Captains Courageous

Rudyard Kipling's 1897 book Captains Courageous chronicles the exploits of fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr., the privileged son of a railroad magnate, who is saved from drowning in the North Atlantic by a Portuguese fisherman. The novel was first published in McClure's as a serial in the November 1896 issue, with the final episode appearing in May 1897. The full work was then released that year as a novel, first by Doubleday in the United States and then by Macmillan a month later in the United Kingdom. It is the only book by Kipling that is totally set in North America. Teddy Roosevelt praised the book and Kipling for depicting in the liveliest fashion just what a boy should be and do in his essay What We Can Expect of the American Kid from 1900. The title was originally used by Kipling for a piece about merchants as the new adventurers that appeared in The Times on November 23, 1892. The privileged son of a powerful railroad tycoon in California is Harvey Cheyne Jr. from a transatlantic steamer washed overboard, and the crew of the We're Here saved him. Excellent cod fishing tales that include mention of New England whaling, 19th-century steam, sailing, and the cod fishery.