing ships and steamers coexist on the high seas. A hurricane destroys their home, and the parents decide the children must leave the island to return to their original home in England. Accompanied by two creole children from Jamaica, Margaret and Harry Fernandez, they leave on the Clorinda, a merchant ship under the command of Captain Marpole. The Clorinda is seized by pirates shortly after leaving Jamaica.
The pirates first pretend they need to seize the ship's cargo and will refund the price of the goods taken, but when the lie becomes obvious, they menace Captain Marpole by threatening to shoot the children if he does not disclose where the Corinda´s safe is kept.
The ship is ransacked, and the children are brought aboard the pirate schooner
Schooner
A schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....
for dinner. Captain Marpole, thinking under cover of darkness that the children have been murdered, flees the scene unknowingly abandoning the children to the pirates. Marpole writes a letter to Mr and Mrs Thornton informing them that their children have been murdered by the pirates.
The children quickly become part of life aboard the pirate ship and treat it as their new home. They are treated with some indifference, though a few crew members – José the cook and Otto the chief mate
Chief Mate
A Chief Mate or Chief Officer, usually also synonymous with the First Mate or First Officer , is a licensed member and head of the deck department of a merchant ship...
– care for them and become fond of them, and Captain Jonsen, the pirate captain himself, becomes very fond of Emily.
The pirates stop at their home base of Santa Lucia to sell the seized goods. Captain Jonsen tries unsuccessfully to convince a rich woman to take care of the children. During the night, José takes John, Edward, and Margaret ashore, and John accidentally falls to his death. He is immediately forgotten by his own siblings. The pirate captain seems to be the last one to forget him.
While drunk, Captain Jonsen approaches Emily. She bites his hand before harm can be physically done, but the girl is tormented by the look in the pirate's eye as he reached for her. From this point, Margaret, the eldest of all the children, seems to be distressed and particularly afraid of the pirates. The author gives no explicit details about the reason, just a veiled description from Emily's point of view. Emily is later injured on her leg in an accident caused by Rachel and is confined on the captain's cabin.
Having made no further captures, the pirates quickly take the first ship they finally see, a Dutch vessel transporting some wild animals. The captain of this ship is tied up and left in the cabin with Emily. Everyone else on the pirate ship boards the Dutch vessel to watch a fight between a lion and a tiger. The Dutch captain does all he can to get Emily to free him but is unable to communicate with her. Finally, seeing a knife, he rolls towards it. Emily, injured and terrified, screams, but no one is near her to hear. She pounces at the last second and stabs the captain multiple times. He soon dies. Margaret, oldest of the children, witnesses this event. When the crew returns to the ship, the pirates mistake Margaret for the murderer and without ceremony throw her overboard, only for her to be rescued by other pirates heading back to the ship.
From that point on, the crew grows tired and scared of the children. Jonsen arranges for them to transfer to a passing steamer. Disguised as a British merchant vessel, the captain claims that some pirates abandoned the children on the Cuban shore and that he then picked them up to bring them to England. Before sending them on board the steamer, Otto instructs Emily not to disclose the truth about what has happened to them in the past months. He chooses Emily rather than Margaret, as the latter seems to have lost her sanity.
Once aboard the steamer, the children are delighted with the boat's luxury and the loving treatment by the passengers, who knew already of the story of the children told by Captain Marpole.
Despite her fondness for Captain Jonsen and the fact that she promised not to tell about what really happened, Emily quickly tells the truth to a stewardess. The pirate ship is pursued and seized by British authorities.
Back in London, the children are reintegrated into their families. They seem completely unaffected by their traumatic experiences aboard the ship, apart from Margaret who has lost her sanity. Emily is only half aware herself of the crime she has committed. The younger children have distorted and contradictory memories of the facts, and after unsuccessfully attempting to extract any information from then, the family solicitor decides that only Emily should testify at the trial against the pirate crew and only to repeat a statement written by him.
Under the pressure of the courtroom. she abandons her carefully memorized statement and cries out that the Dutch captain died before her very eyes. Her testimony is taken as evidence that the pirates committed the murder and they are subsequently executed.
On the way home from the trial, the narrator seems to imply that Emily tells the truth about the Dutch captain's murder to her father.
The book ends with Emily playing with her schoolmates. She is so similar to them that "only God" could tell them apart.
Critical reception
The book received much criticism for its content at the time of release. Many critics responded negatively to the behavior and treatment of the children in the novel, ranging from sexual abuse to murder.Others lauded Hughes for contradicting the Victorian romances of childhood by expressing the children without emotional reduction. The book is often given credit for influencing and paving the way for novels such as Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding about a group of British boys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, with disastrous results...
by William Golding
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
.
In 1998, A High Wind in Jamaica was included as number 71 in the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, a list of the best English-language novels of the 20th century.