Other editions of book POOR JACK 1840

Poor Jack is a novel by the English author Frederick Marryat, published in 1840.It tells the story of Thomas Saunders, a sailor's son and neglected street urchin struggling to survive in Greenwich, London in the early 19th century. ("Poor Jack" was the title given by the waterfront boys, or mudlarks, to their chief.) In a rags-to-riches story Saunders eventually rises by his own efforts to become a pilot on the Thames, makes his fortune and retires to the life of a wealthy squire. The novel has interesting descriptions of domestic life among the naval lower ranks and contains many anecdotes of seafaring life.

I have every reason to believe that I was born in the year of our Lord 1786, for more than once I put the question to my father, and he invariably made the same reply: “Why, Jack, you were launched a few months before the Druids were turned over to the Melpomene.” I have since ascertained that this remarkable event occurred in January 1787. But my father always reckoned in this way: if you asked him when such an event took place, he would reply, so many years or months after such a naval engagement or remarkable occurrence; as, for instance, when I one day inquired how many years he had served the King, he responded, “I came into the sarvice a little afore the battle of Bunker’s Hill, in which we licked the Americans clean out of Boston.” (I have since heard a different version of the result of this battle.) As for Anno Domini, he had no notion of it whatever.

It tells the story of Thomas Saunders, a sailor's son and neglected street urchin struggling to survive in Greenwich, London in the early 19th century. ("Poor Jack" was the title given by the waterfront boys, or mudlarks, to their chief.) In a rags-to-riches story Saunders eventually rises by his own efforts to become a pilot on the Thames, makes his fortune and retires to the life of a wealthy squire.

It tells the story of Thomas Saunders, a sailor's son and neglected street urchin struggling to survive in Greenwich, London in the early 19th century. ("Poor Jack" was the title given by the waterfront boys, or mudlarks, to their chief.) In a rags-to-riches story Saunders eventually rises by his own efforts to become a pilot on the Thames, makes his fortune and retires to the life of a wealthy squire.

It tells the story of Thomas Saunders, a sailor's son and neglected street urchin struggling to survive in Greenwich, London in the early 19th century. ("Poor Jack" was the title given by the waterfront boys, or mudlarks, to their chief.) In a rags-to-riches story Saunders eventually rises by his own efforts to become a pilot on the Thames, makes his fortune and retires to the life of a wealthy squire.