The Arethusa: A Naval Story

Frederick Chamier (1796–1870) is the forgotten giant of nautical fiction and The Arethusa: A Naval Story is another satisfying read for Age of Sail lovers.  The story follows the fortunes and misfortunes of two young midshipmen who seem to be opposites in every characteristic—opposite in temperament, opposite in monetary resources, opposite in morality.  One of them will succeed in his naval career and one of them will not, but perhaps the author will surprise the reader with which is which and certainly the author will surprise the reader with their relationship at the end.

Published originally in 1837 in three separate volumes, this digital version is complete with all three volumes included.

Preparing old books for digital publication is a labor of love at Travelyn Publishing.  We hold our digital versions of public domain books up against any others with no fear of the comparison.  Our conversion work is meticulous, utilizing a process designed to eliminate errors, maximize reader enjoyment, and recreate as much as possible the atmosphere of the original book even as we are adding the navigation and formatting necessary for a good digital book.  While remaining faithful to a writer’s original words, and the spellings and usages of his era, we are not above correcting obvious mistakes.  If the printer became distracted after placing an ‘a’ at the end of a line and then placed another ‘a’ at the beginning of the next line (they used to do this stuff by hand you know!), what sort of mindless robots would allow that careless error to be preserved for all eternity in the digital version, too?  Not us.  That’s why we have the audacity to claim that our re-publications are often better than the originals.