White-Jacket

By: Herman Melville

Narrated by: Joseph Sepe

Herman Melville, potentially one of America’s most important novelists, wrote White Jacket (published in 1850) based on his experiences serving the US Navy aboard the frigate USS Neversink from 1843 to 1844. White Jacket is considered to be Melville’s most politically charged novel due to its severe criticism of the US Navy and its policies at the time. In fact, the novel helped bring about the end of flogging aboard Naval ships (then a standard practice) due to its graphic and brutal descriptions of the floggings Melville himself witnessed.

Public Domain (P)2018 Museum Audiobooks

Mispronunciations galore

I have never heard this many mispronunciations in the narration of an audiobook before. Other reviews here give good examples.

narrator pronounces things very strangely

I'm really confused, the narrator mostly sounds like a native speaker but not infrequently comes across fairly normal English words that he pronounces as if he's never seen them before. "ebony" as e-bony, "carrion" as carry-on, and repeatedly and over and over again the oft occurring word "scourge" as something like "scohrge", and many many others. is there no editor who listens to it and is able to tell the voice actor that he's way off the mark?

Rather irritating

Anyone of us with a pinch of exposure to the days of sail will cringe at the poor pronunciation of mizzen, flageolet, ebony, &c. It's akin to, when at church, a youngster is tagged to do one of the readings and has little knowledge of pronunciation of the words before her/him. Add to this the almost disinterested delivery, and I find myself nodding off. I've heard other readers for this book that were much better in this regard, but I wanted something easy for my mobile to download and listen while at work. Sorry to give such a sour review, but each time he says "mysin", I find myself shouting out the correct pronunciation and wanting to throw the book at him!

Abject lack of vocabulary and reading skills

I don’t blame narrator Joseph Sepe for having the worst vocabulary or weakest reading skills I’ve ever heard by a narrator for an Audible book. I blame the people who hired him. This was the most painful listen I have encountered yet on Audible. How can you hire a narrator who can’t even pronounce the name Trafalgar? I heard the same word mispronounced two separate ways in the same sentence. DON’T BUY THIS BOOK UNLESS YOU ARE A SPEACH THERAPIST AND YOU NEED EXAMPLES OF HOW NOT TO READ.
Audible please find someone with at least a scintilla of historical knowledge to help you hire / approve your narrators.

Poor pacing. Jarring pronunciation.

Please, anybody who considers narrating this genius' work -- learn how to pronounce the sailing terms therein. That a story from Melville needs to interrupted with "forecastle" or "TrafahlGAR" or "tarry" (rhymes with Mary) when it should be "tarry" (rhymes with sorry) [to give 3 of dozens of examples]. To read Melville and have no appreciation for nautical terms (like pronouncing "gunwale" incorrectly) or, for example, his fiddling with heteronyms (tarry/tarry is not the only one found in HMs work). Plus, this narration is completely devoid of any pacing. Every sentence, if it contains 2 clauses, is read in two explosions: first clause; pause; second clause.) There is practically no attempt to give any pacing -- almost as if the narrator isn't really paying attention to what he is reading (and the Melville narrators are exclusively male). Finally, and really this is more forgivable, there is no attempt to voice the characters when Melville uses direct discourse. This is not the only klunker in Audible's Melville listing. See my review of Mardi.

I've tried and tried

The narration is one of the worst I've ever heard. Not only can he not properly pronounce standard nautical terms, he cannot pronounce many common use words properly. His narration is stilted and grating.

Buy another version

Narrator has zero command of nautical terms. Boatswain is correctly pronounced Bosun rather than the ‘boat’ ‘swain’ the narrator uses. Similarly forecastle is correctly pronounced foal-sul rather than the narrators ‘for castle’. List goes on and is very distracting to the listener.