Subtitle from jacket.

Originally published: London : Penguin Books, c2011.

This novel follows the fortunes of Wesley Martin, a man who Kerouac said 'loved the sea with a strange, lonely love; the sea is his brother and sentences. He goes down.' Kerouac began this work not long after his first tour as a Merchant Marine on the S.S. Dorchester in the late summer of 1942 during which he kept a journal detailing the gritty daily routine of life at sea. Inspired by the trip, which exemplified Kerouac's love for adventure and the character traits of his fellow shipmates, the journals were spontaneous sketches of those experiences that were woven into a short novel soon after disembarking from the S.S. Dorchester in October of 1942.