1897 printed on title page; 21 illustrated plates; The Century Company publishers, New York; hardbound in decorative green boards with embossed sailing ship on cover and gilt stamp lettering on cover and spine; pages in very good condition with strong binding; nice original owners signature inside front with 1897 date; boards very good; no dust jacket.
 
description -
Captains Courageous is an 1897 novel, by Rudyard Kipling, that follows the adventures of fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr., the spoiled son of a railroad tycoon, after he is saved from drowning by a Portuguese fisherman in the north Atlantic.
 
Harvey Cheyne, Jr., is the son of a wealthy railroad magnate and his wife, in San Diego, California. Washed overboard from a transatlantic steamship and rescued by fishermen off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, Harvey can neither persuade them to take him quickly to port, nor convince them of his wealth. Harvey accuses the captain, Disko Troop, of taking his money (which is later revealed to be on the deck from which Harvey fell). Disko Troop, captain of the We're Here, bloodies his nose but takes him in as a boy on the crew until they return to port. Harvey comes to accept his situation.
 
Through a series of trials and adventures, Harvey, with the help of the captain's son Dan Troop, becomes acclimated to the fishing lifestyle, and even skillful. Great stories of the cod fishery with references to New England whaling and 19th-century steam and sailing are intertwined with the We're Here's adventures during a season at sea. Eventually, the schooner returns to port and Harvey wires his parents, who immediately hasten to Boston, Massachusetts, and thence to the fishing town of Gloucester to recover him. There, Harvey's mother rewards the seaman Manuel, who initially rescued her son; Harvey's father hires Dan to work on his prestigious tea clipperfleet; and Harvey goes to Stanford to prepare for taking over his father's shipping lines.