A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson

Watkin Tench (6 October 1758 – 7 May 1833) was a British marine officer who is best known for publishing two books describing his experiences in the First Fleet, which established the first settlement in Australia in 1788. His two accounts, "Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay" (this edition) and "Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson" provide an account of the arrival and first four years of the colony. Little more is known of him until he sailed as part of the First Fleet, although he records that he had spent time in the West Indies and his service record shows that he was promoted to Captain-Lieutenant in September 1782 and went on half-pay in May 1786.

In October 1788, Robert Ross made a list of marines who wanted to stay in Australia either as soldiers or settlers. Tench headed the list as 'a soldier for one tour more of three years.' Among his achievements in the fledgling colony of New South Wales Tench was the first European to discover the Nepean River. Tench's accounts were influenced by the liberalism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the idea of the noble savage. He thus writes with some sympathy of the Aborigines. His writings include much information about the Aborigines of Sydney, the Gadigal and Cammeraygal (whom he referred to as "Indians"). He was friendly with Bennelong, Barangaroo and several others. He stayed in Sydney until December 1791 when he sailed home on the HMS Gorgon, arriving in Plymouth in July 1792.

The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826) is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper. It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known. The Pathfinder, published 14 years later in 1840, is its sequel.
The story is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. During this war, the French depended on its Native American allies to help fight the more numerous British colonists in the Northeast frontier areas.
Cooper named a principal character Uncas, after a well-known Mohegan sachem (a head chief) who had been an ally of the English in 17th-century Connecticut. By using this name, Cooper seemed to confuse the Mohegan with the Mahican, a tribe historically based in New York along the Hudson River, closer to the central Mohawk Valley territory he also wrote about.
The novel was one of the most popular in English in its time, although critics identified narrative flaws. Its length and formal prose style have limited its appeal to later readers, yet The Last of the Mohicans remains widely read in American literature courses. It has been adapted numerous times for films, TV movies and cartoons.

At the time of Cooper's writing, many people believed that the Native Americans were disappearing, and would ultimately be assimilated or fail to survive. Especially in the East, their numbers continued to decline. At the same time, the author was interested with the period on the frontier of transition, when more colonists were increasing pressure on the Native Americans.
He set the novel during the Seven Years' War, an international conflict between England and France which had a front in North America. Also known on that continent as the French and Indian War, the conflict arrayed British colonial settlers and minimal regular forces, with Indian allies on one side; against royal French forces, together with their various Native American allies. The war was fought primarily along the frontiers of the British colonies from Virginia to Nova Scotia.
In the Spring of 1757, Lieutenant Colonel George Monro became garrison commander of Fort William Henry, located on Lake George (New York) in the Province of New York. In early August, Major General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and 7,000 troops besieged the fort. On 2 August General Webb, who commanded the area from his base at Fort Edward, sent 200 regulars and 800 Massachusetts militia to reinforce the garrison at William Henry. In the novel, this is the relief column with which Monro's daughters travel.
Monro sent messengers south to Fort Edward on the 3rd, but Webb refused to send any of his estimated 1,600 men north, because they were all that stood between the French and Albany. He wrote to Munro on 4 August that he should negotiate the best terms possible; this communication was intercepted and delivered to Montcalm. In Cooper's version, the missive was being carried by Hawkeye when he, and it, fell into French hands.
On 7 August Montcalm sent men to the fort under a truce flag to deliver Webb's dispatch. By then the fort's walls had been breached, many of its guns were useless, and the garrison had taken significant casualties. After another day of bombardment by the French, Monro raised the white flag and agreed to withdraw under parole.
When the withdrawal began, some of Montcalm's Indian allies, angered at the lost opportunity for loot, attacked the British column. Cooper's account of the attack and aftermath is lurid and somewhat inaccurate. A detailed reconstruction of the action and its aftermath indicates that the final tally of British missing and dead ranges from 69 to 184; more than 500 British were taken captive.

