Before the Wind, the Memoir of an American Sea Captain, Charles Tyng

New York: Viking Penguin, 1999 First Edition. Hard cover, 8vo., (measuring 5 1/2 x 8 3/4 inches), in cream-colored half cloth with blue paper-covered boards, the titles in gilt to spine, and the pictorial dust jacket with clipper ships and portrait illustrations, 270 pp. Condition: Very Good Plus; d/j is Near Fine. (A remainder mark, black, marks bottom edge near spine.) Newburyport-born, and related to one of the big Boston merchant traders of the day, Charles Tyng (1801-1879) sails to China at thirteen years of age as a greenhorn ship's mate. His subsequent career took him "across the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Carribbean, visiting Cuba, China, Europe and Indonesia, among other ports of call." The memoir document was discovered among in the family papers, discovered and published by the subject's great-great granddaughter. From a review: " Charles Tyng takes us on a series of fascinating and often dangerous voyages around the world, as he observes everything from mutinies to mermaids, from sharks to shipwrecks. The story of his rise from green hand to respected captain in the early years of the nineteenth century is as thrilling as any novel." (Richard Ellis). Footnote: A recent historical reassessment of Tyng's career by Paul J. Michaels, in a masters dissertation of 2019, (available online) calls into question why these memoirs end with the 1830's, given that Tyng's career as a merchant sea captain continued for another sixty or so years. His conclusion, that Tyng was thereafter involved in the Havana slave trade, which burgeoned between the 1840's and 60's, also makes for compelling discussion of this complicated, antebellum period of American history.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good.