The Death Ship: The Story of an American Sailor
Author: B Traven, (1882?-1969)
Year: 1934
Publisher: Alfred A Knopf
Place: New York
Description:
372 pages. Octavo (8" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's black cloth with gilt lettering and pictorial ship to spine and blind-stamped ship to cover with red head page ends and deckle fore-edge in original jacket. First American edition.
The first English language edition was published by Chatto & Windus several months before this Knopf appearance, but his is considered the preferred edition as it is Traven's own translation and contains his revisions.
The Death Ship (German title: Das Totenschiff) is a novel by the pseudonymous author known as B. Traven. Originally published in German in 1926, and in English in 1934, it was Traven's first major success and is still the author's second best known work after The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Owing to its scathing criticism of bureaucratic authority, nationalism, and abusive labor practices, it is often described as an anarchist novel. Set just after World War I, The Death Ship describes the predicament of merchant seamen who lack documentation of citizenship and cannot find legal residence or employment in any nation. The narrator is Gerard Gales, a US sailor who claims to be from New Orleans, and who is stranded in Antwerp without passport or working papers. Unable to prove his identity or his eligibility for employment, Gales is repeatedly arrested and deported from one country to the next, by government officials who do not want to be bothered with either assisting or prosecuting him. When he finally manages to find work, it is on the Yorikke, (possibly a reference to the Shakespeare play Hamlet) the dangerous and decrepit ship of the title, where undocumented workers from around the world are treated as expendable slaves. The term death ship refers to any boat so decrepit that it is worth more to its owners over insured and sunk than it would be worth afloat. The title of the book is translated directly from the German Das Totenschiff; in English, they are called coffin ships. In 1959 it was adapted into a film of the same name (also known as Ship of the Dead) directed by Georg Tressler. A copy of the book was seen as part of the drug-induced wreckage of Raoul Duke's Flamingo hotel room in the film adaption of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Condition:
Jacket spine toned, chipped along edges, few closed tears, some staining, flaps clipped with corner tears; minor toning to endpapers else very good copy in a good or better unrestored jacket.
