The Isle of Dead Ships by Crittenden Marriott | Action & Adventure, Nautical | Audiobook

The Isle of Dead Ships by Crittenden Marriott | Action & Adventure, Nautical | Audiobook

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Crittenden Marriott was an American painter and illustrator born in 1867 in Utah, USA. He began his career as a newspaper illustrator in San Francisco, and later worked for various magazines in New York City. Marriott was known for his illustrations of western life, Native American culture, and the American frontier.

In addition to his illustration work, Marriott was an accomplished painter, specializing in landscape and western scenes. He studied at the Art Students League of New York and later at the Académie Julian in Paris. His paintings were exhibited at the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Paris Salon.

Marriott was a member of the Society of Illustrators and the Salmagundi Club in New York City. He also served as the president of the American Watercolor Society from 1917 to 1920.

Crittenden Marriott passed away in 1932 at the age of 65, leaving behind a legacy of exceptional illustration and painting work that captured the spirit and culture of the American West.

There is a floating island in the sea where no explorer has set foot, or, setting foot, has returned to tell of what he saw. Lying at our very doors, in the direct path of every steamer from the Gulf of Mexico to Europe, it is less known than is the frozen pole. Encyclopedias pass over it lightly; atlases dismiss it with but a slight mention; maps do not attempt to portray its ever-shifting outlines; even the Sunday newspapers, so keen to grasp everything of interest, ignore it.

But on the decks of great ships in the long watches of the night, when the trade-wind snores through the rigging and the waves purr about the bows, the sailor tells strange tales of the spot where ruined ships, raked derelict from all the square miles of ocean, form a great[6] island, ever changing, ever wasting, yet ever lasting; where, in the ballroom of the Atlantic, draped round with encircling weed, they drone away their lives, balancing slowly in a mighty tourbillion to the rhythm of the Gulf Stream.

Fanciful? Sailors’ tales? Stories fit only for the marines? Perhaps! Yet be not too sure! Jack Tar, slow of speech, fearful of ridicule, knows more of the sea than he will tell to the newspapers. Perhaps more than one has drifted to the isle of dead ships, and escaped only to be disbelieved in the maelstroms that await him in all the seaports of the world.

Read by Roger Melin.