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The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson #3
The Collected Fiction, Vol. 3: The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea
The third volume of our Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson.
Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
466 pages, Hardcover
Published August 1, 2005
19 people are currently reading
209 people want to read
About the author
William Hope Hodgson
873 books570 followersWilliam Hope Hodgson was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction, and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his poems were published during his lifetime. He also attracted some notice as a photographer and achieved some renown as a bodybuilder. Hodgson served with the British Army durng World War One. He died, at age 40, at Ypres, killed by German artillery fire.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 18, 2023
William Hope Hodgson actually spent time on the sea. He worked as a sailor in the very late 19th/very early 20th century, which was a time of transition (there were still sailing ships although steamers were taking over; and did you know that there was an entire class of steel-hulled four-masted windjammers? I didn't) as the Age of Sail gave way to the Age of Coal. (And then WWI broke out and he enlisted in the British army, twice, and was killed by a German shell in 1918 at the age of 40.)
So when he says things like:
you can safely assume that he knows what the heck a t'gallant is, and likewise a clew, and why it matters.
So this is, as per the title, a collection of many of his nautical stories, some of which have a mild supernatural element and some of which are wholly secular. The longest piece is the short novel The Ghost Pirates (which I insist on referring to as The Gh-gh-gh-ghost P-p-p-Pirates!), which is about a ship that encounters ... well ...
And the remainder are short stories, all filled with very precise, specific nautical terminology whether or not the occult rears its unfathomable head.
Generally good stories -- certainly much more readable, albeit much less memorable, than his novel The Night Land -- but possibly a bit much to take all in one go; especially given that in many of the stories with the more unnatural elements, he likes to try to come up with a "rational" explanation.
So when he says things like:
Indistinctly, I made out that the weather sheet of the fore t’gallant had carried away, and the clew of the sail was whirling and banging about in the air, and, every few moments, hitting the steel yard a blow, like the thump of a great sledge hammer.
you can safely assume that he knows what the heck a t'gallant is, and likewise a clew, and why it matters.
So this is, as per the title, a collection of many of his nautical stories, some of which have a mild supernatural element and some of which are wholly secular. The longest piece is the short novel The Ghost Pirates (which I insist on referring to as The Gh-gh-gh-ghost P-p-p-Pirates!), which is about a ship that encounters ... well ...
And the remainder are short stories, all filled with very precise, specific nautical terminology whether or not the occult rears its unfathomable head.
Generally good stories -- certainly much more readable, albeit much less memorable, than his novel The Night Land -- but possibly a bit much to take all in one go; especially given that in many of the stories with the more unnatural elements, he likes to try to come up with a "rational" explanation.
January 5, 2018
The third entry in Night Shade Books's series of superb William Hope Hodgson collections, this installment collects his novel "The Ghost Pirates" and 28 other sea-based stories. The stories are a mix of weird tales, mysteries, slice of life tales, and pulpy adventures.
The Ghost Pirates
As with his other ship-bound novel "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", Hodgson makes excellent use of his experience as a sailor, serving up an atmospheric ghost story. Apart from the nautical theme, however, "The Ghost Pirates" is a very different novel from "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", and in some ways an inferior one.
The highlights of this book are without a doubt the dialogue and the atmosphere. "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'" lacked any spoken dialogue, so its inclusion here is a nice change. The jargon-sprinkled sea salt conversations are at times hard to follow, but they feel authentic and flavorful. Some reviewers bemoan the lack of a glossary of nautical terms—Hodgson doesn't go to any effort to explain capstans and binnacles to the reader—but I didn't feel as if missing out on a word here or there impacted my enjoyment of the overall story.
While the plot itself is quite sleight (a characteristic shared by all of the Hodgson novels I've read to date), its execution is well done. Hodgson was a master of atmosphere, setting up a number of strange occurrences that gradually build into a tense, unnerving scenario.
I enjoyed "The Ghost Pirates," but I think I would've liked it better had I read it before "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", rather than afterward. "'Glen Carrig'" is filled with such bizarre fever dream imagery that the spirits of the dead, however spooky, seem rather conventional by comparison. That being said, "The Ghost Pirates" is an interesting traditional ghost story, and well told.
... and Other Revenants of the Sea
Making up the bulk of the book, the short stories that follow "The Ghost Pirates" are, inevitably, a mixed bag in terms of quality, but as a Hodgson enthusiast I appreciated the inclusion of even the lesser works (the posthumously published "Old Golly," or "We murdered a black sailor because he was black and maybe he's haunting us now?"). The best of the stories are quite good, and the vast majority of them are at least interesting.
Fans of Hodgson's supernatural fiction will find a lot to like here. There are sea serpents, a were-shark, derelict ships overrun with carnivorous fungi and other bizarre horrors, fish men, even a ship made of stone.
