Facebook X YouTube Instagram Pinterest NetGalley
Google Books previews are unavailable because you have chosen to turn off third party cookies for enhanced content. Visit our cookies page to review your cookie settings.

Seafarers' Voices 4: Landsman Hay (ePub)

Maritime > Seaforth Publishing > Seaforth: Seafarers' Voices World History > UK & Ireland > Scotland

By Robert Hay
Seaforth Publishing
Series: Seafarers' Voices
File Size: 658.0 KB (.epub)
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781783468720
Published: 8th November 2010

in_stock

£4.99 Print price £13.99

You save £9.00 (64%)

Click here for help on how to download our eBooks

You'll be £4.99 closer to your next £10.00 credit when you purchase Seafarers' Voices 4: Landsman Hay. What's this?
Need a currency converter? Check XE.com for live rates

Other formats available Price
Seafarers' Voices 4: Landsman… Hardback Add to Basket £9.79


In 1803, at the age of 14, Robert Hay ran away from home to join the Royal Navy, and for the next eight years experienced the trials and tribulations of a sailor’s life.
Intelligent, agile and willing, he became a boy servant to a series of officers, all of whom helped advance his education as was the practice of the day. But the taxing conditions of life onboard he found detestable and he was, after an action off the French coast, sorely tempted to desert but the well known and ruthless treatment of deserters, if caught, deterred him this time.
He was then posted to the East Indies where he was badly wounded and nearly lost a leg before returning home after five years with £14 and fourteen days leave to look forward to. His next ship ran aground off Plymouth and, this time, he took the opportunity to desert but was then quickly taken by a press gang. Terrified of being identified, he managed to escape and reach the Scotland and home.
As well as a wonderful yarn, the book is also an impressive description of early nineteenth-century naval life, and his ability as a writer was considerable. His descriptions of his remarkable experiences in the East Indies are full of the flavour of the region, while the sailor’s natural inclination to drink and debauchery is told with verve. But also running through the narrative are many fine observations on nature and on the human condition. A true and vivid account of the sailor’s life of this era.

Landsman Hay is a new edition of Scottish Landsman Robert Hay's (1789-1847) experiences on the lower deck of Royal Navy ships during the French wars, 1803-1811... Of the four reprinted “Seafarer's Voices”... Landsman Hay gives the most information about the day-to-day life onboard a ship and the greatest amount of general maritime history information. Hay's experiences onboard ship, while absconding, and while trying to avoid press gangs during the British wars with France make for an enjoyable read.

The Northern Mariner

McInerney has done a superb job, for it is the most readable of memoirs and seems to have lost none of Hay's direct style, nor his comments on life around him.

Excellent reading and very good value.

The Nautical Magazine
More titles by Robert Hay

Other titles in the series...

Other titles in Seaforth Publishing...