The Blue Anchor

# The Blue Anchor, or, The Lost Bride

By Roger Starbuck, this maritime adventure opens with the whaling ship Griffin in the Japan Sea carrying Mrs. Brandon, wife of Captain Brandon, and her infant son Will. The voyage is interrupted when a catastrophic typhoon strikes with sudden violence, destroying both lifeboats in succession. The captain, Mrs. Brandon, her son, and cabin-boy Harry Warlock (age ten) cling to wreckage as the Griffin sinks. In the confusion and fog, Mrs. Brandon and her child are separated from the captain and Warlock, who survive and are rescued by a passing whaler. The grieving Captain Brandon, informed of his wife and child's presumed death, becomes a changed man—his hair graying, his spirits collapsed. The narrative sets up a mystery regarding the apparent loss that structures the plot's subsequent revelations and separations.