The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
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The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (original Spanish-language title: Relato de un náufrago) is a work of non-fiction by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. It was originally published in as a series of newspaper articles in 1955, turned into a book in 1970, and translated into English by Randolf Hogan in 1986.
The book's theme is the possible, but not necessary, moral reversion to a primitive, instinctual existence in the face of a sea catastrophe and consequent shipwreck and solitude. This theme had been explored previously in fiction by Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) and Voltaire (Candide), and more recently by William Golding (Lord of the Flies and Pincher Martin), Umberto Eco (The Island of the Day Before), J.M. Coetzee (Foe), José Saramago (The Stone Raft and The Tale of the Unknown Island). A later non-fiction treatment of a similar theme can be found in The Last Strange Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Ron Hall and Nicolas Tomalin.
Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez began his literary career as a newspaper writer. In 1955, he wrote a series of newspaper stories about a shipwrecked sailor who nearly died on account of negligence by the Colombian Navy; several of his colleagues drowned a little before arriving at the port of Cartagena de Indias. This exceptional piece of newspaper writing that obligated him to exile himself from Colombia for a time, resulting in him working for several years as a foreign correspondent.
The story
Seaman Luis Alejandro Velasco of the destroyer Caldas is eager to return to Colombia after a long stay in the United States. When the ship, sets sail, however, it is overloaded — in part with contraband. When the vessel is caught in a sudden tropical storm in the Caribbean, eight of the crew are washed overboard by a wave in a tropical storm, together with much of the cargo. After four days the search ends, with the missing declared dead. However, Velasco found a raft and remained on the open sea without food and without hope. After drifting with sea currents for ten days, he arrives with his raft on a coast that he later discovers to be Colombia. He is received first with affection and later with military honors and much money from publicity agencies.
Editions in print
- ISBN 0140157557, UK paperback (Penguin)
- ISBN 067972205X, US paperback (Vintage)