There were two pulps titled 'Sea Stories'. This is an issue of the first of them, published by Street & Smith from 1922 to 1932, though it only retained this particular focus until 1930. It began as 'Sea Stories Magazine', which it was at this point, but was renamed to 'Sea Stories' in March 1927. The later renames, highlight its changing focus, in July 1930 to 'Excitement' and May 1931 to 'College Stories'. Ten issues later, it was gone, merged into 'Sport Story Magazine'. Meanwhile, the other 'Sea Stories' showed up in 1953 but only lasted two issues. Times had changed.

The first thing that's obvious is that it's a pretty big magazine, running two-hundred and twenty-two pages from cover to cover. However, a serious amount of those pages are adverts. Of course, the inside cover is an advert, as is the page opposite. After the contents page, fourteen more of adverts. Finally, we get content and, to be fair, there's quite a lot of it. However, once the stories proper finish, there's a surprisingly long section called 'The Log Book', of interaction with readers through more than letters. This runs eleven pages, then there are twelve more pages of adverts.

Twenty-eight pages of adverts does seem like a lot. Forty pages dedicated to material other than stories, if we unfairly include the contents page in that count, seems like an awful lot. But hey, it's still more content than the other pulps I've been reading, like 'Amazing Stories' and 'Weird Tales' and for the same price of a quarter. I'm certainly not complaining, especially since I didn't have to shell out even that quarter. It just seems notable.

There are nine stories here—one novel, six short stories, the first of a five part serialisation and one piece reprinted from an 1857 book. Add to that the fifteenth instalment of an article series and those eleven pages of 'The Log Book' and it does add up to a substantial amount of content. Other than the reprint, everything in this issue was written by a prolific pulp author, though one was debuting and others were early in their careers.

The debutante is going to be interesting to follow, because he's Wallace West who would become a prolific writer, from here to his death in 1980. His story here, 'Static', is the least sea-oriented of anything in this issue and could easily have sold to 'Weird Tales', which took his next piece, that I'll get to read soon enough in October 1927. In fact, I'd expect to cover everything he wrote over the next decade, as it's all in 'Weird Tales', 'Amazing Stories' and 'Astounding Stories', along with one letter in 'Oriental Stories'.

This is an unfortunate debut, given that it trawls in the N word on its first page and adds more by the end, but the story grows substantially as it goes. When it begins, it's relatively routine drama set in colonial Africa, but, as Thomas MacAllister gets deeper into the story of Charles Markley, it gets stranger. He's a radio wizard who's apparently done excellent work in eliminating static but finds himself exiled to Maraban, the White Man's Graveyard, in Niger. He gets drunk and remains that way until he starts getting weird ideas, building a god-in-the-machine narrative in the jungle that escalates into a war of the gods with the king's witch doctor.

It shows up second, after the novel, and it must have seemed a little out of place there given how on topic the novel was by comparison. In fact, readers would have known what to expect from the novel because it was the second in 'Sea Stories Magazine' by Dex Volney and I can only assume the two were linked. The first was 'The Roving Brass Pounder' in July 1926 and this second is 'A Brass Pounder in Northern Waters'. The lead character is Mr. Dex, so I presume this is presented as the true exploits of this pseudonym. It belonged to Volney G. Matheson, who used his real name for a few stories, from 1921, including one for 'Weird Tales', but wrote more as Dex Volney until 1943.

It finds its feet quickly after an awkward opening. The lead is young and capable, a decent man, it seems, but an unnoteworthy one, compared to the cast of characters he'll work alongside on the 'Star of Siberia'. For instance, he signs up officially but is then shanghaied onto his own ship! That makes for an unusual start but a good one. He's to operate a wireless station for a full season at the Bering Sea Cannery at Ugashik, under Iron Larsen, the Arctic Wolf, who was fictionalised into legend by a writer he sailed with twenty years earlier and nearly killed, so likely held a grudge.

The actual task at hand makes this worth the effort, because it feels authentic and dangerous. It isn't just the ship and its captain, or indeed the characterful crew, at least one of whom is mad as a hatter and another holds a deadly grudge. It's the location, an Aleut village near Soulima that's so far north that a number of ships sailing up to exploit the salmon run are trapped by the ice and sunk. In fact, the 'Star of Siberia' is one of them and the first task for the wireless station is to get another ship. This one is refloated but it's a mess and only thirteen men sail it home.

