SOURCE: Spofford, William K. “Stephen Crane's ‘The Open Boat’.” American Literary Realism 12, no. 2 (autumn 1979): 316-21.

In the following essay, Spofford argues that an examination of “The Open Boat” “in relation to Crane's earlier fiction, poetry, journalism, and letters reveals that Crane had articulated his themes and formulated his motifs and images long before the incident, and his recounting of the thirty hours in an open boat merely provided the vehicle for these materials to come together.”

On 1 January 1897, while on a filibustering expedition to Cuba, the Commodore sank, and Stephen Crane spent thirty hours in an open boat before he and his three companions reached the Florida coast. In “Stephen Crane's Own Story,” published in the New York Press on 7 January 1897, Crane recounted the facts of the experience except for the thirty hours spent in a ten-foot dinghy. This part of the ordeal he saved for “The Open...