Editing Captains Courageous (section)

==Notes==
The book was written during Kipling's time living in [[Brattleboro, Vermont]]. Kipling recalled in his autobiography:

{{blockquote|Now our Dr. [James] Conland had served in [the Gloucester] fleet when he was young. One thing leading to another, as happens in this world, I embarked on a little book which was called ''Captains Courageous''. My part was the writing; his the details. This book took us (he rejoicing to escape from the dread respectability of our little town) to the shore-front, and the old T-wharf of Boston Harbour, and to queer meals in sailors' eating-houses, where he renewed his youth among ex-shipmates or their kin. We assisted hospitable tug-masters to help haul three- and four-stick schooners of [[Pocahontas Coalfield|Pocahontas coal]] all round the harbour; we boarded every craft that looked as if she might be useful, and we delighted ourselves to the limit of delight. ... Old tales, too, he dug up, and the lists of dead and gone schooners whom he had loved, and I revelled in profligate abundance of detail—not necessarily for publication but for the joy of it. ...I wanted to see if I could catch and hold something of a rather beautiful localised American atmosphere that was already beginning to fade. Thanks to Conland I came near this.<ref name=Kipling>Rudyard Kipling, ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20091009172847/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kipling/rudyard/something/index.html Something of Myself: for my friends known and unknown]'', London: MacMillan and Co., 1951 (first published 1937). Chapter 5, pp. 129–131</ref>}}

Kipling also recalled:

{{blockquote|When, at the end of my tale, I desired that some of my characters should pass from San Francisco to New York in record time, and wrote to a railway magnate of my acquaintance asking what he himself would do, that most excellent man sent a fully worked-out time-table, with watering halts, changes of engine, mileage, track conditions and climates, so that a corpse could not have gone wrong in the schedule.<ref name=Kipling/>}}

The resulting account, in Chapter 9, of the Cheynes' journey from [[San Diego]] to [[Boston]], is a classic of railway literature. The couple travel in the Cheynes' private rail car, the "Constance", and are taken from San Diego to Chicago as a special train, hauled by sixteen [[locomotive]]s in succession. It takes precedence over 177 other trains. "Two and one-half minutes would be allowed for changing engines; three for watering and two for coaling". The "Constance" is attached to the scheduled express "New York Limited" to [[Buffalo, New York]], and transferred to the [[New York Central Railroad|New York Central]] for the trip across the state to [[Albany, New York|Albany]]. Switched to the [[Boston and Albany Railroad]], the Cheynes complete the trip to Boston in their private car, with the entire cross-country run taking 87 hours 35 minutes.

Kipling also recalled:

{{blockquote|My characters arrived triumphantly; and, then, a real live railway magnate was so moved after reading the book that he called out his engines and called out his men, hitched up his own private car, and set himself to beat ''my'' time on paper over the identical route, and succeeded.<ref name=Kipling/>}}

Disko Troop claims to receive his given name for his birth on board his father's ship near [[Disko Island]] on the west coast of [[Greenland]]. His crewman, "Long Jack", once calls him "[[Discobolus]]".

A claim that Kipling used the [[United States Fish Commission]] [[Fisheries science|fisheries]] [[research ship]] {{ship|USFC|Grampus}} as the model for ''We′re Here'' is unproven.<ref>[https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/new-england-mid-atlantic/us-fish-commission-schooner-grampus-1886 "U.S. Fish Commission Schooner Grampus, 1886 Report on the Construction and Equipment of the Schooner Grampus, taken from the Report of Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, 1886," noaa.gov, August 26, 2022 Accessed 18 March 2023]</ref>