A Skeleton At the Helm

by John Richard Stephens

Stories come from such greats as Poe, Bram Stoker, Washington Irving, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, William Hope Hodgson, and even Winston Churchill! The book also comes with a nice introduction by the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0760793026
• ISBN13: 9780760793022
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Metro Books New York
• Length: 343 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Classic Tales of Nautical Ghosts and Ghoulies!

Sometimes you find the niftiest books in the Remainder section of B & N, Borders, etc. Case in point: A SKELETON AT THE HELM. The cover art - a skeletal pirate captain brandishing a cutlass while gripping the wheel of his storm-tossed ship - was what first caught my eye. It promised exciting, perhaps even hair-raising stories of nautical ghosts and ghoulies, phantom ships and terrors from the deep. By and large, A SKELETON AT THE HELM delivered. Like similar collections he's done, editor John Richard Stephens surveyed classic stories and poems that were out of copyright that, in this case, dealt with supernatural/paranormal doings at sea. So, A SKELETON AT THE HELM brings us 38 tales from the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, William Butler Yeats, Sir Thomas Moore(!), W. Clark Russell, Jack London, Washington Irving and Bret Harte. The tales found in Stephens' book varied from predictable to very good. Among the stand-out stories are "The Derelict" by William Hope Hodgson, "The Log of the Demeter" by Bram Stoker, "The Story of the Haunted Ship" by Wilhelm Hauff, "The Striped Chest" by Arthur Conan Doyle and "Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk" by Frank Cowper. I'm not a big poetry fan but many of the poems were quite good as well. Suitably spooky illustrations add atmospheric touches to many of the stories. So, if tales of shipboard specters, flying dutchmen, cursed crews and mysteriously abandoned ships tickle your fancy, A SKELETON AT THE HELM is just what the doctor ordered. Great reading for a dark and stormy night! Recommended.