Stephen Crane, The Commodore, and The Open Boat

Join us at the Ormond Beach Regional Library for a special presentation: Stephen Crane, the Commodore, and The Open Boat

You’ve read “The Open Boat,” now Meet Captain Murphy as he tells his part of the story of the gunrunning steamship Commodore which shipwrecked fourteen miles off the Daytona coast on a bitterly cold January 1897 night.  The Commodore was heading to Cuba to supply arms and munitions to rebels trying to overthrow Cuba’s Spanish colonial government.  Murphy, along with famous American writer Stephen Crane and two other seamen row the captain’s ten-foot-long dinghy for thirty-one hours keeping in their sight the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse rising off the far distant shore.  Crane reports the misadventure to his newspaper, and with Murphy’s help, eventually writes the Classic American Masterpiece short story.

July 26, 2023 5:30 PM

Ormond Beach Regional Library

30 S Beach St, Ormond Beach, FL 32174