Captain Dingle Explained

Aylward Edward "A.E." Dingle was a sailor and writer.^[1] He was born in Oxford, England, in 1874.^[2] He died in Cornwall in 1947.^[3]

Sailor

He spent 22 years at sea, and was shipwrecked five times. Ships sailed on:

• Thermopylae (clipper)^[4]

Castaway on St Paul Island

In 1893, Dingle joined a salvage. The schooner Black Pearl sailed from Mahe, the Seychelle Islands to the Crozets, seeking gold that had gone down with the immigrant ship Strathmore.^[5] They found the sunken wreck, and its strongbox, but were unable to remove it. Eventually, they were driven off by gales. On the return voyage, the Black Pearl was wrecked near St. Paul Island.^[6] Both crew survived, though the Black Pearl was completely lost. They survived twelve weeks on the island, eating rabbit, goat and fish. Exploring, they found gold from a buried 1870s wreck. On the first morning of the twelfth week, they were rescued by a French bark.

Writer

He wrote pulp fiction for magazines such as Adventure^[7] and Blue Book^[8] under the names 'Captain A. E. Dingle' and Sinbad.^[9] In New York, he shared a flat with writer Gordon MacCreagh and his pet python Billy.^[10]

He sold his first story, "Blind Luck on St. Paul", to Adventure for somewhere between forty-five and sixty-five dollars, and it appeared in the January 1913 issue.^[11]

He wrote an autobiography, A Modern Sinbad, which sold well in the UK.

In 1912, the new editor of Adventure, Arthur Sullivant Hoffman co-founded the Adventurers' Club of New York. The first arrivals for the first meeting were a group of five: Dingle, Hoffman, Hoffman's assistant Sinclair Lewis, and two others. Dingle was first through the door and forever after claimed to be the club's first member. Dingle remained an active participant in the club for the remainder of his life.^[12]

In 1942, he was a guest on BBC Radio's Desert Island Discs,^[13] perhaps the programme's only experienced castaway.

Selected works

• "Blind Luck on St. Paul" (1913)
• "To Make or Break" (1918)
• "The Pirate Woman" (1918)
• "Gold Out of Celebes" (1920)
• A Modern Sinbad (1933)
• "Spin: A Yarn Sailor" (1934)
• "Sinister Eden" (1934)
• "Red Saunders: The Chronicle of a Genial Outcast" (1934)
• "Not Wisely" (1936)
• "Mary: First Mate" (1937)
• "Nor Breed Nor Birth" (1937)
• "Mock Star" (1938)
• "Nita of Martinique" (1938)
• "Adrift" (1939)
• "The Bomb Ship" (1942)
• "Pirates May Fly" (1943)
• "Old Glory" (1945)
• "Black Joker" (1946)
• "Reckless Tide" (1947)
• "The Petrel's Path" (1947)
• "The Corpse Came Back" (1948)
• "Out of the Blue" (1948)

External links

• Short autobiography, written 1925
• Detailed biography by Bear Alley Books
• Biography by Pulp Flakes

Notes and References

1. Web site: Bear Alley: Captain A. E. Dingle. Steve. Bearalley.blogspot.in. 17 October 2014.
2. Web site: Black Dog Books - Captain A.E. Dingle. Tom Roberts. Blackdogbooks.net. 17 October 2014.
3. Web site: Bear Alley: Captain A. E. Dingle. Steve. Bearalley.blogspot.co.uk. 17 October 2014.
4. Web site: Black Dog Books - Captain A.E. Dingle. Tom Roberts. 17 October 2014.
5. Call to Adventure. 1935
6. Adventures of Jehannum Smith (introduction by Tom Roberts). Black Dog Books.
7. Web site: Pulp Flakes: Captain A.E. Dingle - Sailor, Yacht racer, Pulp writer. Sai S. Pulpflakes.blogspot.co.uk. 17 October 2014.
8. "Introduction" to Best Sea Stories from The Blue Book, edited by Horace Vondys, introduced by Donald Kennicott. New York: The McBride Company, 1954.
9. Web site: Off the beaten tracks. The Spectator. 17 October 2014.
10. Adventures of Jehannum Smith (introduction by Tom Roberts). Black Dog Books.
11. Web site: Pulp Flakes: Captain A.E. Dingle - Sailor, Yacht racer, Pulp writer. Sai S. Pulpflakes.blogspot.co.uk. 17 October 2014.
12. Letters by A.E. Dingle to The Adventurer. [need dates]
13. Web site: BBC - Desert Island Discs - Castaway : Captain A E Dingle. BBC Desert Island Discs. 17 October 2014.