Voyaging: Southward from the Strait of Magellan (Paperback)

~ (Author) "AT last, for the first time in months of fevered work, I paused..." (more)
Key Phrases: dwarfed trees, Punta Arenas, Tierra del Fuego, Admiralty Sound (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Twenty-nine years after his death, [Rockwell] Kent has returned with a vengeance. Not since the height of his pre-McCarthyism popularity has so much of his work been available to the public." --Smithsonian

"This is a book filled with roaring winds, black, smoking seas, mountains that are terrible in the isolation they symbolize. Why does the desire persist in men to visit places such as this? What draws them on to certain discomfort, danger and separation from all that civilized effort has won for them? Perhaps Mr. Kent has struck upon the true answer here. 'This hour you are bound by the whole habit of your life and thought, the next by unerring impulse of the soul you are free. How strong and swift is pride to clear itself, from misery or joy, from crowds, from ease, from failure, from success, from the recurrent brim full, the too much? Forever shall man seek the solitudes and the most utter desolation of the wilderness to achieve through hardship the rebirth of his pride.' . . . The strength and menace and majesty of the Cape Horn region proved admirable material for Mr. Kent's black and white drawings. They are not a mere adornment of his book, but an integral part of it."--New York Times

"Rockwell Kent has the Midas knack -- everything his pen touches becomes literary gold. The publication of his 'Wilderness' gave birth to the suspicion that here was a unique figure in the world of letters. With the advent of 'Voyaging' that suspicion becomes a conviction. No other literary artist is doing just what Kent is doing."--New York Tribune

"An account of Mr. Kent's attempt in a tiny sailboat to steer a course from the Strait of Magellan south and west through the mountainous-islanded channels of Tierra del Fuego around Cape Horn. ...Mr. Kent has caught the wild beauty of this ominous region -- iron crags ringed with the froth of blown surf, wind-tortured trees, distant peaks incrusted with dazzling snow; but out of the very heart of this bewildering beauty emanates a sense of unseen presences appallingly, implacably hostile to man."--The Nation

Review

"To say that Voyaging is the literary equivalent of Rockwell Kent's full-blooded paintings is to damn it with faint praise. It's a book that can easily stand on its own beside any travel narrative of its time or indeed our time. In fact, Voyaging is so fresh and robust that it reads as if it had been written yesterday rather than in the early 1920s." (Lawrence Millman, author of An Evening Among Headhunters and Last Places )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 202 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan; 75 Anv edition (March 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819564095
• ISBN-13: 978-0819564092
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #743,718 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Adventure; Thrilling Moments!, April 10, 2000

By	Allen A. Long "Allen A Long" (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Armchair adventurers who love sailing, roughing it through forests, bogs and mountains in strange lands, and meeting new people in brief encounters will love "Voyaging," by Rockwell Kent. The book begins with a shocking confession in the Introduction, and carries the reader through 184 pages of high excitement and magnificent descriptions of one of the most desolate and forsaken places in the world -- the area about Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America.

The book's main characters are (1) Kent, about 40; (2) his mate, a Norwegian of 26 years who started his life by shipping to sea under his father when 14, who after a few months of beatings jumped ship, cursing as he went, apparently never to see his father again; (3) a lifeboat, which Kent bought for $20 and named Kathleen, and with a group of tradesmen modified to include cabin, mast and rigging for sails; (4) the West Wind, which whistled ceaselessly and tossed the little boat about dangerously, and (5) a menagerie of people along the way who extended hospitality, most with loving kindness, a few with malice.

A touching moment came on Bailey Island when Kent asked 20-year-old Margarita García, the name of her three-month-old suckling daughter. The baby has no name because she has not been baptized, Margarita replied. There in that inhospitable land Kent converted a dirty hovel into a cathedral and "baptized" the child, giving her his wife's name Kathleen Kent García. Kent writes that Father García, a murderer who earlier was released from a nearby prison after serving time, said "the ceremony had pleased him particularly as it was in truth the baptism of his child."

Characteristically, Kent illustrates the book well with black-and-white drawings of the stark landscape, and a few portraits of his new acquaintances. He also includes several maps by which the reader may follow the men's attempt to sail around Cape Horn -- an adventure that did not always go according to plan, as the reader will discover. -- Allen Long, Arlington, VA.

4.0 out of 5 stars old style adventures in Tierra del Fuego, May 13, 2008

By	Dennis Kalma "traveling naturalist" (Willsboro, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Although Rockwell Kent is mainly known as an artist and illustrator he also deserves a fine reputation as a travel/adventure writer. This book describes his months of small boat sailing and trekking in the islands and channels of Tierra del Fuego at the very southern tip of South America.
This was in the 1920's, a time well before ecotourism became a business. Going off on an adventure had a very different meaning: no reliable maps, no aerial photos, no GPS, no satellite phone to let you bail out when it got a little tough - it was actually dangerous out there. The book lets you in on an experience probably unobtainable in the modern world.
The wonderful illustrations by Kent are a bonus, but the style is more grandiloquent than his classic "N by E".