I read a recent account of a young fisherman’s fight for life while alone in a lifeboat for thirteen days adrift in the Pacific Ocean. It reminded me of Mark Twain’s account of a similar saga of survival, away back in 1866…

The Hornet sailed out of New York with a quantity of kerosene onboard and caught fire in the middle of the Pacific. Capt. Mitchell and his crew set themselves adrift in two lifeboats, the second of which was never to be seen again.

Surviving at sea 43 days on 10 day’s rations for 15 men, they washed ashore at Laupahoihoi on the Big Island of Hawaii. Well, Mark Twain just happened to be there at the time, and scooped the story. His vivid account appeared in the Sacramento Union, the paper that sent him out there to write up the potential of commerce between California and Hawaii. Subsequently it also appeared in Harpers under the by-line, Mark “Swain.”

According to Mark, one crew member, when asked how he and the crew of the Hornet survived, responded, “Eggs.”

“Eggs? Where did you get eggs?”

“Every morning the captain would check the weather and lay to.”

On the 38th day all provisions ran out entirely. Those 15 men took to pounding their boots to pulp and eating them. One sailor contended that the boots he ate were full of holes, but the holes tasted about as good as the boot. A shell of a green turtle was scraped with knives and eaten to the very last shaving.

Twain commented, “These men could starve if need be, but they seem not to have known how to be mean.”

Upon his return to Sacramento with the Hornet story, the Union publishers asked what Sam thought his bonus ought to be. “Oh, I’m a modest man; I don’t want the whole Union office, call it $100 a column.”

They laughed, not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like you’re eating bread that’s got sand in it. Then they made out the check. The cashier didn’t faint, but he came rather near it. Said Samuel, “They were the best two men who ever owned a newspaper.”

Upon returning to the city by the bay, Sam discovered that renting the San Francisco Music Hall for a lecture on the Hornet was $50, or about $1,000 today. He took it on credit at a dollar a ticket, or about $20 today.

“For three days before that lecture I was the most distressed and frightened creature on the west coast.”

But Sam went on to record the first profit of his life, if you don’t count the five dollars he made on a mule he bought for ten dollars on the Big Island, rode for two hundred miles, and sold for fifteen…

So the story of the Hornet helped to launch Mark Twain’s career as the Lincoln of our literature, a seasoned lecturer, and one of America’s best loved humorists…