The Evacuation of England: The Twist in the Gulf Stream — Context and Discussion

(0 User reviews) 43

In Category - Science Fiction Utopias

Authors: Gratacap, L. P. (Louis Pope), 1851-1917 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2021 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Great Britain -- Fiction; Climatic changes -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 75,349

Reading time 328 min

Text sections 14

Before opening The Evacuation of England: The Twist in the Gulf Stream — Context and Discussion, the edition data offers a quick orientation: 75,349 words, 5 hr 28 min estimated reading time, and 14 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 27.3 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Great Britain -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #65588

This 1908 novel opens with a Washington street argument overheard by a lethargic observer, then follows the climatic catastrophe of a Gulf Stream shift that forces the evacuation of Britain. The excerpts show a blend of scientific speculation, detailed crowd scenes, and a narrator who remains a passive witness to disaster.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg65588

Read the Text

IN WASHINGTON, APRIL, 1909.

Alexander Leacraft was regarding with as much interest as his constitutional lassitude permitted, the progress of a distinctly audible altercation on Pennsylvania avenue, Washington, D. C. The disputants had not felt it necessary, under the relaxing influences of a premature spring, to interpose any screen of secrecy, such as a less exposed position, or subdued voices, between themselves and the news-mongering (and hungering, let it be added) proletariat of our nation’s capital.

A small crowd, composed of the singular human compound always pervasive and never to be avoided in Washington, which, in that centre of political sensations, is made up of street loafers, accidental tourists, perambulating babies, “niggers,” and presumptive statesmen, enclosed this “argument”; and from his elevated station, within the front parlor of the McKinley, Mr. Leacraft was afforded a very excellent view of and an equally distinct hearing of the disagreement and its principals.

The two disputants were themselves sufficiently contrasted in appearance to have allured the casual passer-by to observe their contrasted methods in debate. One--the taller--was a thin, angular man with unnaturally long arms, a peculiar swaying habit of body, an elongated visage, terminating in a short, stubby growth of whiskers, and a sharp, crackling kind of voice, with unmistakable nasal faults. He seemed to be a southern man modified by a few imitations of the northern type.

He was addressing a bulky, rather disdainful man in a checquered suit of clothes, who had advanced the season’s fashion by assuming a straw hat, and whose rosy face, broad and typical features, and yet not plethoric expansion of body, strong and stalwart frame betokened much animal force, and reserved power of action. He might have been a northern man. As Alexander Leacraft looked at them, it was the southern man who was speaking, and his uplifted arm, at regular intervals, rose and fell, as the palms of both hands met in a cadence of corroborative whacks. It may interest the reader to know that the particular time of this particular incident was April, 1909.

“Let me tell you this, Mr. Tompkins,” drawled the southerner with loquacious ease, the crackle and sharpness of his intonation appearing as his excitement increased, “the necessities of our states demand the Canal at whatever cost. It will be the avenue for an export trade to the east, which will convert our stored powers of production into gold, and it will react upon the whole country north and south in a way that will make all previous prosperity look like nothing. Our cotton mills have grown, our mineral resources have been developed; Georgia and Alabama are to-day competing with your shaft furnaces and steel mills for the trade of the railroads, and builders; and for that matter we are building ourselves. We can support a population ten times all we have to-day; our resources have been just broached, but exhaustion is a thousand years away. Our rival has been Cuba. She has robbed us of trade; she has put our sugar plantations out of business; even her iron, which I will admit is superior in quality, has scaled our profits on raw ingots, but she can’t hold us down on cotton. Open up this canal, and we will gather the riches of the Orient; our ships will fill it with unbroken processions, and in the train of that commerce in cotton, every section of the Union will furnish its contribution to swell the argosies of trade. I tell you sir” and the excited speaker, conscious of an admiring sympathy in the crowd around him, raised his voice into a musical shout, in which the crackle was quite lost, “the commerce, the mercantile integrity of these United States will be restored, and American bottoms for American goods will be no longer a vain aspiration; it will be a realized dream, an actual fact.”

He paused, as if the projectile force of his words had deprived him of breath, and then at the momentary opportunity Mr. Tompkins, in a clear and metallic voice, with a punctuative force of occasional hesitation, undertook his friend’s refutation.

Continue Reading →

The novel begins not with a catastrophe but with a street argument on Pennsylvania Avenue, observed by Alexander Leacraft from the front parlor of the McKinley hotel. The narrator’s “constitutional lassitude” sets a tone of detached observation that persists through the excerpts. The two disputants—a thin, angular man with a nasal voice and a bulky man in a checquered suit—are described with a specificity that suggests the author’s interest in character types rather than individuals. The crowd is a “singular human compound” of loafers, tourists, babies, and “presumptive statesmen,” a phrase that hints at the political setting without yet revealing the plot.