However, whether this is fictionalised autobiography or simply adventure fashioned out of whole cloth, it's made all the more vibrant through a succession of little stories. The Casco and the bear. Iron Larsen vs. Red Strauss. See Mow getting twenty five bucks to feed his healthy gambling habit by butchering and salting a dead man. A Filipino sailor frozen to the jib boom for days. A drunken missionary/marshal falling into a grave. None of these are crucial to the plot but they're colour in a long voyage and a long isolation and this novel benefits from that. I just wish 'The Roving Brass Pounder' was available to read. I want to know what went before this.

The other novel, presented only as the first part of five, is very different indeed, far less vibrant and only starting to warm up by the time it's over, after five chapters and twenty-five pages. It's 'The Unattainable' by Carrington Phelps, a prolific author from 1907 to 1939 and so well established in 1926. I'm assuming that it becomes a sea story at some point, but it's a drama here, albeit one that sits on the border of sea story. It's focused on a generational clash within a family that owns Bidwell and Sons, which runs a fleet of ships.

The lead is Peter Bidwell, who started out as a cub on the 'Minneapolis Times' and the narrator is his friend, who's retelling his story from a seven hundred page manuscript. Bidwell and Sons was founded by his grandfather, Jonathan Bidwell, who came west, but Peter wants out of the family business due to the stories he hears from Old Bob the salt. In particular, there was a mutiny in '49 on the 'Angela' and that was a Bidwell ship. It seems that Jonathan was not a good man. His son, Jonathan the second, is still around and we don't know if he's a good man or not. The clash that's set up between him and his son may have been worse, but the sea finds Peter and we fast-forward. What happens from there, I have no idea. Again, the rest of the story isn't available.

That leaves a bunch of short stories and I'll talk about 'The Mess Boy of the 'Aukitan'' first, as it's decent stuff but surely the least of the lot. It's by Francis Rotch, who wasn't as prolific as his peers in this issue, but still saw thirty-six stories in print from 1924 to 1935. This was the fourth of them and the third in 'Sea Stories Magazine', his most frequent market. It's set on the freighter of the title, which takes lumber and railroad ties from Puget Sound to Mauritius, then picks up hemp in Manila to transport to Seattle. Rinse and repeat.

The mess boy of the title is an unexpected one, Old Ben Morgan. He has an awful lot of stories but the crew firmly believes that he's nothing but a liar. "Why, he'd have to be a hundred years old to have been in all the ships he talks about!" is a typical opinion. However, a storm rages and yellow fever ravages the crew, so Ben has to take command and bring her into port. It's straightforward stuff without any twists to shake up the story, but it's still told well and validates Old Ben nicely.

If that reliable and enjoyable story is the worst of the bunch, then it's a strong issue indeed. Next best is probably 'Jake's Suggestion', the first of five 'Jake McCarver' stories by Bob Du Soe, listed as "A story of the Black Gang". Robert Coleman du Soe would become a prolific author but he was just starting out, though he'd got a step further than Wallace West as this story was his second in print, after one in the April issue. He would be published regularly until 1937 with 'Sea Stories' his most frequent early market. He sold to enough others that its demise didn't affect his career.

'Jake's Suggestion' is a relatively traditional adventure story that begins with Jake having to get out of Honolulu. He stows away on the freighter 'Valdera', so soon meets Captain Nichols. What's left is simple but effective stuff that's rather given away by the three line summary beneath the title and illustration. "Though a stowaway, Jake was given inhuman treatment by the assistant engineer. A storm gave Jake's persecutor the chance to damage the ship and throw the blame on the chief engineer. Jake made a suggestion that greatly changed things." That can't be a spoiler because the story hasn't even started yet but I can't really add anything more.

I'd be hard put to rank the remaining four stories, though the least substantial is the reprint, an excerpt, presumably a chapter, from 'The Book of the Ocean, and Life on the Sea' by Captain R. F. Coffin, published in 1857 but reading much newer in style than that. He wasn't merely a writer of fiction, as his obituary, on the front page of the 'New York Times' explained in 1888. He sailed the seas for many years as a captain but "the decline of the American mercantile marine" shifted him into newspaper work, starting with the 'New York World' in 1868, for whom he served as yachting editor. Appropriately enough, he died on Shelter Island on the annual cruise of the Atlantic Yacht Club.

This excerpt is titled  'A Female Crusoe'. It starts out as a whaling story, only reaching the desert island we expect from the title after a boat is dragged a hundred and fifty miles from its ship by a whale. They lose the whale too but find an island and, on that island, a woman, who's been there for five years after the 'Sarah Louisa' wrecked. That's good for them because she cooks them up a nice stew but only later explains what the meat was. No, it's not long pig, but I won't spoil what it is.