The more conventional stories were also fascinating, however. "The Sharks of the St. Elmo" is a particularly tense story about a becalmed ship surrounded by thousands of thrashing sharks as far as the eye can see. The narrator finds himself pushed into a leadership role as the captain and First Mate drink themselves senseless and the crew begin searching about for a "Jonah," a cursed shipmate who must be disposed of lest he damn the rest of the men. Jonahs are a recurring topic in many of the included stories.
Shipboard bullying is another recurring theme in this collection of stories. I suspect it's telling that, despite his prior career as a sailor, Hodgson refused a position in the Royal Navy when he enlisted in the first World War. Some of the brawlers featured here are presented in a favorable light (e.g., the eponymous "Jack Grey, Second Mate" is a badass who would be at home in a Robert E. Howard yarn), but most of the time they're vicious, drunk foes to be bested by the protagonists. "We Two and Bully Dunkan" is a clever shipboard heist in which two sailors get their revenge against their tormentors. Like a Boys' Life Magazine story gone horribly wrong, "The 'Prentices' Mutiny" is a harrowing tale of a ship's youngest crew members under siege by bullying shipmates turned murderous.
While I consider "The Ghost Pirates" to be the weakest of Hodgson's novels, it's still a worthwhile read, and the more than two dozen nautical stories that accompany it make this volume a particularly appealing package.
The Ghost Pirates
As with his other ship-bound novel "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", Hodgson makes excellent use of his experience as a sailor, serving up an atmospheric ghost story. Apart from the nautical theme, however, "The Ghost Pirates" is a very different novel from "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", and in some ways an inferior one.
The highlights of this book are without a doubt the dialogue and the atmosphere. "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'" lacked any spoken dialogue, so its inclusion here is a nice change. The jargon-sprinkled sea salt conversations are at times hard to follow, but they feel authentic and flavorful. Some reviewers bemoan the lack of a glossary of nautical terms—Hodgson doesn't go to any effort to explain capstans and binnacles to the reader—but I didn't feel as if missing out on a word here or there impacted my enjoyment of the overall story.
While the plot itself is quite sleight (a characteristic shared by all of the Hodgson novels I've read to date), its execution is well done. Hodgson was a master of atmosphere, setting up a number of strange occurrences that gradually build into a tense, unnerving scenario.
I enjoyed "The Ghost Pirates," but I think I would've liked it better had I read it before "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", rather than afterward. "'Glen Carrig'" is filled with such bizarre fever dream imagery that the spirits of the dead, however spooky, seem rather conventional by comparison. That being said, "The Ghost Pirates" is an interesting traditional ghost story, and well told.
... and Other Revenants of the Sea
Making up the bulk of the book, the short stories that follow "The Ghost Pirates" are, inevitably, a mixed bag in terms of quality, but as a Hodgson enthusiast I appreciated the inclusion of even the lesser works (the posthumously published "Old Golly," or "We murdered a black sailor because he was black and maybe he's haunting us now?"). The best of the stories are quite good, and the vast majority of them are at least interesting.
Fans of Hodgson's supernatural fiction will find a lot to like here. There are sea serpents, a were-shark, derelict ships overrun with carnivorous fungi and other bizarre horrors, fish men, even a ship made of stone.
The more conventional stories were also fascinating, however. "The Sharks of the St. Elmo" is a particularly tense story about a becalmed ship surrounded by thousands of thrashing sharks as far as the eye can see. The narrator finds himself pushed into a leadership role as the captain and First Mate drink themselves senseless and the crew begin searching about for a "Jonah," a cursed shipmate who must be disposed of lest he damn the rest of the men. Jonahs are a recurring topic in many of the included stories.
Shipboard bullying is another recurring theme in this collection of stories. I suspect it's telling that, despite his prior career as a sailor, Hodgson refused a position in the Royal Navy when he enlisted in the first World War. Some of the brawlers featured here are presented in a favorable light (e.g., the eponymous "Jack Grey, Second Mate" is a badass who would be at home in a Robert E. Howard yarn), but most of the time they're vicious, drunk foes to be bested by the protagonists. "We Two and Bully Dunkan" is a clever shipboard heist in which two sailors get their revenge against their tormentors. Like a Boys' Life Magazine story gone horribly wrong, "The 'Prentices' Mutiny" is a harrowing tale of a ship's youngest crew members under siege by bullying shipmates turned murderous.
While I consider "The Ghost Pirates" to be the weakest of Hodgson's novels, it's still a worthwhile read, and the more than two dozen nautical stories that accompany it make this volume a particularly appealing package.