This opening, dated April 1909, establishes a world on the brink of change, but the change itself—the twist in the Gulf Stream—is not yet named. The reader is placed in Washington, a city of political sensations, and given a narrator who watches rather than acts. The leisurely pace of the first chapter contrasts sharply with the later urgency of evacuation.

A Narrator Who Watches

Alexander Leacraft is introduced as a man of “constitutional lassitude,” and this trait governs his role throughout the excerpts. He observes the street argument from his hotel window, and later, during the evacuation of Scotland, he is present but not central. In Chapter VI, he reaches the hotel at the Caledonian station “in a crowd of breathless men,” yet his actions are reported without interiority. He meets Sir John C—, whose face is “clouded with grief and anxiety,” but Leacraft’s own emotional state is not described. The narrative voice remains external, focusing on what can be seen and heard: the crowd, the fire, the hastily prepared luncheon, the muttered doubts of escape.

This observational stance creates a documentary feel. The reader learns about the disaster through Leacraft’s eyes, but his passivity means the novel’s tension comes from the accumulating details of panic and geological change rather than from personal stakes. The narrator is a witness, not a hero, and the excerpts give no indication that this changes.

The Science of Disaster

The catastrophe is rooted in a specific scientific mechanism: the Gulf Stream shifts, causing a new ice age. The excerpts include a lengthy quotation from the geologist Geikie, describing how “all northern Europe and northern America disappeared beneath a thick crust of ice and snow.” This passage is embedded in the narrative as a direct citation, suggesting the author’s desire for scientific credibility. The novel’s subtitle, “The Twist in the Gulf Stream,” announces this premise, and the excerpts show the consequences: Scotland is “evicted,” the Scandinavian area feels the effects, and European markets are thrown into “frightful stagnation.”

The science is presented as fact, not speculation. The narrator does not question the reality of the change; instead, the focus is on the human response. The “panic of doubt” spreads confusion, and money is checked from circulation. The novel thus combines a natural disaster plot with economic and social commentary, though the excerpts only hint at the latter.

Crowds and the Pressure of Escape

The excerpts repeatedly emphasize crowds and collective movement. In Washington, the crowd around the argument is a “small crowd” of mixed types. In Edinburgh, the last train waits for the Provost Marshal and “the little army of workers.” The hotel in Chapter VI is filled with a “dense crowd of men” greedily eating and muttering doubts. The language of pressure and suffocation recurs: the room is “filled almost to suffocation,” and the men are “greedily devouring” their meal. The trainmen say it is “a hard job now to get through,” and the way to Glenarken is “full of big drifts.”

These details create a sense of mounting urgency. The evacuation is not orderly but desperate, and the narrator’s passive observation makes the reader feel the crush of the crowd without being inside any single character’s fear. The novel’s title promises evacuation, and the excerpts deliver it as a logistical and emotional ordeal.

The Weight of Place and History

Despite the disaster, the excerpts show a strong attachment to place. Sir John C— cannot bear to leave Edinburgh; his “heart is broke” at deserting the city. The narrator notes that the last train will break the connection between “the muffled city and the south,” returning Scotland to a geological phase from sixty thousand years ago. The quotation from Geikie evokes the deep time of ice ages, contrasting with the immediate human drama. The novel thus layers personal grief over a vast natural cycle.

The setting moves from Washington to Scotland, and the excerpts suggest that the evacuation is not just of people but of a way of life. The “old town” is left behind, and the reader is given only glimpses of what is lost. The novel’s structure, with chapters titled “The Eviction of Scotland” and “The Terror of It,” indicates a focus on the emotional and physical cost of abandonment.

The excerpts offer a first reading that is observational and scientific, with a narrator who remains on the periphery. Readers should pay attention to the way Gratacap uses specific details—the checquered suit, the straw hat, the quoted geologist—to build a world that feels both real and on the verge of collapse. The novel’s interest lies less in individual psychology than in the collective experience of disaster, and the excerpts suggest that the evacuation itself, rather than any single character’s fate, is the true subject.

I’ve often lingered over that narrator in The Evacuation of England, drowsy on his park bench, watching ruin unfold without a word. It reminds me of the quiet ache in No More Parades: A novel — Context and Discussion, where war’s chaos sits heavy on men who’ve lost the will to shout. Both simply hold still, letting the storm pass around them.