The Boats of the 'Glen-Carrig'

The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" is a horror novel by William Hope Hodgson, first published in 1907. Its importance was recognised in its later revival in paperback by Ballantine Books as the twenty-fifth volume of the celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in February 1971. The novel is written in an archaic style, and is presented as a true account, written in 1757, of events occurring earlier. The narrator is a passenger who was traveling on the ship Glen Carrig, which was lost at sea when it struck "a hidden rock". The story is about the adventures of the survivors, who escaped the wreck in two lifeboats. The novel is written in a style similar to that used by Hodgson in his longer novel The Night Land (1912); with long sentences, containing semicolons and numerous prepositional phrases. There is no dialogue in the usual sense. While The Night Land is an early example of science fiction, Boats is primarily a survival and adventure story with elements of horror, in the form of monsters. The monsters do not necessarily require a supernatural explanation — i.e., are not ghosts, as in Hodgson's novel The Ghost Pirates (1909) or some of his Carnacki stories —, but there are also few explanations given. Boats in its strong use of concrete detail evokes a lost world, and is also an interesting case study in human relationships and class mores, as the class distinctions between the narrator and the crew members are broken down by the shared situation they find themselves in, but are eventually re-established. The text is out of copyright and is available online via Project Gutenberg and other sources. An unabridged recording of the novel is available in the form of a podcast.

Reviews

News