March 9, 2016
Thus far in the series, we've seen each volume thematically centered around one novel from Hodgson with one being basically a survival at sea story with some vague horror elements (and written in an old fashioned style, although people who thought that was pushing it were probably not at all prepared for "The Night Land" but we'll get to that eventually) and the other a combination of "survival not at sea" story and attempting to write the trippiest story you could imagine for the early 20th century. Here, he seems to take both those elements and synthesizes them so that the horror and the boat stuff are far more integrated and the reading experience is tremendously enhanced by it (unless you go with the theory that he wrote these stories in the reverse order in which they were published . . . there appears to be evidence that suggests either could be true) as a result. Being about halfway through "The Night Land" now I can probably comfortably say that "The Ghost Pirates" is probably the best pure story he ever did, even if "House on the Borderland" gets most of the plaudits simply because it's so darn strange.
The thing to remember with Hogdson is that the bulk of what he wrote were nautical based stories, and he was pretty good at them. Generally most of them work because they're short but he has the confidence that only someone who has been on boats quite a bit can have and even when he's using the same basic story idea over and over (there are two stories in this collection alone where passengers use trickery to gang up on an abusive captain) he's got a decent enough style that you get the sense he's making it as differently as he can. The "cosmic horror" stuff that made Lovecraft go "squee!" (or whatever the equivalent was for the 1920s) is mostly relegated to "House on the Borderland" and some scattered stories where people generally seem to face sea monsters or the Carnacki ghost stories (half of which wind up not being about ghosts at all). He can do creepy in spades but a lot of times its man against the ocean against the unknown against his own crew. Even "Glen Carrig" was mostly about getting away from the weird seaweed ocean they had found themselves in and the giant crabs and fishmen and whatnot seemed to be there simply to liven things up or give the crew a different obstacle to overcome.
Here, it's a new game entirely. Written in a slyly oblique style that is worlds away from the imposed archaic nature of "Glen Carrig" or the "anything goes" feel of "House on the Borderland", this one features a crew on a boat that is subject to very strange things happening to them, that range from weird beings glimpsed to odd events, generally all of which are passed off as being witnessed by tired crew members or people going a little nuts from being out in the ocean all the time. A little rest and a little discipline and all the problems should go away, right? Except the problems don't go away. In fact, they get worse. Much, much worse.
Hodgson does a number of interesting things here, all of which seem to accentuate the sheer creepiness of the story that much more. For one, he leaves any description of the forces gradually taking over the ship to be maddeningly vague so that their appearances are gauged more on the reactions of the crew (who are trying not to lose their cool, and slowly failing) and the officers (who are forcing everyone to pretend they didn't see anything), with events described to us fairly plainly, giving the story a realistic yet utterly unsettling feel as the incidents begin to increase in frequency. Hodgson paces the story ridiculously well, with the sense of unease slowly creeping over the reader as it becomes very clear (to you at least well before the crew) that these people are well and truly screwed and the chance of them getting out of the story alive is very, very slim. And once that realization hits you, the story becomes fantastically disquieting because you find yourself searching in the cracks of the incidents being described and what people are saying for some real hint as to what's going on (and since we're limited to the one narrator we don't always see everything that happens). But the "ghosts" (if that's what they are) never seem to interact with the crew and there's no hint at all what's making them do this, whether it's instinct or malice or payback of some kind, we're never told. Instead things continue to escalate until its clear that the ghosts are definitely trying to kill everyone on board and are taking over the ship to do so and watching these men struggle against a force that they don't understand and is completely out of their league is one of the most futile things I've ever seen in literature. By the time all heck finally breaks lose in the story's climax, you don't realize just how much Hodgson has been tightening the screws all along and yet, the release is not a relief in any sense. They don't stand a chance and its that dawning horror, more on the part of the reader than the story participants, that gives the story its power.
Leading off with that story is going to be a fairly tough act to follow for anyone and its not surprise that the rest of the stories, while entertaining and competent, lack the power of "The Ghost Pirates". The collection frontloads the more memorable ones, "The Voice in the Night" which is a fairly effective horror story (and made into a movie), the truly weird "The Shamraken Homeward-Bounder" (which may stop some people due to its utter commitment to natural sounding sea dialects, the short and doomed tale "Out of the Storm". Most of the rest don't feature supernatural elements and often follow characters who are getting revenge on someone else ("The Regeneration of Captain Bully Keller" and "We Two and Bully Dunken" which are oddly entertaining despite having the same general setup), or encounter oddness that is either present as otherworldly can be explained or is simply beyond understanding or simply feature all the things that can go wrong on a boat even when you know what you're doing, which is everything.
