In 1955, Garcia Marquez was working for El Espectador, a newspaper in Bogota, when in February of that year eight crew members of the Caldas, a Colombian destroyer, were washed overboard and disappeared. Ten days later one of them turned up, barely alive, on a deserted beach in northern Colombia. This book, which originally appeared as a series of newspaper articles, is Garcia Marquez’s account of that sailor’s ordeal.

1. JITHYA RAVEENDRAN
OPTION: ENGLISH
KUTEC DHARMASALA

4. Columbian novelist, short story writer, screen writer
Affectionately called ‘Gabo’
Nobel Prize for Literature 1982
Major works:
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
Love in the Time of Cholera
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Autumn of the Patriarch

6. Major works
NOVELS
In Evil Hour (1962)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975)
Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
The General in His Labyrinth (1989)
Of Love and Other Demons (1994)

7. NON FICTION
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (1970)
The Solitude of Latin America (1982)
The Fragrance of Guava (1982, with Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza)
Clandestine in Chile (1986)
Changing the History of Africa: Angola and Namibia (1991, with
David Deutschmann)
News of a Kidnapping (1996)
A Country for Children (1998)
Living to Tell the Tale (2002)

8. WORKS

9. The Nobel Prize in Literature 1982
Gabriel García Márquez
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1982 was awarded to
Gabriel García Márquez "for his novels and short stories,
in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a
richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a
continent's life and conflicts".

10. THE STORY OF A SHIPWRECKED
SAILOR Gabriel Garcia Marquez

14. The Story
The book tells the saga of a man named Luis Alejandro Velasco, a 20
year-old sailor serving on a Colombian Navy destroyer, who was
washed overboard during a storm in the middle of the Caribbean
Sea on February 28, 1955. Clinging to a life raft, without food or
water, he survived ten days on the open sea, eventually washing up
on a remote Colombian beach, more dead than alive. Following his
recovery, he was declared a national hero by Colombia’s military
government and toured the nation, displayed by the dictatorship as
a source of prodigious nationalistic pride. He also made a small
fortune in commercial endorsements and appearance fees, signing
autographs everywhere he went.

15. Characters
Luis Alejandro Velasco - Main character (protagonist);
"Fatso“
Mary Address -Velasco's girlfriend
Diego Velazquez - sailor who, after watching a
shipwreck movie, says, "What if something
like that happened to us?"; drowns
Luis Rengifo - The sailor (drowns) who calls
Velasco "Fatso"

16. CONTD…..
Ramon Herrera - Washed overboard along with
Velasco; drowns
Miguel Ortega - Sailor; doesn't spend his money; wife
and children in Cartagena; Chief Gunner's Mate; drowns
Jamie Martinez Diago - Only officer to drown in the
catastrophe; not talkative
Julio Amador Caraballo - Sailor who is wearing lifejacket;
drowns while trying to save Eduardo Castillo

17. CONTD.....
Elias Sabogal - sailor; 40 years old; "sea wolf"; has
new child waiting for him at home in
Cartagena; drowns
Eduardo Castillo - Sailor who drowns while clinging
to Julio Amador Caraballo's neck; no lifejacket
Jamie Manjarres -Old friend who appears on raft to
talk with Velasco

18. CONTD.....
Massey Nasser - Jewish clothing store clerk from
Mobile
Damaso Imitela - Second person Velasco meets
on land in Columbia
Dr. Humberto Gomez - Doctor who gives Velasco an
examination

20.  CONTEMPLATE – look thoughtfully for a long time
 CHOPPY – rough
 PREDICAMENT – a difficult and unpleasant situation
 ABSURD – illogical
 STUPIFIED – astonished or shocked
 SEARING – extremely hot or intense
 GASH – a deep cut or wound
BOBBING – float up and down
 DEMARCATE – set or draw boundaries of something
 CUFF – to strike with open hand

21.  GUNWALE - upper edge of the side of a boat- often made of oily wood like
teak
VORACIOUS - having a huge appetite, greedy, ravenous; excessively eager
QUARRY - animal hunted or caught for food
LUMINOUS - emitting or reflecting light, glowing; illuminating
PICTURESQUE - suggesting a picture; strickingly vivid; charming or quaint to
look

22. APPARITION
the appearance of a ghost-like figure
SHIPWRECK
destruction of a ship by
sinking

23. CRATE
large basket
OAR
a pole with a flat blade, used
to row or steer a boat through the
water.

24. ABYSS
a deep or bottomless gull
RAFT
a flat buoyant structure of timber or
other materials fastened together, used as a
boat or floating platform.

25. THANK YOU