"The Mysterious Ship" (Long Version) by H.P. Lovecraft

This story was written by Lovecraft when he was 12 years old! Four years on and he is still having trouble spelling the word 'excite' for some reason ;-)

Funny that on this one he decided to attribute it to anonymous.

It appears someone must have read and helped Lovecraft with this longer version of the story, as not only is the story itself a bit expanded and some new vocabulary introduced, but the grammar and spelling and punctuation are much improved as well (not perfect, but much, much better). Although in the concluding chapter, there is some missing text. I grabbed some obvious missing bits from the short version of the story, but it is possible more was missing than just that. Ah well, there's nothing I can do about it.

Interesting that so many of just childhood tales are maritime in nature. I wonder if that is his Anglophilia appearing at so young an age, since the UK was still the dominant naval power at the time, or if something else is going on with that.

By 1902, very many attempts had been made at reaching the North Pole, but success (or at least claims of success) at getting there was still a few years away.

Newgate prison was closed in 1902. But there were executions right up the way through 1902, the last one being on May 6 of that year. Of course, if the story was written in 1902, we can assume it was set at some point at least a few years prior, so a hanging at that prison in this story does actually fit with the history of the place.

David Farragut was promoted to the rank of commander in 1841, and the rank of captain in 1855. Unless the story is referencing some other Farragut besides this most famous one, that would give us a pre-Civil War time frame for the story, well within the scope of Newgate prison's operational life time.

Now while the Constitution is technically still in commission, it hasn't seen active combat duty since I believe the 1820s, although it did continue to sail in training and ceremonial duties up until the 1920s. Although it appears she did actually capture a slaver ship off of Africa in 1854 or 55? Even now, she still sails periodically just for demonstration purposes. Pretty amazing that such an old ship is still able to operate at all! Anyways, it appears at no point in its history was anybody named Farragut ever in charge of the Constitution. So our budding young author just picked a couple of names out of history and put them together randomly. No luck for him though, that the pairing doesn't match the historical record. Would have been fun if it had.

To follow along: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mys.aspx