Poor Jack

Poor Jack is a maritime novel by Frederick Marryat, published in 1840. Its narrator, Thomas Saunders, looks back on a childhood spent among the sailors, pensioners, traders, and waterfront poor of Greenwich at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Tom is the son of a naval seaman and grows up with little protection or schooling. Known as "Poor Jack" among the riverside boys, he learns to earn his way around the Thames and to judge the very different adults whose stories, schemes, and loyalties shape his education.

His progress from neglected street boy to capable pilot gives the book the outline of a coming-of-age story. Around it, Marryat gathers shipboard anecdotes, family reversals, accidents, and sharp observations of life among the lower ranks of the navy.

The novel mixes adventure with social detail and a veteran sailor's humor. Tom's eventual prosperity matters less than the practical courage and independence by which he earns it.

"I have every reason to believe that I was born in the year of our Lord 1786, for more than once I put the question to my father, and he invariably made the same reply: "Why, Jack, you were launched a few months before the Druids were turned over to the Melpomene." I have since ascertained that this remarkable event occurred in January 1787."