Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs
Weblink
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/ …

THE VOYAGE OF THE ROSE CITY

John Moynihan

An Adventure at Sea

A young adventurer's journal of life on board The Rose City.

Spurred by an insatiable wanderlust, yet blissfully naïve about the realities of life at sea, John Moynihan asked his father, a United States Senator, to pull some strings and get him passage on a ship, The Rose City.

He soon found himself vying for the respect of the other mariners who were immediately wary of this new deckhand who curiously knew next to nothing about the realities of sea life. Plus, the presence of this green hand meant that one of the mariner's friends had missed out on a badly needed job. Surrounded by unfriendly faces, Moynihan immediately had a lot to prove.

The life of a deckhand proved to be brutal, yet Moynihan soon found himself drinking at seedy port towns around the world, fearing attacks from pirates, learning about the sea and living a life of adventure.

His summer experience proved to be the most powerful and formative of his life. The journal he kept at sea became the basis for this book, which he wrote for a creative writing class when he returned to university. When Moynihan died unexpectedly in his 40s, his mother Elizabeth published 100 copies of his journal as a gift to commemorate his death. Thanks to the overwhelming response to his journal, his work is available now as a trade hardcover.

Available products
Book Published 2011-10-01 by Spiegel & Grau
Book Published 2011-10-01 by Spiegel & Grau

Comments

"John Moynihan's high-spirited description of his four months as an ordinary seaman on a supertanker is a mesmerizing tale of courage, nerve, and heart. This riveting account of how the senator's son was eventually accepted by the clannish crew is wittily illustrated by the drawings that filled the margins of his journal."

"John Moynihan died young, but not before leaving, on the pages of a loose-leaf notebook, an imperishable legacy. This literary gem, the story of a young man and the sea, will be read as long as people care about life's essentially lonely voyage to maturity. The delight that Moynihan's prose occasions is tinged with melancholy, because this is the only glimpse we shall have of a remarkable talent."

"A sincere study of the life of a man at sea, eschewing the romanticism often associated with the lifestyle. Moynihan is a talented writer, wielding crisp and clear prose, and his emotions spill out onto the page but never overwhelm the story. He brings the narrative to a satisfying close, only marred by the fact that the author's life was cut tragically short. An honest portrayal of a lonely life at sea, Moynihan's adventures aboard the Rose City are exciting, but it is his overwhelming desire for acceptance that will resonate most with readers."