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"In Sargasso." Missing, a romance cover

"In Sargasso." Missing, a romance

Chapter 2: PREFACE.
By Julius Chambers
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Adventure

About This Book

The first-person narrator, commander of a tramp steamer, steers into the floating mass of seaweed and derelicts known as the Sargasso Sea, where his vessel and crew become stranded among a community of shipwreck survivors. The narrative recounts life among the Sargassons: their manners, ceremonies, jealousies, revolts, and inventive use of salvaged materials. A romantic attachment develops with a woman called Fidette as the narrator adapts to new customs, helps build boats, and faces plots of treason and internecine violence. The tale follows the community's struggles, the refitting of the Caribas, and the eventual attempt to steam out of the floating continent.

PREFACE.

Within a week’s sail of New York is a vast and trackless waste, unexplored by the hardiest sailors, uncrossed by the stateliest ships; a monster mass of floating debris, consisting of growing seaweed, blooming and blossoming orchids, creeping and twining vines; traversed by broad and easily navigated straits that stretch through its broad expanse of living green. It is called The Sargasso Sea.

There dwells a nation of castaways—​a new and distinct differentiation of the human race. Countless lost ships, whose tales of disaster never have been told, are floating there to-day. The destination of every wandering hulk, once it reaches the Gulf Stream or the Spanish Main, is this Harbor of Missing Ships!

Geographers have little to say about this floating continent, but the Sargasso Sea has always been a wonder-shop to me, wherein are gathered all the lost, strayed and stolen treasures in the ocean’s keeping. In every grassy cove, a story; in every watery lane, a romance; in every frowning hulk, a Secret of the Sea. J. C.