Cora and Alice Munro, daughters of Lieutenant Colonel Munro, are traveling with a column of reinforcements from Fort Edward to Fort William Henry, where Munro is commanding an army. In the party are David Gamut, the singing teacher, and Major Duncan Heyward, the group's military leader.
Magua, a Huron scout allied with the French, leads them into an ambush. Natty Bumppo (also known as Hawkeye) and his two Mohican friends, Chingachgook and his son Uncas, rescue the party just in time. Knowing that Magua (also known as Le Renard Subtil, the cunning fox) will soon return with reinforcements, Hawkeye and the Mohicans lead their new companions to a nearby cave. A group of Hurons sent by Magua chase them into the cave. After a fierce struggle, Hawkeye and his friends decide to split up the group for safety. Hawkeye and the Mohicans hide in a nearby stream, while Heyward, Gamut, and the Munro sisters retreat into the cavern.
Magua returns with more Hurons and captures the four in the cave. The Hurons take their captives to a stream, where they rest briefly. The Hurons interrogate Heyward, who tells them that Hawkeye and the Mohicans have escaped. He learns from them that Uncas's nickname is the Bounding Elk and that Hawkeye is referred to as the Long Rifle or La Longue Carabine.
When Cora demands why the Hurons were so eager to capture them, Magua says that Colonel Munro and the English introduced him to firewater, causing him to get drunk and be expelled from his tribe. He allied with the Mohawks, but continued to drink. After Munro had him whipped after some drunken disorder, Magua returned to the Hurons and is leading them in revenge against the English. He offers to spare the party if Cora will go with him as his wife to the Huron village, but she refuses.
Hawkeye, Uncas, and Chingachgook return and ambush the Hurons, killing most of them. Magua escapes. Heyward and Hawkeye lead the Munro women to Fort William Henry, now surrounded by the French.
Munro sends Hawkeye to Fort Edward for reinforcements. While bearing General Webb's reply, he is captured by the French, who deliver him to Fort William Henry without the letter. Heyward tries to parley with the French, but learns nothing. He returns to Colonel Munro and announces his love for Alice. Munro reveals that Cora's mother was of mixed race of African ancestry from the West Indies, and gives his permission for Heyward's courtship.
The French general, Montcalm, invites Munro to a parley. He shows him Webb's letter: the English general has refused to send reinforcements. Realizing that his cause is lost, Munro agrees to Montcalm's terms. The British soldiers, together with their wounded, and women and children, are allowed to leave the fort and withdraw. Outside the fort, the column is set upon by 2000 Indian warriors. In the chaos of the massacre, Magua finds Cora and Alice, and leads them away toward the Huron village. David Gamut follows them.
Three days later, Hawkeye and the Mohicans, Heyward, and Colonel Munro enter the ruins of Fort William Henry. The next morning they follow Magua's trail. Outside the Huron village, they come across David Gamut. The Huron consider him mad for all his singing and won't kill him. Gamut says that Alice is being held in this village, Cora in one belonging to the Lenape (Delaware) tribe, and Magua is hunting. Disguised as a French medicine man, Heyward enters the Huron village with Gamut, intending to rescue Alice. Hawkeye and Uncas set out to rescue Cora. Chingachgook remains with Colonel Munro, who has become somewhat deranged as a result of events.
Before Heyward can find Alice, Uncas is led into the village, having been captured by the Hurons. Magua returns, and demands that Uncas be put to death, but does not recognise Heyward. Hawkeye steals a bearskin and disguises himself while following Heyward. They rescue Alice, wrapping her in cloth and convincing the Hurons that she is someone the French "medicine man" has to heal. As Heyward carries Alice toward the Lenape village, Gamut and the disguised Hawkeye return to the village to rescue Uncas.
His guards recognize the bear suit and allow the two to pass. Uncas dons the bear skin while Hawkeye dresses as Gamut and begins to sing. Gamut stays behind. Uncus and Hawkeye flee to the Delaware village.
Discovering Gamut, the Hurons realize that Uncas has escaped. They find Magua, bound and gagged in the cave. Learning of how they were deceived the warriors become enraged. The Hurons vow revenge.
Magua goes to the Lenape village, where he demands the return of his prisoners, and warns the Lenape of La Longue Carabine's reputation. A chief asks the prisoners who is the "long rifle". Heyward, mistaking Hawkeye's wishes, claims he is the man. Hawkeye also claims the title, and Tamemund makes them do a shooting match, which Hawkeye wins.
Tamenund at first grants Magua's wish to keep his prisoners, but Cora begs him to reconsider. She eventually begs him to hear from a Delaware warrior, referring to Uncas.
When first taken there, Uncas had offended the Delaware. They tear off his clothing and see a turtle tattoo on his chest, the symbol of his clan. Tamenund accedes to all Uncas asks and frees the prisoners, except for Cora, as she belongs to Magua. Magua reluctantly agrees to Uncas's demands but says he will keep Cora. Hawkeye had offered himself as sacrifice, but Magua refuses. Uncas and Heyward both vow to hunt down and kill Magua and rescue Cora.
According to custom, Tamenund has agreed to give Magua a three-hour head start before permitting the Delaware to pursue to try to rescue Cora. As the Delaware prepare for battle, Gamut arrives. He said he saw Magua and Cora at the Huron village, and she was hidden in the cave where they earlier found Alice. The Delaware go off to confront the Huron.
The Delaware are in three parties: one led by Hawkeye and Heyward, one by Uncas, and one by Chingachgook and Munro. They force the Huron back to their village with heavy losses and finally take the village. Magua escapes with Cora and two of his warriors; Uncas, Hawkeye, and Heyward pursue them through the mountains. Cora stops on a rocky ledge, refusing to continue. When Uncas attacks the Huron, both he and Cora are killed. Hawkeye arrives and shoots Magua.
The novel concludes with a lengthy account of the funerals of Uncas and Cora. The Lenni Lenape sing that Uncas and Cora will marry in the afterlife. Hawkeye renews his friendship with Chingachgook. Tamenund prophesies, "The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again...."

