John Steinbeck · 1951 · sea
In March 1940 Steinbeck and the marine biologist Ed Ricketts chartered a Monterey sardine boat and spent six weeks collecting specimens round the Gulf of California. Four thousand miles, thousands of animals catalogued, and a book that is half tide-pool biology and half philosophy - and which effectively invents marine ecology as a way of seeing.
- 1Monterey
11 March 1940, and a seventy-seven-foot sardine seiner called the Western Flyer puts out with Steinbeck, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, a crew of four, a small library and a balky skiff motor they nickname the Sea-Cow.
- 2San Diego
Running night and day down the California coast, stopping only to refuel and clear papers - and Steinbeck's lawyer gets off here, and so does the last of the world they are leaving for six weeks.
- 3Cabo San Lucas
Round the cape and into the Gulf, at a cannery town with no resorts and no development - the point at which the book stops being a voyage and starts being what it is, which is two men turning over rocks at low tide.
- 4La Paz
The pearl coast, and the story Steinbeck heard here that he turned into The Pearl three years later - a boy who found a great pearl and what the town did to him for it.
- 5Loreto
Puerto Escondido and the islets: sea cucumbers, urchins, crabs, snails, sea stars and coral, catalogued at every low tide - and between the collecting, the philosophy that is what people actually read the book for.
- 6Guaymas
9 April, and a fleet of eleven Japanese trawlers dredging the seafloor for shrimp - taking every shrimp and every other living thing with it, scraping the bottom clean. The waste, they write, was appalling.
- 7Puerto Refugio
Guardian Angel Island at the top of the Gulf, the furthest north they get - and then south again down the peninsula's inner shore, collecting all the way back.
- 8San Diego
16 April 1940, four thousand miles later. Steinbeck's wife Carol was aboard the whole voyage and is not mentioned once in the book - and the marriage ended shortly afterwards.