Alone on a Wide Wide Sea. Michael Morpurgo

      

      

      Alone on a Wide

       Wide Sea

      michael morpurgo

      

       Copyright

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2006 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Copyright © Michael Morpurgo 2006

      Michael Morpurgo asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

      Some Photographs were unavailable for the electronic edition.

      Source ISBN:

      EBook Edition © 2006 ISBN: 9780007369980 Version: 2014-10-02

       Dedication

      To Lula Léa and Clare, who helped make this book with me.

      My thanks to Alex Whitworth and Peter Crozier, mariners extraordinaire and quite ancient too, whose emails while circumnavigating the world in their yacht Berrimilla in 2004 informed and inspired this story. Thanks also to Graham Barrett and Isabella Whitworth for all their wonderful help and encouragement. And of course I mustn’t forget Samuel Taylor Coleridge…

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One: The Story of Arthur Hobhouse

Arthur Hobhouse is a Happening

Three Red Funnels and an Orchestra

Kookaburras, Cockatoos and Kangaroos

Cooper’s Station and Piggy Bacon and God’s Work

Suffer Little Children

Wes Snarkey’s Revenge

Saints and Sinners

Mrs Piggy to Ida

“Only One Way Out”

“Did We Have the Children Here for This?”

“Just Watch Me”

       “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow”

       Wide as the Ocean

       “Couple of Raggedy Little Scarecrows”

       Henry’s Horrible Hat Hole

       I Must Go Down to the Sea

       Scrambled Eggs and Baked Beans

       “You’re my Boys, Aren’t You?”

       Freddie Dodds

       One January Night

       An Orphan Just the Same

       Things Fall Apart

       The Centre Will Not Hold

       Oh Lucky Man!

       Kitty Four

       Part Two: The Voyage of the Kitty Four

       What Goes Around, Comes Around

       Two Send-offs, and an Albatross

       Jelly Blobbers and Red Hot Chili Peppers

       And Now the Storm Blast Came

       Just Staying Alive

       “Hey Ho Little Fish Don’t Cry, Don’t Cry”