In March 1912, Jack and Charmian set sail from Baltimore and traveled around Cape Horn on the 330 foot long Dirigo to Seattle. Jack and Charmian took many photos many of which are linked at the Huntington Library.
“The Mutiny of the Elsinore” (1914) is a fictionalized account of incidents and characters they encountered on the 148 day Dirigo voyage.
The Dirgo was built in Bath, Maine in 1894, as the first of Sewall Company’s fleet of deep-water steel sailing ships. The name is taken from the maine State Motto, the Latin word for “I lead” or “I direct”.
Charmian London never completed her writing “Log of the Dirgo” though excerpts of the manuscript have been published in other works, some of which are housed at the Huntington Library’s Jack London Collection.
The Dirgo was lost to enemy action in WWI.
