Week 6: Storytelling - Sinbad: First Voyage

 Sinbad the Sailor: First Voyage part 1(Source)

It’s dark, cold, and ominous. The waves appear to be cliffs rushing toward the ship. The Insurrection’s crew notices a sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs as they begin to realize that their ship will not make it through the night. 

Despite the near impossible task ahead, the captain puts all the men to work. Some men are bailing water for their lives while others try to keep the ship pointed bow first toward the incoming waves. Everyone stops what they are doing at the sight of a wave bigger than any of them had ever seen. All that can be done at this point is to hang on for dear life and say whatever prayers one might need.

As dawn breaks over a peaceful ocean, Sinbad wakes up in a confused stupor. He takes in his surroundings only to realize that he was the only one that survived the storm. He was fortunate enough to have grabbed ahold of the mast and managed to hang on to it through the night. 

Sinbad was sitting there contemplating his options when he noticed a large portion of the ship floating along in the water, so he swam over and climbed on board. Being utterly lost and out of food or water, he decided the only thing to do was to lay on the wood and pray that someone came along or he drifted to some island. 

After three days, Sinbad was at his wits end and began to wonder if he should just end it all instead of dying a slow hallucination filled death. At that exact moment a pod of dolphins swam up to him. They asked his name and what circumstances had led to his current situation. Sinbad recalled his tale to them, and when he said his name their eyes lit up. 

“Are you the great Sinbad?” their leader asked.

“That would be me” replied Sinbad. 

The dolphins told him how they had heard many things about his great travels and tales. They also mentioned that there was an island not too far away that was inhabited by a friendly people that would take him in. 

Sinbad climbed on the back of the strongest dolphin and away they went. After about an hour with the dolphins, they dropped him off on the shores of the island they said was owned by King Mihrage.

        This story is based off of Sinbad's First Voyage from The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang. The original story begins with Sinbad telling another man named Sinbad about how he squandered his wealth inherited from his parents and now goes from ship to ship seeking adventure. He then tells the story of one particular ship he was on that would stop at little islands on the way to the West Indies to trade goods and explore the cities. They then accidentally land on a whale and he gets thrown into the sea. He then lands on some cliffs on an island and climbs up. I chose to head straight into to Sinbad getting thrown into the ocean and floating about. The part about the dolphins is based off of one of my favorite songs by Jimmy Buffet called Jolly Mon Sing. In this song a traveling musician gets thrown into the ocean, but a dolphin has heard him singing and loves him so he takes him to an island. I thought this would be a fun little twist to the original telling of Sinbad's First Voyage.

Animated Picture of a Dolphin (Picture Source)