The Sea Wolf

‘The Sea-Wolf’ (1904) is an adventure novel by American writer Jack London. Inspired by his acquaintance Captain Alex MacLean, a sailor from the Pacific Northwest, London sought to write a novel of the high seas with psychological and philosophical underpinnings. Jack London began his career at sea, and his shipboard experiences imbue The Sea-Wolf with flavorful authenticity. In the story, the gentleman narrator, Humphrey Van Weyden, is pitted against an amoral sea captain, Wolf Larsen, in a clash of idealism with materialism.
The novel begins when Van Weyden is swept overboard into San Francisco Bay, and plucked from the sea by Larsen's seal-hunting vessel, the Ghost. Pressed into service as a cabin boy by the ruthless captain, Van Weyden becomes an unwilling participant in a brutal shipboard drama. Larsen's increasingly violent abuse of the crew fuels a mounting tension that ultimately boils into mutiny, shipwreck, and a desperate confrontation. Generations have been spellbound by this harrowing story of danger on the sea, psychological confrontation, and the dual nature of humankind.

John Griffith London was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.
His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as "The Pearls of Parlay", and "The Heathen".
London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of unionization, workers' rights, and socialism. He wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, War of the Classes, and Before Adam.
London died November 22, 1916, in a sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch. London's ashes were buried on his property not far from the Wolf House. The grave is marked by a mossy boulder. The buildings and property were later preserved as Jack London State Historic Park, in Glen Ellen, California.