ISBN: 9781494491888

San Francisco Bay is so large that often its storms are more disastrous to ocean-going craft than is the ocean itself in its violent moments. The waters of the bay contain all manner of f… mais…

San Francisco Bay is so large that often its storms are more disastrous to ocean-going craft than is the ocean itself in its violent moments. The waters of the bay contain all manner of fish, wherefore its surface is ploughed by the keels of all manner of fishing boats manned by all manner of fishermen. To protect the fish from this motley floating population many wise laws have been passed, and there is a fish patrol to see that these laws are enforced. Exciting times are the lot of the fish patrol: in its history more than one dead patrolman has marked defeat, and more often dead fishermen across their illegal nets have marked success.Wildest among the fisher-folk may be accounted the Chinese shrimp- catchers. It is the habit of the shrimp to crawl along the bottom in vast armies till it reaches fresh water, when it turns about and crawls back again to the salt. And where the tide ebbs and flows, the Chinese sink great bag-nets to the bottom, with gaping mouths, into which the shrimp crawls and from which it is transferred to the boiling-pot. This in itself would not be bad, were it not for the small mesh of the nets, so small that the tiniest fishes, little new-hatched things not a quarter of an inch long, cannot pass through. The beautiful beaches of Points Pedro and Pablo, where are the shrimp-catchers' villages, are made fearful by the stench from myriads of decaying fish, and against this wasteful destruction it has ever been the duty of the fish patrol to act.When I was a youngster of sixteen, a good sloop-sailor and all- round bay-waterman, my sloop, the Reindeer, was chartered by the Fish Commission, and I became for the time being a deputy patrolman. After a deal of work among the Greek fishermen of the Upper Bay and rivers, where knives flashed at the beginning of trouble and men permitted themselves to be made prisoners only after a revolver was thrust in their faces, we hailed with delight an expedition to the Lower Bay against the Chinese shrimp-catchers.There were six of us, in two boats, and to avoid suspicion we ran down after dark and dropped anchor under a projecting bluff of land known as Point Pinole. As the east paled with the first light of dawn we got under way again, and hauled close on the land breeze as we slanted across the bay toward Point Pedro. The morning mists curled and clung to the water so that we could see nothing, but we busied ourselves driving the chill from our bodies with hot coffee. Also we had to devote ourselves to the miserable task of bailing, for in some incomprehensible way the Reindeer had sprung a generous leak. Half the night had been spent in overhauling the ballast and exploring the seams, but the labor had been without avail. The water still poured in, and perforce we doubled up in the cockpit and tossed it out again.After coffee, three of the men withdrew to the other boat, a Columbia River salmon boat, leaving three of us in the Reindeer. Then the two craft proceeded in company till the sun showed over the eastern sky-line. Its fiery rays dispelled the clinging vapors, and there, before our eyes, like a picture, lay the shrimp fleet, spread out in a great half-moon, the tips of the crescent fully three miles apart, and each junk moored fast to the buoy of a shrimp-net. But there was no stir, no sign of life. Trade Books>Trade Paperback>Literature>Literature>Literature, CreateSpace Publishing Core >1<

ISBN: 9781494491888

From oyster pirate to oyster cop, Jack London brings us adventure stories from the wild days of turn-of-the-century San Francisco.Jack London was born in San Francisco in 1876. After he w… mais…

From oyster pirate to oyster cop, Jack London brings us adventure stories from the wild days of turn-of-the-century San Francisco.Jack London was born in San Francisco in 1876. After he was deserted by his father, an itinerant astrologer, he was raised in Oakland by his mother. Although his youth was marked by poverty, he became an avid reader by the age of ten. Young Jack frequented the Oakland Public Library, where he was influenced by the works of Flaubert, Tolstoy, and other major novelists. After leaving school at the age of fourteen, London worked as a seaman, rode freight trains as a hobo, and joined in protest armies of the unemployed during the hard times of the 1890s. In 1894, he was arrested in Niagara Falls and jailed for vagrancy. He then made a vow to better himself. Later these hard-life adventures provided rich material for his well known works, such as The Sea-Wolf. London educated himself in public libraries, and at the age of nineteen, he was accepted to the University of California at Berkeley. However, London left the school before the year was over and went to seek a fortune in the Klondike gold rush of 1897. His attempt to find gold was unsuccessful, and he spent a harsh winter near Dawson City suffering from scurvy before returning to San Francisco.For the remainder of 1898, London tried to earn his living by writing, finding his first success with The Son of the Wolf in 1900. That same year he married Elisabeth Maddern, but left her and their two daughters three years later to marry Charmian Kittredge. After publishing his first book, he produced a steady stream of fiction novels and short stories. In 1901, London ran unsuccessfully on the Socialist Party ticket for mayor of Oakland. In 1902, he went to England, where he studied the backside of the British Empire. His report about the economic degradation of the poor in The People of the Abyss became a surprise success in the United States but was decried in England. In 1904, Books Books ~~ Literary Collections~~ Ancient & Classical Tales-of-the-Fish-Patrol~~Jack-London CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform<

ISBN: 9781494491888

Paperback, [PU: Createspace]