'Sam Sugden's Mutiny' is a riot of a story, by E. S. Pladwell, the initials standing for Edgar Spencer. He was prolific from 1918 to 1937, mostly in frontier stories and westerns, but this one's action all the way. Sam Sugden is the postmaster in Yellow Butte and he's shanghaied onto a ship without a clue of where he's woken up. He wins the fight he's thrown into, then knocks out the second mate and the next two, finding almost a berserker rage in battle. Eventually he faces Thomas Ruggles, Man'andler Ruggles, the captain of the 'Calmar Castle' and, as he's about to succumb, the title of the story comes into view. I liked it a lot.

I liked 'Captain's Watch' just as much, by L. Paul, the standard pseudonym for Ludwig Paul Kuhrig, who never saw print under another name. He was prolific from 1924 to 1934 and, if this is typical of his work, I'd like to read a lot more of it. We're with Captain Tim Brady of the 'Cormorant' when he bumps into Dake in Montreal, a man who hates him. A cop watches the ensuing fight until finally stepping in, at which point Brady signs Dake up for his ship, appointing him to be Captain's Watch. Dake's grudge continues, including a memorable fight on the ice, but is eventually wrapped up in an impressive ending.

'Rockets Offshore' is as different from those three stories as they are from each other, following the exploits of the coast guard at Goose Point on Cape Cod. It's by Warren Elliot Carleton, highly prolific under his own name and at least eighteen pseudonyms from 1916 to 1943. He also worked in the industry, as an editor at Street and Smith, which opens up the possibility that he edited the issue I'm reading. As with 'Action Stories' the same month, no editor is known, so I have to credit Anon. once again. Carleton could have edited either or both. Who knows?

The number one surfman at Goose Point is Frank Bishop and he feels hard done by after not being promoted into an empty slot. Instead Cap Swanson was brought in and he's an outsider. We aren't surprised when Bishop quits, moving Alec Rogers up from number two to number one, and that's where we are when the mystery manifests. The 'Sarah Mahon' often travels very close indeed to Devil-tail Reef and that's suspicious. Alec suspects Sever but Cap wants him to watch Bishop. That setup evolves through some nice twists to an effective action-packed ending. I like this one a lot.

With all these done, Don Waters gets a fifteenth instalment in his 'Man on the Water' series, each piece an article on an era of sailing, this one being 'The Slavers'. Given all the N words included in 'Static' earlier, I wasn't eager to see how this unfolded, but it's a surprisingly modern look at the era, very open about the horrors and injustices of the slave trade even if it wraps up with a rather hopeful acknowledgement of its end.

While I enjoyed all these stories, many of them very much, I wasn't anywhere near as captivated by 'The Log Book'. It's an unusual mix of letters and answers to previously floated queries, every one of them submitted by another Shipmate. Some of these contributions are interesting to any reader who likes to learn, but many are so specific in nature as to be targetted very much at the questioners in previous issues. If I was reading this a hundred years ago, I'd definitely pick up the next issue of 'Sea Stories Magazine' but I'd probably skip its 'The Log Book'.

I have seven issues to hand, but I'm too late for the first three, from 1922 and 1923—you might say that I've missed the boat—and it'll be three years before I'll get to read another one, as the next one I have is August 1929. So I'll take a look at the ads to see if there's anything out of the usual in these many pages.

The oddest might be the Chelsea House advert, not because of what it aims to sell but because of how it's presented. Chelsea House is a publisher and they're pushing four new books, which seems appropriate. However, it takes up two pages, which aren't consecutive, there being a completely typical "Be a real Draftsman!" ad in between them. What's more, there's only about a page that covers the actual books, bookended by a rambling pitch and a half page filler illustration. Chelsea House could have got more out of half the cost.

In fact, they probably did with a couple of later ads that are very carefully single page in nature, a border around them to guarantee that. The ad for '$10,000 Reward' by Christopher B. Booth is an illustrated and vibrant pitch, its large print text kicking off with the enticing, "Crazed by bootleg booze". The equivalent for 'Train's Trust' by George Owen Baxter isn't quite as effective, but it's close, the Train of the title being "Steve Train, gambler, adventurer, clever rogue". Chelsea House clearly knew how to lay out ads, which just boggles my mind all the more about the first one.

Skipping past all the other routine job ads and education ads and medical quackery ads, there are some of note. It seems odd that people might buy carpet mail order from an ad in a pulp magazine but then the Sears Catalog was a thing. Congoleum is apparently the National Floor Covering and it's only a buck a month. I'd like to know what was in Fleischmann's Yeast that made people buy it to give them energy. That's hardly an enticing name. Talking of names, Listerine are here again with yet another ad highlighting just how effective it is at conquering dandruff. ~~ Hal C F Astell