I. for biblio.com


THE PILOT is about warfare on land and sea between the rebelling USA and mother Britain between the years of, say, 1778 and 1792. The pilot in question, though never named, is legendary John Paul (Jones), father of the American navy.

He lands in northeastern England to extract valuable hostages to exchange for American revolutionaries taken at sea by the British. The success of Jones's mission depends on his uncanny seamanship while being pursued amid shoals, rocks and currents.

Subplots abound. Jones meets with a former love. Other young lovers pursue their future mates against great odds. By 1792, the year of Jones's death, two minor comic characters,  wartime enemies, are the best of friends on the US-Canadian frontier. This novel established a new literary genre: the sea adventure tale.  -OOO-


The volume's second novel is THE RED ROVER, written five years after THE PILOT.

After a very slow beginning full of intrigue in and around the harbor of Newport, Rhode Island in October 1759, young Harry Wilder and companions board the disguised pirate ship, the Red Rover, with a royal commission to identify and bring to justice its captain who uses the same name.

After a long sea chase of a rich merchantman, the Red Rover captures a British frigate. In time the pirate proves himself an early patriot laboring for the freedom of the North American colonies from their British overlords.

The novel abounds in mood changes, disguises, false flags for the Rover and twists and turns in the pirate chief's identities, moods and whims. At novel's end the Rover, whose real name is Heidegger, is revealed to be an American patriot, as Newport celebrates the end of the war for independence.  -OOO-

05/15/2009

http://www.biblio.com/books/25920606.html

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 II. for amazon.com

Title of this review:    "I lov'd the King. God bless him!",
May 16, 2009

Reviewer's rating of THE PILOT and THE RED ROVER  * * * * *


In 1823 James Fenimore Cooper ( 1789–1851) invented a new novelistic genre: the sea tale. He not only created that novelty, he underlined it through subtitling THE PILOT: A TALE OF THE SEA. Despite its subtitle most of the action of THE PILOT took place on or near the land of the northeastern coast of England. Five years later Cooper's second sea tale, THE RED ROVER, sailed off into deeper waters of the wide Atlantic, but not all that far from the coastlines of North America and the Caribbean. Never mind, the sea adventure tale genre was launched. And James Fenimore Cooper would write again and again adventures set on the salt waters of the seven seas as well as fresh waters of the Hudson and Kalamazoo rivers, Lakes Ontario and Otsego ("Glimmerglass") and others.

For Cooper had been a professional sailor before becoming America's first novelist able to live by his writings. And those wide-ranging works treated not only politics, cross-cultural comparisons of America and Europe but a still read history of the young United States Navy.

The 1991 Library of America presentation of THE PILOT and THE RED ROVER is 902 pages long. The two sea tales take up 868 pages of smaller than average print. The succeeding scholarly apparatus consists of Chronology (869 - 881) -- a detailed literary life of James Fenimore Cooper -- Note on the Texts (882 - 885) and Notes (886 - 902). The only obvious reader aids lacking are maps of northeastern England and the nearby "German Sea" as well as Rhode Island and the route of the Red Rover in its chase and naval engagements.


This is a novel of John Paul Jones and his carrying the revolutionary war to the enemy. In this tale the locale is Northumberland. By chance an American loyalist has taken his daughter and the daughter of his dead brother from rebel South Carolina to the mother country. His ancestral home is five miles from the sea. And Jones and others are commissioned by the Continental Congress to wreak reprisal on the foe. The British take American hostages. So the Americans take British hostages to trade for their countrymen. Jones has six captives in mind, including two peers of the realm.

His plan is complicated by two young women and a young sailor, children of three sisters. They are more flexible in their loyalties. Some women will readily give up their aging relative/protector to go anywhere with the rebel they love. But one cousin will stay with her loyalist uncle despite her lover's rescue of her in Jones's raid. How does she nonetheless find true love? Read THE PILOT and find out. The last intelligible words of old Carolinian, ever loyal to Britain, are "I - I - I- lov'd the King -- God bless him ---." -OOO-


In 1759 in the harbor of Newport, Rhode Island, we meet Captain Heidegger, master, allegedly of a mysterious ultra-sleek slaver. Not long after a passenger packet puts to sea bound for the Carolinas, Heidegger proclaims himself the dreaded buccaneer, the Red Rover, and makes a long pursuit. Through perils of sea, storms, fog and of various other sorts, Heidegger defeats a British man-of-war pursuing him. He frees people you would not expect him to free, releases his pirate crew and disappears. At novel's end, Heidegger reappears, now in true identity. Some previously unacknowledged relatives gather at his deathbed. We learn that all along the Red Rover was a colonial patriot, warring against the King before the Colonies proclaimed their independence. His dying words: " ... we have triumphed!"   -OOO-

THE PILOT and THE RED ROVERS: two novels that probe the issues that lead people to stay loyal to a flawed ruler and others to join the other side.  -OOO-


http://www.amazon.com/James-Fenimore-Cooper-Library-America/dp/0940450704/
ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242466781&sr=1-1

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III. for epinions.com

Title of this review:  THE PILOT launched a new novelistic genre: the sea adventure tale

Pros: Two world-class historical novels in one volume. Scholarly notes. America fights Britain to win independence.

