NORTHWEST PASSAGE KENNETH ROBERTS DOUBLEDAY DORAN 1938 Book

By: unknown author

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B077JJ8DKB
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Unbranded
• Weight: 1.89 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Historical Fiction of French & Indian War

About Robert Rogers' attack on the Wabenaki (mostly referred to as Abenaki) village of St. Francis in 1759. Although not historically accurate because of the false claims he made in his report about the number of males killed, (they were out with the French soldiers looking for him at the time), it holds one's imagination in hand. The movie with Spencer Tracy was good to a point, though of course he was miscast because he was too short and had that awful 1930's hair. The book includes Rogers' attempts in London to secure financing and rank to discover the fabled "Northwest Passage," and explores his failure as governor of Michilimackinac after the peace of 1763. He winds up in a London prison for debt and is an alcoholic, but the book paints the portrait of a fascinating 18th century American woodsman turned legendary leader of the "rangers." Rogers was given command of a smallish force of raiders which he sued to raid Connecticut during the Revolutionary War, ever loyal to the British. (Wait, did I confuse him with Benedict Arnold?) He did go to South Carolina after 1763 to see if he could make some money, but that was a epidemic hole of a place at the time (yellow fever, malaria.) Rogers by the way was charged as a younger man with trying to pass counterfeit money at a Greenville, Rhode Island bank, though how he wound up there from his home in New Hampshire before the French & Indian War began in 1754 is anyone's guess. (The bank by the way is still there. I drove by it last week.) I used to spend Labor Day weekends at Lake Ogontz near Lisbon New Hampsire, and that is where Rogers and his rangers came down the Ammonossoc River after the raid on St. Francis. They passed by Lake Memphremagog which straddles the Vermont and Canadian border near Newport, Vermont, a place I have been wanting to visit for a long time. This is a good historical fiction book which I expect older Americans like me who actually liked history in school will appreciate. A good story, in short, about the famous early American "Rogers Rangers." Like treks through the beautiful northeastern lakes and forests with conflict with the French allied native Americans? Go for it.