High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! "The Open Boat" is a short story by American author Stephen Crane (1871–1900). First published in 1897, it was based on Crane`s experience of surviving a shipwreck off the coast of Florida earlier that year while traveling to Cuba to work as a newspaper correspondent. Crane was stranded at sea for thirty hours when his ship, the SS Commodore, sank after hitting a sandbar. He and three other men were forced to navigate their way to shore in a small boat; one of the men, an oiler named Billie Higgins, drowned after the boat overturned. Crane`s personal account of the shipwreck and the men`s survival, titled "Stephen Crane`s Own Story", was first published a few days after his rescue.