Depending on your appetite for nautical fiction this will either seem a feast or designed to give you the bends, but none of the stories are pure clunkers. Even the scattered tales that round out the collection and were published posthumously have something to recommend them, whether it's an interesting take on a scenario or a turn of phrase or even a tantalizing glimpse into something he could have expanded on later. They're not all essential (I say this because apparently hardcovers of this are up for sale for lots of money these days) and frankly with "The Ghost Pirates" being public domain it can be easily read anywhere. But for anyone interested in weird fiction, its one of the key stories, even more than "House on the Borderland" since it depicts so easily what Lovecraft and the rest strove to convey, the casual ease by which the universe can dispassionate ignore our struggles and then turn around and crush us anyway, and never give us a reason as to what we did to deserve it.
The thing to remember with Hogdson is that the bulk of what he wrote were nautical based stories, and he was pretty good at them. Generally most of them work because they're short but he has the confidence that only someone who has been on boats quite a bit can have and even when he's using the same basic story idea over and over (there are two stories in this collection alone where passengers use trickery to gang up on an abusive captain) he's got a decent enough style that you get the sense he's making it as differently as he can. The "cosmic horror" stuff that made Lovecraft go "squee!" (or whatever the equivalent was for the 1920s) is mostly relegated to "House on the Borderland" and some scattered stories where people generally seem to face sea monsters or the Carnacki ghost stories (half of which wind up not being about ghosts at all). He can do creepy in spades but a lot of times its man against the ocean against the unknown against his own crew. Even "Glen Carrig" was mostly about getting away from the weird seaweed ocean they had found themselves in and the giant crabs and fishmen and whatnot seemed to be there simply to liven things up or give the crew a different obstacle to overcome.
Here, it's a new game entirely. Written in a slyly oblique style that is worlds away from the imposed archaic nature of "Glen Carrig" or the "anything goes" feel of "House on the Borderland", this one features a crew on a boat that is subject to very strange things happening to them, that range from weird beings glimpsed to odd events, generally all of which are passed off as being witnessed by tired crew members or people going a little nuts from being out in the ocean all the time. A little rest and a little discipline and all the problems should go away, right? Except the problems don't go away. In fact, they get worse. Much, much worse.
Hodgson does a number of interesting things here, all of which seem to accentuate the sheer creepiness of the story that much more. For one, he leaves any description of the forces gradually taking over the ship to be maddeningly vague so that their appearances are gauged more on the reactions of the crew (who are trying not to lose their cool, and slowly failing) and the officers (who are forcing everyone to pretend they didn't see anything), with events described to us fairly plainly, giving the story a realistic yet utterly unsettling feel as the incidents begin to increase in frequency. Hodgson paces the story ridiculously well, with the sense of unease slowly creeping over the reader as it becomes very clear (to you at least well before the crew) that these people are well and truly screwed and the chance of them getting out of the story alive is very, very slim. And once that realization hits you, the story becomes fantastically disquieting because you find yourself searching in the cracks of the incidents being described and what people are saying for some real hint as to what's going on (and since we're limited to the one narrator we don't always see everything that happens). But the "ghosts" (if that's what they are) never seem to interact with the crew and there's no hint at all what's making them do this, whether it's instinct or malice or payback of some kind, we're never told. Instead things continue to escalate until its clear that the ghosts are definitely trying to kill everyone on board and are taking over the ship to do so and watching these men struggle against a force that they don't understand and is completely out of their league is one of the most futile things I've ever seen in literature. By the time all heck finally breaks lose in the story's climax, you don't realize just how much Hodgson has been tightening the screws all along and yet, the release is not a relief in any sense. They don't stand a chance and its that dawning horror, more on the part of the reader than the story participants, that gives the story its power.
Leading off with that story is going to be a fairly tough act to follow for anyone and its not surprise that the rest of the stories, while entertaining and competent, lack the power of "The Ghost Pirates". The collection frontloads the more memorable ones, "The Voice in the Night" which is a fairly effective horror story (and made into a movie), the truly weird "The Shamraken Homeward-Bounder" (which may stop some people due to its utter commitment to natural sounding sea dialects, the short and doomed tale "Out of the Storm". Most of the rest don't feature supernatural elements and often follow characters who are getting revenge on someone else ("The Regeneration of Captain Bully Keller" and "We Two and Bully Dunken" which are oddly entertaining despite having the same general setup), or encounter oddness that is either present as otherworldly can be explained or is simply beyond understanding or simply feature all the things that can go wrong on a boat even when you know what you're doing, which is everything.
Depending on your appetite for nautical fiction this will either seem a feast or designed to give you the bends, but none of the stories are pure clunkers. Even the scattered tales that round out the collection and were published posthumously have something to recommend them, whether it's an interesting take on a scenario or a turn of phrase or even a tantalizing glimpse into something he could have expanded on later. They're not all essential (I say this because apparently hardcovers of this are up for sale for lots of money these days) and frankly with "The Ghost Pirates" being public domain it can be easily read anywhere. But for anyone interested in weird fiction, its one of the key stories, even more than "House on the Borderland" since it depicts so easily what Lovecraft and the rest strove to convey, the casual ease by which the universe can dispassionate ignore our struggles and then turn around and crush us anyway, and never give us a reason as to what we did to deserve it.
