Debby Detering Wordcraft

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Panama and Beyond

The San Juan: Panama to San Francisco, 1914
The San Juan, cargo and passengers to San Francisco…


Will Hobby’s Journal

Found our ship lying at a finished portion of the massive concrete docks which will fringe the harbor at the Pacific terminal of the great canal.  We were beguiled on board 3 hours before sailing time by an apparently authoritative announcement of an earlier start, so losing the time which would have enabled Mother to see something of the Panaman carnival. Found ship taking in mail and baggage and our own trunk, regardless of its marking and the official assurance, buried in the ship’s hold … About 2 P.M. the gang planks were drawn aboard. A sturdy little tug hove our steamer stern around till her prow pointed southward and, reminding me of Mark Twain’s management of his donkey.

Will Hobby, February 23, 1914

Mark Twain’s Donkey

“If he were drifting to starboard, you might put your helm down hard the other way, if it were any satisfaction to you to do it, but he would continue to drift to starboard all the same. There was only one process which could be depended on, and it was to get down and lift his rear around until his head pointed in the right direction, or take him under your arm and carry him to a part of the road which he could not get out of without climbing…”

Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

Side Trips

Colonel Higginson–a gentleman I would have loved to meet–trained the first Black Regiment in the Civil War. He also directed the publication of the first of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Fairbanks scales would indeed have been exported from Vermont to Costa Rica by 1914, and research turned up photos of models from that era. I wonder how many of William Clark Russell’s maritime novels my grandfather read and acquired a copy of The Frozen Pirate,. Did the ship Sosostress disintegrate on the shores of Guatemala? I found three tales of her grounding and a report of her final disposition..

This collection of letters with historical background and notes on these side trips of discovery is available now--Join me on steamships from New York to Cuba and Panama, in the epochal construction of the Panama Canal, and on the steamship SAn Juan up the Pacific Coast to San Francisco.

Panama and Beyond…

This engine could have been used in 1914 on the trip to Sonsonate.
Side Trip to Sonsonate, El Salvador; This engine from 1914 for contemporary excursions.



The deepest portion of Culebra Cut, and the location of the worst landslides.
Culebra Cut, Where Will Hobby Worked from 1907 to 1914.
Will Hobby described sunrise over a volcano as the San Juan sailed up the coast of Central America in 1914.
Sunrise Over a Volcano, as Described by Will Hobby from a Stateroom on the San Juan.

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Debby’s fiction explores family relationships with mingled conflict and caring and reflects her experience in emergency foster care, often for teenagers abandoned in one way or another.

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RSS Debby’s Other Blog: RAMBLING TOGETHER

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    How can we go into wilderness when we’ve never before sat in a canoe? Canoeing on the Missouri River?  With him over 70 years and me unable to get up from ground level without help? Yes—with Wilderness Inquiry. I once rowed a small skiff in a calm, protected bay off the Massachusetts coast. Skus and […]

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