Captains Courageous: A Story of the Grand Banks is an 1897 novel by Rudyard Kipling that follows the adventures of fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr., the spoiled son of a railroad tycoon, after he is saved from drowning by a Portuguese fisherman in the North Atlantic. The novel originally appeared as a serialisation in McClure's, beginning with the November 1896 edition with the last instalment appearing in May 1897. In that year, it was published in its entirety as a novel, first in the United States by Doubleday, and a month later in the United Kingdom by Macmillan. It is Kipling's only novel set entirely in North America. In 1900, Teddy Roosevelt extolled the book in his essay "What We Can Expect of the American Boy", praising Kipling for describing "in the liveliest way just what a boy should be and do".
First edition cover
Cover of the November 1896 edition of McClure's, which began the serialisation of the novel
The fishing schooner We're Here
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.
Kipling in 1895
Malabar Point, Bombay, 1865
English Heritage blue plaque marking Kipling's time in Southsea, Portsmouth
Lahore Railway Station in the 1880s