Cons: No maps of northeastern English coast. No maps of Rhode Island and America's eastern seaboard.

The Bottom Line: Both THE PILOT and THE RED ROVER are grand tales of the American Revolution. They probe the reasons men shift political allegiances and portray those shifts straining loyalties within families.

aohcapablanca's Full Review:
May 16, 2009

Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832) was a landsman, not a sailor. But he once made an extensive, albeit close to land, tour by ship to inspect the lighthouses of Scotland. Scott then drew on what he had learned during that voyage with friends, as well as on his extensive readings in Norse influence in the Orkney and Shetland Islands. In 1821 he produced one of my favorite novels, THE PIRATE.

Meanwhile in America 32 year old James Fenimore Cooper, a former U. S. naval officer read THE PIRATE and resented perceived mistakes about minutiae of navigation, rigging, tides and currents. To set nautical facts right Cooper, in 1823 published THE PILOT: A TALE OF THE SEA.

In the preface to the 1849 edition of this early novel of his, Cooper shares with us his authorial intent: to "present truer pictures of the ocean and ships than any that are to be found in the PIRATE." He also lets "the landsman into the secrets of the seaman's manner of life." Cooper invites us to imagine "several hundred rude beings confined within the narrow limits of a vessel, men of all nations and of the lowest habits ... deprived altogether  of association with the gentler and better portions of the other sex ... ."

Scholars tell us that THE PILOT was the world's first novel in a brand new genre: the sea adventure tale. (Perhaps THE PIRATE did not count because its heroes and heroines spent more time on land and ashore than on the ocean or in bays.)

Fenimore Cooper soon followed up THE PILOT with a dozen more salt water tales, including THE RED ROVER. In addition further adventures on fresh water would make up a large part of his five LEATHERSTOCKING TALES, including THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS.

So if Richard Henry Dana and Joseph Conrad are among your literary heroes, you owe a debt of thanks to the men who inspired their sea tales: Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper.


A mysterious pilot (thinly disguised John Paul Jones, founder of the American navy) is commissioned by the Continental Congress to take hostages to exchange for Americans seized at sea by the British. Variously assisted and distracted by a crew of American sailors and marines which includes two star-struck lovers seeking their lady loves and acting on shaky intelligence, Jones is roaming about the coast of Northumberland. His goal is to capture six important hostages, including two peers of the realm. The American warriors march five miles inland to seize well defended St. Ruth's Abbey, ancestral home of a rich loyalist who has just fled from South Carolina protecting against their will the two young women whose swains have persuaded John Paul Jones and their Captain to attack the residence.

The Americans are at times captured, at times victorious. The tides of battle turn for and against them, occasionally aided by comic misundertandings among the combatants.

Will the South Carolina belles desert the King and their ageing relative to follow the young rebels they love? It is not a sure bet. Read the novel for details. -OOO-


We begin in Rhode Island in 1759. Residents loyally celebrate the news of the fall of French Quebec to the British. Little do they know that Captain Heidegger, whose eerily sleek cruiser sits in the outer harbor of Newport, pretending to be a slaver, is really the dreaded Red Rover, a fierce buccaneer preying on rich pickings from British merchantmen and passenger pickets.

Little as well does Captain Heidegger know that the British Admiralty is sending a brilliant spy after him to bring the pirate to justice.  That spy is handsome young "Wilder." He guesses that Heidegger is the Rover and wangles a billet as the pirate's first mate, replacing an injured officer.

Having failed to convince four women he had warned not to sail south on the Royal Caroline, Wilder is forced to aid the Rover's pursuit of the women and other wealthy passengers for rich booty. Time will show that there are undreamed personal relations still to be rediscovered and probed among Wilder, the Rover, the four women and others. The Red Rover, for all his faults, will be revealed as an American patriot a decade and more before independence is declared.

Seventeen years later, in Rhode Island, on the day residents learn of the peace treaty with Britain, the wounded ex-pirate is carried in on a stretcher to reveal himself to the friends and relatives he now acknowledges as such. The Rover's dying words salute his career and that of all American patriots. "'Wilder! he repeated, laughing histerically, 'we have triumphed!'"  -OOO-

Minimal justice can be done in one review to two long, complex, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic novels. Each deserves its own space. Did time permit, a reviewer could extract and highlight Cooper's wise insights into religion, romantic love, justice and slaughter. The convoluted character of Heidegger, the Red Rover, an alternating mixture of good and evil, innocence and horseplay, is, for instance dissected delicately, imaginatively and convincingly by Fenimore Cooper. Here in one handy volume are two tales of sea adventure of the first magnitude.  -OOO-



http://www.epinions.com/reviews/Sea_Tales_by_James_Fenimore_Cooper/
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