February 25, 2013
The Edition I read was just "The Ghost Pirates" free on Kindle in the Public Domain Books series. It was a bit of a cross between a boys' own adventure story with lots of stiff upper lip and "jolly well pull yourself together" and a good old fashioned ghost story. In the end I felt the supernatural element won out as the atmosphere created by the mists, the mysterious shapes in the water and the grey men together with the contrast between the vast open space of the ocean and the claustrophobia of the ship as the men start to disappear/die really created a nice tense feel to the story. It was a but reminiscent of Stoker's Dracula in the Ship's log section of the story but a bit more developed with some pleasing characters and enough salty sea dogs to cheer any reader up. A good ripping yarn - free on kindle so don't miss out
November 1, 2023
Each October, I try to read a bunch of books with a particular horror subtheme; this year (2023), the theme was water-adjacent horror. This is one of the books I read for that. Here's what I thought:
Premise: The book is a collection of more or less every sea-located short story Hodgson—early 20th century bodybuilder, photographer, and writer—ever wrote, or at least the ones that weren't put into the first and second volume of his works put out by Night Shade Books. It's about 480 pages, including one novella and 29 short stories. And of that set, “The Riven Night,” “The Habitants of Middle Islet,” “Demons of the Sea,” “The Real Thing: 'S.O.S.',” “The Haunted Pampero,” “The Stone Ship,” “the Derelict,” “The Voice in the Night,” “A Tropical Horror,” and the lead novella The Ghost Pirates are outright supernatural. Still, I read them all.
Characters. It's not that there aren't characters here, but there are so many and they're all of stock types that listing doesn't seem too productive. There's the brave captain, the bully captain, the old hand, the uber-competent working class sailor, and, occasionally, a woman, whose presence is entirely defined by some male character. Every now and then, there's a scientist or scholar who finds more than they've bargained for, and a tricky ordinary sailor who bamboozles a less worthy captain or officer.
Instead, I'm going to pick and briefly describe five of the horror-related stories.
The Ghost Pirates. Beings from another dimension phase a ship out of our reality and start picking off the crew, one by one. It's a pretty heady idea for a story from 1909!
“The Voice in the Night.” A ship come across a voice in the night, who relates to the sailors a story of a strange lichen that transforms anyone who gets too close to it.
“Out of the Storm.” There's no supernatural element here, but in some ways, it's the most horrific story of all: two men receive a telegraph from a ship sinking in a storm, and the author relates what it's like to face certain death.
“The Stone Ship.” Sailors at sea come across a floating stone ship, and decide to come aboard and explore. The stone ship's inhabitants do not like visitors.
“The Haunted Pampero.” Were-shark!
'”The Habitants of Middle Islet.” When his friend's fiancee's ship goes missing, the narrator goes on an expedition to find it—and they find it abandoned and empty on a small island. They go further inland to seek out the would-be shipwrecked, and find something else, and worse.
Are there red skies in morning? Oh yes. Admittedly, reading them all one after other diminishes the overall effect a lot. If anyone reading this ever attempts something similar, I'd recommend spacing them out a lot, or sticking to the works I highlighted. But that aside, these are quintessential ocean-based horror stories. Lots of strange monsters, ghosts, and despair at an unforgiving environment. And honestly, there's a good balance too—I think mixing in the more adventure-based stories keeps the proceedings from getting too bogged down in one tone or another. It does drag on a bit towards the end; 400+ pages of short stories is a lot of short stories.
Is it Spooky? Yes again. If you look up responses to Hodgson by his contemporaries, you'll find a lot of Lovecraft endorsements, and that makes sense; a lot of Hodgson's more horror-related tone seems to have an influence on Lovecraft. There's a keen sense of dread in these stories, to the point that in some cases, when and if the monster surfaces, there's a sense of relief. It's not perfect, and reading them all at once instead of spread over years and years of Hodgson's career reveals a tendency to return to the same tropes, sometimes literally telling the same stories but with a few of the details changed. And the racialized elements don't age particularly well. But in general, the horror is definitely there.
Is it Halloween? Yes again, though less certainly so than the other two. The supernatural stories tend to have a very specific nascent cosmic horror approach to them, and the tone that follows. It's very atmospheric but arguably not very fun. The narrators tend to be a dour lot, which is understandable given their circumstances. On the other hand, that's where the balance I referred to comes in. The scary stories are well-mixed with fun stories about crew rebelling against bullying captains, or noble sailors fighting off would-be mutineers or German navies. There's definitely a spooky adventure mix, with even an occasional bit of humour, and that's how I tend to define this category.
