title: Little Ship of Fools: Sixteen Rowers, One Improbable Boat, Seven Tumultuous Weeks on the Atlantic
author: Charles Wilkins
description: In a thrilling adventure on the high seas, the sexagenarian Wilkins joins a grueling, 3,000-mile expedition across the Atlantic as he and a crew of college rowing alumni, drifters, and philosophers attempt to beat a world record. After months of training, delays, and financial setbacks, the author and his team embark off the western coast of Morocco on the first ocean-rowing catamaran ever constructed: a 40-foot craft that alternately serves as cozy home, claustrophobic prison, spiritual crucible, and medieval torture device for the 16 souls who call it home. En route to the Caribbean nation of Barbados, after weeks of malnutrition, illness, injury, spectacular animal encounters, and near-death experiences, the on-board drama escalates into a maritime Lord of the Flies as coups and mutinies threaten the mission, all deftly narrated with Wilkins trademark humor and guile. Infused with a wit, charm, and sense of wonder akin to Bill Brysons travelogues, the playful but epic tale stands as a testament to the human spirit stripped bare by the power of nature. --Adam Morgan
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  # The Balloo- Hoax
  
  
  ### Edgar Poe
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  
  Astounding News by Express, via Norfolk !—The Atlantic crossed in Three Days !
  Signal Triumph of Mr. Monck Mason's Flying Machine !—Arrival at Sullivan's
  Island, near Charlestown, S.C., of Mr. Mason, Mr. Robert Holland, Mr. Henson,
  Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, and four others, in the Steering Balloon, "Victoria,"
  after a passage of Seventy-five Hours from Land to Land ! Full Particulars of
  the Voyage!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The subjoined jeu d'esprit with the preceding heading in magnificent capitals,
  well interspersed with notes of admiration, was originally published, as
  matter of fact, in the "New York Sun," a daily newspaper, and therein fully
  subserved the purpose of creating indigestible aliment for the quidnuncs
  during the few hours intervening between a couple of the Charleston mails. The
  rush for the "sole paper which had the news," was something beyond even 