Ho! The Sailor! Is Coming!…a Lecture Entitled A Voyage Around the World in a Whale Ship! By E. Farrell.

[U.S., 1883]. Broadside, 9” x 5.4”, completed in manuscript. “1883” in ink at upper-left corner. Old pencil calculations on verso. CONDITION: Good, old folds, a few minor losses at the margin, one tiny puncture at lower-left, one tiny stain at middle, wear to a few letters, but no losses to the text.

An appealing broadside issued by a sailor who lectured on whaling, seafaring on the four oceans, “monsters of the deep,” and more.

As noted in manuscript, Farrell delivered this lecture at the “Colburgh[?] School No. 1” on Monday evening, May 21st, 1883. He advertises here that he has twenty-five years of experience in seafaring life, “commencing with his school days and passing through all the varied changes of three long years of hardships and hair-breadth escapes among Whales, Sharks, and other monsters of the deep.” The lecture would be “new and novel” to those who have “never had experience before the masts,” and nothing would be presented except the “actual experience” of Farrell himself:

He will lead you through Four Oceans, in which many Islands were touched and many different classes of people were seen, including Esquimaux, New Zelanders [sic] and the inhabitants of many Pacific Islands. Through the cruise there will be many incidents illustrating real life at sea; some wild and exciting, some dark and doleful; others full of Sailor’s wit; in fact just what could happen in such places and under such circumstances and no other. Nothing to offend the most fastidious. Admission 10 cents.

No copies recorded in OCLC. A Google search yields a single copy of a similar broadside in the Melville Collection at the Newberry Library.