Quotation: (from “Out of the Storm”) “Oh! God, art Thou indeed God? Canst Thou sit above and watch calmy that which I have just seen? Nay! Thou art not God! Thou art weak and puny beside this foul Thing which Thou didst create in Thy lusty youth. It is now God—and I am one of its children. ... On the forecastle, I saw a mother and her little son clinging to an iron rail. ... Then the Mother stooped and bit like a foul beast at the hand of her wee son. She was afraid that his little additional weight would be more than she could hold. I heard his scream even where I stood—it drove to me upon the wild laughter. It told me again that God is not He, but It.”
Random Thoughts:
--This isn't the first appearance of Hodgson in my Halloween romps; I read The House on the Borderland for the year I read Haunted House stories. None of these stories are quite that trippy, not even The Ghost Pirates. That said, they're probably much more accessible over all.
--Towards the later works, there are two stories that take a more patriotic direction, with English sailors fighting off German submarines and vessels. It's interesting how quick both stories are to portray the Germans as fundamentally more sneaky but less clever than their English counterparts.
--”The Regeneration of Captain Bully Keller” is the story of a retired boxer attempting to morally reform a notoriously bullying captain. It's clear pretty early in the story that yes, this boxer is absolutely going to thrash this bully. But Hodgson build towards it slowly, including the boxer's apprehension with getting dragged back towards violence, a largely false Christian conversion for the bully, and the boxer's promise to his wife to never hit anyone again. It's the same sort of skill in rising story that shows in his horror work, only applied to comedy instead. It suggests a pretty good versatility on his part.
--Likewise, “Jack Grey, Second Mate” shows a high level of generic flexibility in Hodgson; it's an adventure romance, albeit a highly violent one, where a female upper class passenger grows increasingly close to the rugged second mate, until they eventually have to hold back/fight a crew of two dozen mutineers. Kind of Titanic meets the Raid in 1910 sort of vibes.
--Like Hodgson, I married later in life. Unlike Hodgson, unless things go very differently than expected this year, I don't see enlisting in the army at age 40.
--As alluded to previously, Hodgson is an equal opportunist when it comes to class: there's bullying captains who deserve to be robbed, overthrown, or both; there's scurrilous sailor mutineers who meet their end at the second mate's guns. I suspect his overall stance is more the familiar British one, where moral decay is inevitable if the upper classes aren't properly executing their responsibilities.
--Most of the stories are very, very white, with all the characters rooted in British origin. It's not that there aren't non-British sailors in the crew, so much that they don't warrant any mentioning except in passing. The primary exception to this is a later story, “The Sharks of the St. Elmo.” The plot is that a ship has a secret cargo in the hold that none of the sailors are allowed to see, and the ship is being followed by a shiver of sharks. The crew is getting suspicious, and the captain and first mate are very evasive. What's eventually found is that the compartment is full of drugged Chinese dissidents who had fled to San Francisco; the captain was being paid to return them to China, presumably to their deaths. Instead, the crew—which Hodgson is plain to mention, also contains Chinese crewmen—lets them go. I'm not sure what's going on here exactly, but the shark swarm in particular gives it a weird orientalist kind of sense.
Verdict: 100 out of 10 grogs of ale paid to wet the tongue of an old sea dog recounting tales from his life on the waves
Premise: The book is a collection of more or less every sea-located short story Hodgson—early 20th century bodybuilder, photographer, and writer—ever wrote, or at least the ones that weren't put into the first and second volume of his works put out by Night Shade Books. It's about 480 pages, including one novella and 29 short stories. And of that set, “The Riven Night,” “The Habitants of Middle Islet,” “Demons of the Sea,” “The Real Thing: 'S.O.S.',” “The Haunted Pampero,” “The Stone Ship,” “the Derelict,” “The Voice in the Night,” “A Tropical Horror,” and the lead novella The Ghost Pirates are outright supernatural. Still, I read them all.
Characters. It's not that there aren't characters here, but there are so many and they're all of stock types that listing doesn't seem too productive. There's the brave captain, the bully captain, the old hand, the uber-competent working class sailor, and, occasionally, a woman, whose presence is entirely defined by some male character. Every now and then, there's a scientist or scholar who finds more than they've bargained for, and a tricky ordinary sailor who bamboozles a less worthy captain or officer.
Instead, I'm going to pick and briefly describe five of the horror-related stories.
The Ghost Pirates. Beings from another dimension phase a ship out of our reality and start picking off the crew, one by one. It's a pretty heady idea for a story from 1909!
