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4 December 1872: The brigantine Dei Gratia chances upon another
brigantine out on the Atlantic near the Azores. She is the Mary
Celeste. She is under sail. But she is deserted. Silent as a
drowned cadaver. For 150 years since then, the mystery of why the
Mary Celeste was abandoned, and what happened to the ten souls on
board, has spawned thousands of conjectures, conspiracy theories,
fictions and fantasies. Some have thought they solved the mystery.
Some have just spun yarns. One, at least, has claimed it was all a
hoax. The Mysterious Case of the Mary Celeste: 150 Years of Myth
and Mystique unveils those stories - the 'fake news', 'alternative
facts' and the myths fabricated from fractured truths. These are
the real facts in search of a truth that remains unfathomable to
this day.
The sea realm has ever been mysterious: strange happenings upon it,
an unfathomable abyss of 'The Great Unknown' below. Before the
scrutiny of scientific Enlightenment and Age of Reason, in the
eighteenth century, ghost ships and oceanic monsters were the stuff
of superstition, myth and legend to explain the inexplicable, to
enthral the imagination - and enliven the unimaginable. Narratives
of phantom ships manned by ghostly (sometimes skeletal) crews, or
damned like the Flying Dutchman to roam the seas forever; of
sinister, sinuous sea serpents; and the lore of the terrible
multi-tentacled kraken. Accounts inspired spirited controversy
amongst believers and sceptics, in the awestruck thrill of such
frightful enigmas.
Life at sea in the nineteenth century was demanding and perilous.
Seamen had to be able to rely on those around them. This was easier
said than done. The sea could be, and still is, a place of constant
and unpredictable danger, whether by storm, shipboard disease or
threat from the crew. Stories of unimaginable cruelties inflicted
upon crews by savage officers and treacheries committed by mutinous
crews were the soap operas of the day. People followed the trials
in the newspapers, hanging hungrily on to each new piece of detail.
Tales of suffering, hardship and treachery were thrilling to those
on land but also replete with piteous infamy.
In the nineteenth century true stories of cannibal tribes
massacring white traders (and vice versa) and missionaries fed the
morbid appetites of Europeans, North Americans and colonials.
Accounts of cannibalism committed by seafarers on their dead
shipmates quickened the pulses of landfolk even more, and pricked
their moral disquiet. Acts of desperate men committing unspeakable
atrocities. The warring frenzy of cannibal headhunters and their
gruesome feasting. Such was the stuff of real-life 'sixpenny
romances', rich in human butchery and garnished with treachery and
terror. The more atrocious the at rocities, the more exotic the
locations; the more sensational the narratives, the greater was the
thrall of these thrilling tales of the sea.
The mythology of Mesoamerica, which encompasses the general region
of Central America, is a vast mixture of mythologies from many
cultures. Yet even with so many cultures in the mix, each of the
mythologies covers the same basic themes, including those about
creation and the afterlife. Accompanying the text are brilliant,
full-color images to capture the imagination. Supports English
language arts content standards requiring students to identify and
analyze the characteristics of various literary forms and genres,
such as myths.
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Paperback
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R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
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