The Long Voyage
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The Long Voyage
"The Long Voyage" is a New Year's Eve short story by Charles Dickens. It was originally published in the 31 December 1853 issue of ''Household Words'' magazine. Plot summary The story concerns a man alone on New Year's Eve, who loves to "sit by the fire, thinking of what I have read in books of voyage and travel" while he himself has never been "around the world, never has been shipwrecked, ice-environed, tomahawked, or eaten." Some of the books he has read concern Christopher Columbus, James Bruce who searched for the source of the Nile, John Franklin who made an "unhappy overland Journey" and was lost searching for the northwest passage in the Canadian Arctic, "Men-selling despots" and the Atlantic slave trade, and Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer (1771–1806) who wrote ''Travels in the Interior of Africa'' and other adventure stories. He also touches on "one awful creature" by the name of Alexander Pearce who escaped from a penal colony on an island and cannibalized his fello ...
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New Year's Eve
In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Eve, also known as Old Year's Day or Saint Sylvester's Day in many countries, is the evening or the entire day of the last day of the year, on 31 December. The last day of the year is commonly referred to as “New Year’s Eve”. In many countries, New Year's Eve is celebrated with dancing, eating, drinking, and watching or lighting fireworks. Some Christians attend a watchnight service. The celebrations generally go on past midnight into New Year's Day, 1 January. The Line Islands (part of Kiribati) and Tonga, in the Pacific Ocean, are the first places to welcome the New Year, while American Samoa, Baker Island and Howland Island (part of the United States Minor Outlying Islands) are among the last. By region Africa Algeria In Algeria, New Year's Eve (french: Réveillon; '' ar, Ra’s al-‘Ām'') is usually celebrated with family and friends. In the largest cities, such as Algiers, Constantine, Annaba, Oran, Sétif, and Béjaïa ...
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Thursday October Christian I
Thursday October Christian (14 October 1790 – 21 April 1831) was the first son of Fletcher Christian (leader of the historical mutiny on the ''Bounty'') and his Tahitian wife Mauatua. He was conceived on Tahiti, and was the first child born on the Pitcairn Islands after the mutineers took refuge on the island. Born on a Thursday in October, he was given his unusual name because Fletcher Christian wanted his son to have "no name that will remind me of England." Thursday, at age 16, married an older native woman, Teraura (Susannah/Susan Young), who had been Ned Young's original consort. She was past 30 at the time of the marriage. The ceremony was carried out with a ring that had belonged to Ned Young. Meeting the British When the British frigates ''Briton'' and ''Tagus'' arrived at Pitcairn on the morning of 17 September 1814, Thursday and George Young paddled out in canoes to meet them. Both spoke English well, and made a good impression on the officers and men of the ships a ...
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New Year Fiction
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, 1995 Songs * "New" (Daya song), 2017 * "New" (Paul McCartney song), 2013 * "New" (No Doubt song), 1999 *"new", by Loona from '' Yves'', 2017 *"The New", by Interpol from ''Turn On the Bright Lights'', 2002 Acronyms * Net economic welfare, a proposed macroeconomic indicator * Net explosive weight, also known as net explosive quantity * Network of enlightened Women, a conservative university women's organization * Next Entertainment World, a South Korean film distribution company Identification codes * Nepal Bhasa language ISO 639 language code * New Century Financial Corporation (NYSE stock abbreviation) * Northeast Wrestling, a professional wrestling promotion in the northeastern United States Transport * New Orleans Lakefront Ai ...
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1853 Short Stories
Events January–March * January 6 – Florida Governor Thomas Brown signs legislation that provides public support for the new East Florida Seminary, leading to the establishment of the University of Florida. * January 8 – Taiping Rebellion: Zeng Guofan is ordered to assist the governor of Hunan in organising a militia force to search for local bandits. * January 12 – Taiping Rebellion: The Taiping army occupies Wuchang. * January 19 – Giuseppe Verdi's opera ''Il Trovatore'' premieres in performance at Teatro Apollo in Rome. * February 10 – Taiping Rebellion: Taiping forces assemble at Hanyang, Hankou, and Wuchang, for the march on Nanjing. * February 12 – The city of Puerto Montt is founded in the Reloncaví Sound, Chile. * February 22 – Washington University in St. Louis is founded as Eliot Seminary. * March – The clothing company Levi Strauss & Co. is founded in the United States. * March 4 – Inauguration of Franklin Pierce as 14th President of th ...
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Grosvenor (East Indiaman)
The wreck of the ''Grosvenor'', an East Indiaman, occurred on 4 August 1782 on the Pondoland coast of South Africa, north of the mouth of the Umzimvubu River. The shipwreck was close to the place where the Portuguese ship, ''São João'', had gone down more than two centuries earlier on 8 June 1552. The ''Grosvenor'' was a three-masted ship of 729 tons on her return voyage to England when she was wrecked, carrying a crew of 132 and 18 passengers (12 adults and 6 children), and a cargo valued at £75,000. Of the 123 survivors, only 18 reached Cape Town and were repatriated, the remainder dying of their privations or joining with tribes. Four survivors, Robert Price, Thomas Lewis, John Warmington, and Barney Larey, eventually got back to England. History The ''Grosvenor'' had left Madras in March 1782 under the command of Captain John Coxon, falling in with Admiral Hughes' fleet. On 13 June 1782, she set sail for England from Trincomalee in Ceylon. Sailing west near the Cape co ...