“The Voice in the Night.” A ship come across a voice in the night, who relates to the sailors a story of a strange lichen that transforms anyone who gets too close to it.
“Out of the Storm.” There's no supernatural element here, but in some ways, it's the most horrific story of all: two men receive a telegraph from a ship sinking in a storm, and the author relates what it's like to face certain death.
“The Stone Ship.” Sailors at sea come across a floating stone ship, and decide to come aboard and explore. The stone ship's inhabitants do not like visitors.
“The Haunted Pampero.” Were-shark!
'”The Habitants of Middle Islet.” When his friend's fiancee's ship goes missing, the narrator goes on an expedition to find it—and they find it abandoned and empty on a small island. They go further inland to seek out the would-be shipwrecked, and find something else, and worse.
Are there red skies in morning? Oh yes. Admittedly, reading them all one after other diminishes the overall effect a lot. If anyone reading this ever attempts something similar, I'd recommend spacing them out a lot, or sticking to the works I highlighted. But that aside, these are quintessential ocean-based horror stories. Lots of strange monsters, ghosts, and despair at an unforgiving environment. And honestly, there's a good balance too—I think mixing in the more adventure-based stories keeps the proceedings from getting too bogged down in one tone or another. It does drag on a bit towards the end; 400+ pages of short stories is a lot of short stories.
Is it Spooky? Yes again. If you look up responses to Hodgson by his contemporaries, you'll find a lot of Lovecraft endorsements, and that makes sense; a lot of Hodgson's more horror-related tone seems to have an influence on Lovecraft. There's a keen sense of dread in these stories, to the point that in some cases, when and if the monster surfaces, there's a sense of relief. It's not perfect, and reading them all at once instead of spread over years and years of Hodgson's career reveals a tendency to return to the same tropes, sometimes literally telling the same stories but with a few of the details changed. And the racialized elements don't age particularly well. But in general, the horror is definitely there.
Is it Halloween? Yes again, though less certainly so than the other two. The supernatural stories tend to have a very specific nascent cosmic horror approach to them, and the tone that follows. It's very atmospheric but arguably not very fun. The narrators tend to be a dour lot, which is understandable given their circumstances. On the other hand, that's where the balance I referred to comes in. The scary stories are well-mixed with fun stories about crew rebelling against bullying captains, or noble sailors fighting off would-be mutineers or German navies. There's definitely a spooky adventure mix, with even an occasional bit of humour, and that's how I tend to define this category.
Quotation: (from “Out of the Storm”) “Oh! God, art Thou indeed God? Canst Thou sit above and watch calmy that which I have just seen? Nay! Thou art not God! Thou art weak and puny beside this foul Thing which Thou didst create in Thy lusty youth. It is now God—and I am one of its children. ... On the forecastle, I saw a mother and her little son clinging to an iron rail. ... Then the Mother stooped and bit like a foul beast at the hand of her wee son. She was afraid that his little additional weight would be more than she could hold. I heard his scream even where I stood—it drove to me upon the wild laughter. It told me again that God is not He, but It.”
Random Thoughts:
--This isn't the first appearance of Hodgson in my Halloween romps; I read The House on the Borderland for the year I read Haunted House stories. None of these stories are quite that trippy, not even The Ghost Pirates. That said, they're probably much more accessible over all.
--Towards the later works, there are two stories that take a more patriotic direction, with English sailors fighting off German submarines and vessels. It's interesting how quick both stories are to portray the Germans as fundamentally more sneaky but less clever than their English counterparts.
--”The Regeneration of Captain Bully Keller” is the story of a retired boxer attempting to morally reform a notoriously bullying captain. It's clear pretty early in the story that yes, this boxer is absolutely going to thrash this bully. But Hodgson build towards it slowly, including the boxer's apprehension with getting dragged back towards violence, a largely false Christian conversion for the bully, and the boxer's promise to his wife to never hit anyone again. It's the same sort of skill in rising story that shows in his horror work, only applied to comedy instead. It suggests a pretty good versatility on his part.
--Likewise, “Jack Grey, Second Mate” shows a high level of generic flexibility in Hodgson; it's an adventure romance, albeit a highly violent one, where a female upper class passenger grows increasingly close to the rugged second mate, until they eventually have to hold back/fight a crew of two dozen mutineers. Kind of Titanic meets the Raid in 1910 sort of vibes.
--Like Hodgson, I married later in life. Unlike Hodgson, unless things go very differently than expected this year, I don't see enlisting in the army at age 40.
--As alluded to previously, Hodgson is an equal opportunist when it comes to class: there's bullying captains who deserve to be robbed, overthrown, or both; there's scurrilous sailor mutineers who meet their end at the second mate's guns. I suspect his overall stance is more the familiar British one, where moral decay is inevitable if the upper classes aren't properly executing their responsibilities.
