Blow Up with Ship

Hello everyone, This blog is a part of my thinking activity. In this blog I will discuss about  Wilkie Collins's Short story 'Blow up with the ship' 

Introduction

'Blow up with the ship' is a short story by 19th century writer Wilkie Collins. It is a thriller story. The story is narrated in first person. The narrator was sent to sea when still a boy and became a mate at the age of twenty five.

About Author

William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1859), a mystery novel and early "sensation novel", and for The Moonstone (1868), which established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is also perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre.

Born to the London painter William Collins and his wife, Harriet Geddes, he moved with them to Italy when he was twelve, living there and in France for two years, learning both Italian and French. He worked initially as a tea merchant. After Antonina, his first novel, appeared in 1850, Collins met Charles Dickens, who became a friend and mentor. Some of his work appeared in Dickens's journals Household Words and All the Year Round. They also collaborated on drama and fiction. Collins gained financial stability and an international following by the 1860s, but, in the 1870s and 1880s, after becoming addicted to the opium he took for his gout, his health and writing quality declined.

Collins criticized the institution of marriage: he split his time between widow Caroline Graves – living with her for most of his life, treating her daughter as his – and the younger Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children.

Summary

Blow up with the ship' is a short story by 19th century writer Wilkie Collins. It is a thriller story.

The story is narrated in first person. The narrator was sent to sea when still a boy and became a mate at the age of twenty five. The setting is sea during the year 1818, when the Spanish colonies in South America were fighting for independence.

The writer sailed in the ship named, ‘The Good Intent’. The ship was laden with gun powder. It was sent to help a revolution. She had a crew of eight. As the ship contained gun powder, They were not allowed to smoke or light the lanterns. But the Captain used to light the candle when he went to bed or when he looked over his charts on the cabin table. Therefore the regulations didn’t apply to him.

Finally they reached the coast of South America and a boat came towards them rowed by two men, one was an Irishman and the other was an evil-looking native pilot. The native pilot was “skinny, cowardly, quarrelsome fellow”. He picked quarrel with everyone. He lighted the pipe and the narrator became angry and tried to stop him. The pilot tried to push him. He raised his hand and the pilot fell down and pulled out his knife. The narrator slapped his murderous face. The next morning when the narrator awakened, he found himself bound. His hands and legs were tied. The ship was in the hands of the Spaniards and all the seven members of the ship were killed except him.

The pilot came there with a pilot’s stick and carpenter’s drill in one hand and a long piece of thin rope in the other. He put the candle stick, with the new candle lighted in it. He drilled a hole in the side of the barrel and the gun powder came trickling out. He rubbed the powder into a whole length of thin rope. He then tied the rope to the candle which was just one feet away from him. He then whispered to the narrator “blow up with the ship” and everyone left the place with the gun powder. The narrator was filled with fright and fainted.

The narrator woke up after eight months. He came to know that an American ship which came that way had saved him. The story like other adventure stories, end on a positive note with the rescue of the protagonist.