Saturday, May 7, 2pm. At the Noble Maritime Museum (on the grounds of Snug Harbor), 1000 Richmond Terrace, Building D, SINY 10301
Mark Twain had a Staten Island connection??? Who knew?!!!!!
Staten Island OutLOUD invites you to go behind the scenes of Mark Twain’s strange fantasy/science fiction novel Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven (ranked as one of his top 4 novels by H. L. Mencken) and his story Refuge of the Derelicts, to meet the real-life pirate of Twain’s fiction: Edgar Wakeman, whose 1874 stay at Sailors’ Snug Harbor inspired Twain’s tales.
Staten Island historian Andrew Wilson has researched Twain’s Staten Island connection, and what he’s discovered will knock your socks off! Join us for this special event. A spoken word performance, and Mr. Wilson’s first-hand account of his literary sleuthing.
In 1874 Captain Edgar Wakeman, partially paralyzed and suffering from fainting spells, arrived at Sailors’ Snug Harbor seeking help writing his autobiography. The man he had asked for help was Mark Twain.
Twain had first met Wakeman aboard the steamship America on a voyage from San Francisco to New York City in 1866. Twain was fascinated by the gregarious old salt and featured him as a character in several of his books, often under the name “Captain Stormfield.”
The most popular of these stories was an unfinished novel published as Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven in 1907. Twain spent about 40 years writing it. Though little known today, the critic H.L. Mencken declared Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven to be one of Twain’s four great works, in 1913, despite being unfinished. At the time of his death Twain was working on a new beginning to the tale. The addition did not debut until 1972 when it was published as a separate story called Refuge of the Derelicts. Discover how the two stories could have fit
together and the real-life events at Snug Harbor inspired them.
Why was Twain was so fascinated with the captain? Wakeman first came to national attention in 1849 by hijacking the steamship New World, then under police guard at an East River dock. After tricking the police into letting him start her engines “to work the rust off” he then forced the deputies overboard at Staten Island for a wet three mile slog back to the ferry. The manhunt for Wakeman continued for years with multiple narrow escapes. Cornelius Vanderbilt even provided him with a safe house on the Island where he stayed as the police closed in.
Wakeman was Vanderbilt’s choice for his personal yacht captain. He also commanded Twain’s friend, the “real” Tom Sawyer, aboard the Vanderbilt Line’s Independence. Whether he was running a blockade in the Mexican-American War or saving San Francisco from a gang of Australian arsonists, Wakeman shared his stories, from both sides of the law, with a young reporter named Samuel Clemens – including one about a personal visit he had made to Heaven.
Join us for a dramatic reading, with traditional musical accompaniment, as the ghosts of Twain and Wakeman reunite at the captain’s old home and tell their fantastic tales of adventure and friendship.
FEATURING
James Hill as Mark Twain; Roger Ahearn as Captain Edgar Wakeman; Laura Martocci as the Narrator
Music by Allergic to Bees – Joan and Gary Moore
Presented by Staten Island OutLOUD
Written by Captain Edgar Wakeman and Mark Twain (with a little help from Andrew Wilson)