--Most of the stories are very, very white, with all the characters rooted in British origin. It's not that there aren't non-British sailors in the crew, so much that they don't warrant any mentioning except in passing. The primary exception to this is a later story, “The Sharks of the St. Elmo.” The plot is that a ship has a secret cargo in the hold that none of the sailors are allowed to see, and the ship is being followed by a shiver of sharks. The crew is getting suspicious, and the captain and first mate are very evasive. What's eventually found is that the compartment is full of drugged Chinese dissidents who had fled to San Francisco; the captain was being paid to return them to China, presumably to their deaths. Instead, the crew—which Hodgson is plain to mention, also contains Chinese crewmen—lets them go. I'm not sure what's going on here exactly, but the shark swarm in particular gives it a weird orientalist kind of sense.
Verdict: 100 out of 10 grogs of ale paid to wet the tongue of an old sea dog recounting tales from his life on the waves
February 9, 2022
As with any collection of short stories, some are better than others. What is unique about Hodgson is that most of the stories take place at sea, rather than the typical gothic mansions and foggy cityscapes of his contemporaries. The short novel included in this collection (The Ghost Pirates) was my favorite of the collection, although the ending was somewhat anticlimactic. Hodgson puts you firmly on the sailing ships of yore, and most of the stories in this collection are delightfully creepy. If you like early 20th century horror (Lovecraft, Bloch, Smith, Chamberlain, Howard) you will like this.
March 2, 2020
I liked a few of the stories, but most were extremely slow and built around creating a moody atmosphere. That happened at the expense of telling an interesting story in most cases. The one story that really stood out for me was "The 'Prentices' Mutiny". And unlike most of the other stories, this was not about the supernatural, but about a bunch of apprentice sailors fighting a cruel captain and second mate. If you like slow-moving, atmospheric stories about long, slow nights out at sea you will probably like this more than I.
June 28, 2017
Gripping tales of life on the sea, told by a master. The superstitiousness of seamen is highlighted in many of the stories, and a supernatural aspect surrounds most. I had to expand my knowledge of late nineteenth and early twentieth century seagoing vessels while reading.
August 20, 2025
A great collection of weird fiction and nautical tales of adventure and mystery.
This collection of his work includes:
The Ghost Pirates
The Silent Ship
STORIES OF THE SEA
A Tropical Horror
The Voice in the Night
The Shamraken Homeward-Bound
Out of the Storm
The Albatross
The 'Prentices' Mutiny
On the Bridge
The Derelict
The Island of the Crossbones
The Stone Ship
The Regeneration of Captain Bully Keller
The Mystery of Missing Ships
We Two and Bully Dunkan
The Haunted Pampero
The Real Thing: 'S.O.S.'
Jack Grey, Second Mate
A Fight with a Submarine
REVENANTS (or Posthumously Published Stories of the Sea)
In the Danger Zone
Old Golly
Demons of the Sea
The Wild Man of the Sea
The Habitants of Middle Islet
The Riven Night
The Heaving of the Log
The Sharks of the St. Elmo
"Sailormen"
By the Lee
This collection of his work includes:
The Ghost Pirates
The Silent Ship
STORIES OF THE SEA
A Tropical Horror
The Voice in the Night
The Shamraken Homeward-Bound
Out of the Storm
The Albatross
The 'Prentices' Mutiny
On the Bridge
The Derelict
The Island of the Crossbones
The Stone Ship
The Regeneration of Captain Bully Keller
The Mystery of Missing Ships
We Two and Bully Dunkan
The Haunted Pampero
The Real Thing: 'S.O.S.'
Jack Grey, Second Mate
A Fight with a Submarine
REVENANTS (or Posthumously Published Stories of the Sea)
In the Danger Zone
Old Golly
Demons of the Sea
The Wild Man of the Sea
The Habitants of Middle Islet
The Riven Night
The Heaving of the Log
The Sharks of the St. Elmo
"Sailormen"
By the Lee
May 5, 2024
4 stars alone for the excellent, atmospheric novel The Ghost Pirates, which is exactly what it sounds like. The short stories are a mixed bag, with the more realistic ones often falling along similar lines (sailors revolt against abusive superior, for instance), but there are some strong supernatural ones. "The Voice in the Night," "Demons of the Sea," "The Inhabitants of the Middle Islet," and especially "The Derelict" are all creative, well-written supernatural stories with a nautical flavor.
March 3, 2023
Enjoyable, but sometimes repetative.
Currently reading
October 19, 2024The Shamraken Homeward-Bounder is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror
The Stone Ship is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror
The Stone Ship is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror
April 27, 2015
Stories of the supernatural with a nautical bent? This is so in my wheelhouse! (pun intended)
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