Fame in America is both fleeting and fickle; as hard to keep as it is to attain. And attaining it is a delicate balance of achievement and memorability, because what good is a man’s achievement if it isn’t remembered? And what if the achievement is remembered, but the man is not?
This is the Forgotten History of The Nameless Writer.
The Hornet was one of the fastest clippers in the sea, and her crew needed her to be. With a cargo of candles and kerosene headed from California to New York, they were set to round the dangerous Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America and head north through gale force winds and rough, stormy waters.
But first, they had to make it through the doldrums—the area near the equator where the trade winds of the northern and southern hemisphere collide and can strand ships for weeks. The Hornet sped toward them and stopped. The days dragged on. The doldrums in the air produced doldrums on the ship and the crew grew bored.
And boredom, and the carelessness it brings, can be more dangerous to a ship than winds or rough seas. On the 108th day of the Hornet’s voyage, her first mate and two sailors lit a candle and went below deck for a can of varnish. One of them turned the spigot on the barrel of varnish, but before it even filled the cup, the candle ignited vapors and, in a panic, the sailor dropped the cup.
In an instant the flames were everywhere, and once the fire spread to the kerosene in the cargo hold, it was only a matter of time before the Hornet would sink. The flames burned for more than a day, giving the crew just enough time to gather as many supplies as they could carry and set off on three lifeboats.
The 31 men had enough food for 10 days and water for only four, but they tied the three boats together and made a course for the closest island they could find. But their progress was too slow and their rations were running too low for them all to survive.
The captain was forced to make the most difficult decision of his life. He cut the ropes that bound the three boats together and left the other two to fend for themselves. They were never seen again. But 43 days after the fire, the third boat and its 15 passengers made landfall in Hawaii.
Once they were transported to a hospital, a young writer for the Sacramento Union heard of their story and rushed to their bedsides to interview them. Their account of the ordeal was incredible, and the young writer’s talent for telling it was undeniable.
“As six bells chimed, the cry of "Fire!" rang through the ship,” he wrote, “and woke every man to life and action. And following the fearful warning, and almost as fleetly, came the fire itself. It sprang through hatchways, seized upon chairs, table, cordage, anything, everything - and almost before the bewildered men could realize what the trouble was and what was to be done the cabin was a hell of angry flames.”
The writer stayed up all night to finish his story and sailed back to California to publish it as soon as he could. It was the first detailed account of the survivors of the Hornet, and it was an immediate sensation. Newspapers across the country reprinted it, and readers were taken as much with the tale of survival as they were with the writer’s knack for capturing it so perfectly.
On the ship back to the mainland, the writer interviewed several more survivors, who even let him print excerpts of their diaries. The follow-up story, entitled “Forty-three Days in an Open Boat. Compiled from Personal Diaries,” was purchased by the prestigious Harper’s Magazine.
This, the writer was convinced, was his big break. He would be famous. He would be a world-renowned journalist who might even be able to use his newfound fame to help launch his fiction writing career. As soon as the story would be published, his would be a household name.
Only Harper’s Magazine printed the wrong name. The writer used a pen name, but an editor at Harper’s had misprinted it, so the world thought “Mac Swain” was the brilliant journalist behind the incredible account of survival.
The writer was devastated, but not disheartened. He kept writing and focused even more on his fiction. A few months later, one of his short stories, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” became a huge hit.
And the world finally knew the talented young writer’s real pen name: Mark Twain.