[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> E. G. Dalziel —> Next]

Passage Illustrated: The Engraving Anticipates The Wreck

Before I go any further with this narrative, I will state that our ship was a barque of three hundred tons, carrying a crew of eighteen men, a second mate in addition to John, a carpenter, an armourer or smith, and two apprentices (one a Scotch boy, poor little fellow). We had three boats; the Long-boat, capable of carrying twenty-five men; the Cutter, capable of carrying fifteen; and the Surf-boat, capable of carrying ten. I put down the capacity of these boats according to the numbers they were really meant to hold. [[Chapter One, pp. 165-166]

The Long-boat being cast off, the Surf-boat was soon filled. There only remained aboard the Golden Mary, John Mullion the man who had kept on burning the blue-lights (and who had lighted every new one at every old one before it went out, as quietly as if he had been at an illumination); John Steadiman; and myself. I hurried those two into the Surf-boat, called to them to keep off, and waited with a grateful and relieved heart for the Long-boat to come and take me in, if she could. I looked at my watch, and it showed me, by the blue-light, ten minutes past two. They lost no time. As soon as she was near enough, I swung myself into her, and called to the men, “With a will, lads! She’s reeling!” We were not an inch too far out of the inner vortex of her going down, when, by the blue-light which John Mullion still burnt in the bow of the Surf-boat, we saw her lurch, and plunge to the bottom head-foremost. The child cried, weeping wildly, “O the dear Golden Mary! O look at her! Save her! Save the poor Golden Mary!” And then the light burnt out, and the black dome seemed to come down upon us. [Chapter One, "The Wreck: Captain Ravender's Narrative," 172]

Commentary: The Extra Christmas Number Household Words (1856)

The two volumes containing The Christmas Stories do not indicate where they appeared in the twenty-six volume sequence. A "Bibliographical Note" on the verso of the title-page refers to the Charles Dickens Edition of 1871, although this 1911 text has been augmented by five stories from "Reprinted Pieces" and two others, "What Christmas Is As We Grow Older" and "The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices," collaborative stories "which were not always included in the collected works of the novelist." The 1856 immigrant tale involves a Merchant Navy vessel bound from Liverpool for California (originally, Australia) that somewhat improbably strikes an iceberg in the South Atlantic, off Cape Horne. Led by the stalwart Captain Ravender, the twenty passengers and miscellaneous crew survive for twenty-seven days crammed into open lifeboats before being rescued.

Originally published in the Extra Christmas Number of the weekly journal Household Words in 1856, "The Wreck of The Golden Mary: Being the Captain's Account of the Loss of the Ship, and the Mate's Account of the Great Deliverance of Her People" was a collaboration by Dickens himself (Chapter One, "The Wreck") and Wilkie Collins ("The Mate's Narrative" and the final chapter, "The Deliverance"). However, several other staff writers provided the interpolated tales in "The Beguilement in the Boats." The novella is thus a framed tale involving five interpolated tales told by the survivors in the lifeboats of the ill-fated vessel. The lesser-known HW collaborators include Percy Fitzgerald ("The Armourer's Story"), Harriet Parr (nom de plume, Holme Lee, "Poor Dick's Story"), Adelaide Anne Proctor ("The Old Seaman's Story"), and the Rev. James White ("The Scotch Boy's Story").

Since the original text in the twenty-page journal contained no illustrations, the editors of such later editions as the Household Edition had to provide wood-engravings for the previously unillustrated short story collections that had appeared in the Extra Christmas numbers from 1850 through 1859. Dickens had avoided offering serialised novels in the weekly journal's pages, and had focussed instead "on securing the services of a staff of regular writers, capable of treating non-fictional subjects in a lively manner, or of established authors of poetry and short fiction, as occasional contributors" (Schlicke, 282). By 30 September 1856, although still working on the serialisation of Little Dorrit, Dickens lined up the team for the Christmas Number, in which he would pursue his continuing fascination with the lost Franklin Expedition from the 1840s. "Evidently, he no longer considered it necessary to tie the now well-established special Christmas number to the Christmas season" (Slater, 411). In the engraving, Dalziel sets up the rhetorical context of the interpolated tales as the passengers and crew have already abandoned the sinking vessel. The illustration shows the surf boat, with its full complement, in the foreground, and its blue light visible.

Bibliography

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. Christmas Stories from "Household Words" and "All The Year Round." Centenary Edition. 36 vols. London: Chapman & Hall; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911.

Schlicke, Paul. The Oxford Companion to Dickens. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1999.

Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens. New Haven and London: Yale U. P., 1999.

---

Victorian
Web

Christmas
Stories

Illus-
tration

Edward G.
Dalziel

Next

Created 20 September 2005

Last modified 26 May 2024