The texas, in American English, [1] is a structure or section of a steamboat that includes the crew's quarters. It is located on the hurricane deck, which is also called the texas deck. This long, narrow cabin is near and may be surmounted by the pilothouse.
A steamboat's texas is named in honor of the state of Texas. This innovation in steamboat construction was introduced about the same time that the state of Texas became part of the United States in 1845. [2]
In this period, steamboat cabins were conventionally named after states and the officers' quarters were the largest. This structure housing the largest cabins was identified with Texas, which was then the largest state. [3] [4]
The term became widely known after the publication of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn . In the section in which Huck and Jim encounter a wrecked steamboat:
"... there ain't nothing to watch but the texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybody's going to resk his life for a texas and a pilot-house such a night as this, when it's likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?" Jim couldn't say nothing to that, so he didn't try.
— Mark Twain, The Annotated Huckleberry Finn : Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's comrade) [5]
On the Great Lakes, lake freighters have deck houses at the bow and stern with cargo holds in the center. For those, the texas refers to the layer of the deck house that is just below the wheel house / bridge. [6]
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by American author Mark Twain, which was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, best known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter of which has often been called the "Great American Novel". Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a musical with music and lyrics by Roger Miller, and a book by William Hauptman.
Tom Sawyer, Detective is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894). Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the story is told using the first-person narrative voice of Huck Finn.
Tom Sawyer Abroad is a novel by Mark Twain published in 1894. It features Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in a parody of adventure stories like those of Jules Verne.
Huckleberry Finn and His Friends is a 1979 television series documenting the exploits of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, based on the novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by American writer Mark Twain. The series is made up of 26 episodes and was a Canadian/West German international co-production.
The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum is located on 206-208 Hill Street, Hannibal, Missouri, on the west bank of the Mississippi River in the United States. It was the home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as author Mark Twain, from 1844 to 1853. Clemens found the inspiration for many of his stories, including the white picket fence, while living here. It has been open to the public as a museum since 1912, and was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 29, 1962. It is located in the Mark Twain Historic District.
Huckleberry Finn is a 1974 musical film version of Mark Twain's 1884 novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The Adventures of Mark Twain is a 1985 American stop motion claymation fantasy film directed by Will Vinton and starring James Whitmore. It received a limited theatrical release in May 1985. It was released on DVD in January 2006, and again as a collector's edition in 2012 on DVD and Blu-ray.
Mark Twain: The Musical is a stage musical biography of Mark Twain that had a ten-year summertime run in Elmira, NY and Hartford, CT (1987–1995) and was telecast on a number of public television stations. An original cast CD was released by Premier Recordings in 1988, and LML Music in 2009 issued a newly mastered and complete version of the score. Video and DVD versions of the show are currently in release.
Jim is one of two major fictional characters in the classic 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The book chronicles his and Huckleberry's raft journey down the Mississippi River in the antebellum Southern United States. Jim, who is often referred to in the book as a "nigger," is a black man who is fleeing slavery; "Huck", a 13-year-old white boy, joins him in spite of his own conventional understanding and the law.
Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is a fictional character created by Mark Twain who first appeared in the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and is the protagonist and narrator of its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). He is 12 or 13 years old during the former and a year older at the time of the latter. Huck also narrates Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective, two shorter sequels to the first two books.
Huckleberry Finn is a 1931 American pre-Code adventure comedy film directed by Norman Taurog, and written by Grover Jones and William Slavens McNutt, based on Mark Twain's 1884 novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It stars Jackie Coogan as Tom Sawyer, Mitzi Green as Becky Thatcher, Junior Durkin as Huckleberry Finn, and Jackie Searl as Sid Sawyer.
Huckleberry Finn is a surviving American silent dramatic rural film from 1920, based on Mark Twain's 1884 classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It was produced by Famous Players–Lasky and distributed through Paramount Pictures. William Desmond Taylor directed Huckleberry Finn, as he had the 1917 film version of Tom Sawyer, using a scenario written by Julia Crawford Ivers, who also had been the writer for Tom Sawyer.
Back to Hannibal: The Return of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn is a 1990 American television family drama film directed by Paul Krasny and written by Roy Johansen, based on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. It aired on the Disney Channel on October 21, 1990. In the film, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn work to save their friend Jim from a charge of murder.
Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn is a 2014 American comedy-drama/adventure film directed by Jo Kastner and starring Joel Courtney as Tom Sawyer, Jake T. Austin as Huckleberry Finn, Katherine McNamara as Becky Thatcher, Noah Munck as Ben Rogers, and with Val Kilmer as Mark Twain. It is based on Mark Twain's novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). The film was released by VMI Worldwide.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is an 1876 novel by Mark Twain about a boy growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1840s in the town of St. Petersburg, which is based on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy. In the novel, Tom Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best selling of Twain's works during his lifetime. Though overshadowed by its 1884 sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book is considered by many to be a masterpiece of American literature. It was one of the first novels to be written on a typewriter.
Thomas Sawyer is the title character of the Mark Twain novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He appears in three other novels by Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), and Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896).
Truman W. "True" Williams was an American artist known as the most prolific illustrator to Mark Twain's books and novels. He illustrated the first edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and was thus the first to visually portray such characters as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He was also sole illustrator of Twain's Sketches, New and Old and primary illustrator of Roughing It and The Innocents Abroad. Working with a number of publishers he also illustrated works by writers Bill Nye, George W. Peck, Joaquin Miller, and others. He was also a notorious drunk, which slowed his work and made him unreliable.