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Isle Of Purbeck
The Isle of Purbeck is a peninsula in Dorset, England. It is bordered by water on three sides: the English Channel to the south and east, where steep cliffs fall to the sea; and by the marshy lands of the River Frome and Poole Harbour to the north. Its western boundary is less well defined, with some medieval sources placing it at Flower's Barrow above Worbarrow Bay. John Hutchins, author of ''The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset'', defined Purbeck's western boundary as the Luckford Lake steam, which runs south from the Frome. According to writer and broadcaster Ralph Wightman, Purbeck "is only an island if you accept the barren heaths between Arish Mell and Wareham as cutting off this corner of Dorset as effectively as the sea." The most southerly point is St Alban's Head (archaically St. Aldhelm's Head). From 1974 to 2019, the whole of the Isle of Purbeck lay within the local government district of Purbeck, which was named after it. The district extended ...
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Halsewell (East Indiaman)
The ''Halsewell'' was an East Indiaman that was wrecked on 6 January 1786 at the start of a voyage from London to Madras. She lost her masts in a violent storm in the English Channel, and was driven onto the rocks below a cliff on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, England. The vicar of nearby Worth Matravers recorded the event in his parish register: Of over 240 crew and passengers, only 74 survived. The shipwreck shocked the nation. The King visited the scene of the tragedy. The wreck of the ''Halsewell'' was the subject of poems, paintings and an orchestral symphony. Many years later Charles Dickens described the wreck in a short story. First voyages The ''Halsewell'' was an East-Indiaman of 776 tons (bm), launched in 1778. She had three decks, a length of and a breadth of . Throughout her career she was under the command of Captain Richard Pierce. On her maiden voyage the ''Halsewell'' sailed to Madras and China, leaving Portsmouth on 6 March 1779 and after stopping at ...
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Captain Bligh
Vice-Admiral William Bligh (9 September 1754 – 7 December 1817) was an officer of the Royal Navy and a colonial administrator. The mutiny on the HMS ''Bounty'' occurred in 1789 when the ship was under his command; after being set adrift in ''Bounty''s launch by the mutineers, Bligh and his loyal men all reached Timor alive, after a journey of . Bligh's logbooks documenting the mutiny were inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World register on 26 February 2021. Seventeen years after the ''Bounty'' mutiny, on 13 August 1806, he was appointed Governor of New South Wales in Australia, with orders to clean up the corrupt rum trade of the New South Wales Corps. His actions directed against the trade resulted in the so-called Rum Rebellion, during which Bligh was placed under arrest on 26 January 1808 by the New South Wales Corps and deposed from his command, an act which the British Foreign Office later declared to be illegal. He died in London on 7 December 1817. ...
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Fletcher Christian
Fletcher Christian (25 September 1764 – 20 September 1793) was master's mate on board HMS ''Bounty'' during Lieutenant William Bligh's voyage to Tahiti during 1787–1789 for breadfruit plants. In the mutiny on the ''Bounty'', Christian seized command of the ship from Bligh on 28 April 1789. Some of the mutineers were left on Tahiti, while Christian, eight other mutineers, six Tahitian men and eleven Tahitian women settled on isolated Pitcairn Island, and ''Bounty'' was burned. After the settlement was discovered in 1808, the sole surviving mutineer gave conflicting accounts of how Christian died. Early life Christian was born on 25 September 1764, at his family home of Moorland Close, Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth in Cumberland, England. Fletcher's father's side had originated from the Isle of Man and most of his paternal great-grandfathers were historic Deemsters, their original family surname McCrystyn. Fletcher was the brother to Edward and Humphrey, being the three so ...
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Mutiny On The Bounty
The mutiny on the Royal Navy vessel occurred in the South Pacific Ocean on 28 April 1789. Disaffected crewmen, led by acting-Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, seized control of the ship from their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh, and set him and eighteen loyalists adrift in the ship's open launch. The mutineers variously settled on Tahiti or on Pitcairn Island. Bligh navigated more than in the launch to reach safety, and began the process of bringing the mutineers to justice. ''Bounty'' had left England in 1787 on a mission to collect and transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies. A five-month layover in Tahiti, during which many of the men lived ashore and formed relationships with native Polynesians, led those men to be less amenable to military discipline. Relations between Bligh and his crew deteriorated after he allegedly began handing out increasingly harsh punishments, criticism, and abuse, Christian being a particular target. After three weeks ba ...
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Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school at the age of 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years he returned to school, before he began his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, for education, and for other social ...
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Alexander Pearce
Alexander Pearce (1790 – 19 July 1824) was an Irish convict who was transported to the penal colony in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), Australia for seven years for theft. He escaped from prison several times, allegedly becoming a cannibal during one of the escapes. In another escape, with one companion, he allegedly killed him and ate him in pieces. He was eventually captured and was hanged in Hobart for murder, before being dissected. Early life Pearce was born in County Monaghan, Ireland. A Roman Catholic farm labourer, he was sentenced at Armagh in 1819 to penal transportation to Van Diemen's Land for "the theft of six pairs of shoes". He continued to commit various petty offences whilst in the penal colony in Van Diemen's Land, from which he soon escaped. The 18 May 1822 edition of the ''Hobart Town Gazette'' reported this escape and advertised a £10 reward for his recapture. When caught, he was charged with absconding and forging an order, a serious crime. For this h ...
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