Eric Linklater 1st Edition 1949 The Pirates of the Deep Green Sea Hardcover w/DJ

Up For Sale Today is

The Pirates of the Deep Green Sea

by

Eric Linklater
Illustrated by William Reeves

Hardcover. 8vo. Published by Macmillan & Co, London, UK. 1949. 367 pgs. First Edition/First Printing.

DJ has shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities (chip present to the crown of the spine) . Bound in cloth boards with titles present to the spine. Boards have light shelf-wear present to the extremities. No ownership marks present.  Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid.

It's the late 1940's, and 11-year-old Timothy Spens and his brother Hew, who's nine, live on windy Popinsay Island, off the north coast of Scotland, with their father, a retired Captain in the Royal Navy, his housekeeper Mrs. Matches, and his former orderly Sam Sturgeon, who joined the Royal Marines when he was only 14. (Their mother lives in South Africa, to which she was carried by the ship that rescued her after hers was torpedoed in World War II.) When Sam and the boys meet Gunner Boles, who claims to have been hit on the breastbone by a Spanish musket ball during the Battle of Trafalgar, a whole new world opens up for them. Gunner Boles, it seems, is one of a large colony of such "iron men" from the days of wooden ships, now dwelling beneath the surface of the sea in service to Davy Jones, and attempting to protect "the knots"--the points at which the parallels of latitude and longitude cross--from a rival colony of pirates led by Dan Scumbril and Inky Poops. One of these knots is located just off Popinsay, and Boles believes an attack will soon be mounted against it. He can't leave his post, so he asks the boys to go to Davy Jones's court and fetch help. And thus begins their fantastic experience beneath the sea, meeting creatures like Miss Dildery Doldero the octopus (a very dear friend of Gunner Boles's assistant Cully) and a school of helpful herrings, getting acquainted with their own many-times-great-grandfather, outwitting Scumbril and Poops in person, and generally saving the day, as well as their own family's fortunes. Linklater populates his story with a splendid assortment of characters, from Mrs. Matches (who declares "there's not a man alive that can daunt me with his shouting") to the sly Poops and gruff Scumbril to the two Powder Monkeys who serve Timothy and Hew as guides in their quest. He also provides a great new twist on the motif of threatened places with his picture of the knots and why they're important.