Characters

Magua (ma-gwah) – the villain; a Huron chief driven from his tribe for drunkenness and later whipped by British soldiers; also known as Le Renard Subtil or "Sly Fox."
Chingachgook (now it is usually pronounced chin-GATCH-gook) – last chief of the Mohican tribe; escort to the Munro sisters, father to Uncas. His name was a Unami Delaware word meaning "Big Snake."
Uncas – the son of Chingachgook and the titular "Last of the Mohicans" (meaning the last pure-blooded Mohican born).
Natty Bumppo/ Hawkeye – Oeil de Faucon; a frontiersman who, becomes an escort to the Munro sisters. Known to the Indians and the French as La longue carabine, because of his long rifle and skills.
Cora Munro – dark-haired daughter of Colonel Munro. Cora is serious and intelligent, calm in the face of danger. Her mother, whom Munro met and married in the West Indies, was a mulatto, "descended, remotely" from slaves. Scholars have sometimes termed Cora a quadroon and called her "the first tragic mulatta in American literature."
Alice Munro – Cora's blonde half-sister is cheerful, playful, and charming. She is the daughter of Alice Graham, whom Munro married later in life after his first wife died.
Colonel Munro – the sisters' father, a British army colonel in command of Fort William Henry.
Duncan Heyward – a British army major from Virginia who falls in love with Alice Munro.
David Gamut – a psalmodist (teacher of psalm singing), also known as "the singing master".
General Daniel Webb – Colonel Munro's commanding officer, who takes command at Fort Edward.
General Marquis de Montcalm – the French commander-in-chief, referred to by the Hurons and other Indian allies of the French as "The great white father of the Canadas".
Tamenund – An ancient, wise, and revered Delaware Indian sage who has outlived three generations of warriors. He is the "Sachem" of the Delaware (Lenape).

According to Susan Fenimore Cooper, the author's eldest daughter, Cooper first conceived the idea for the book while visiting the Adirondack Mountains in 1825 with a party of English gentlemen. The party passed through the Catskills, an area with which Cooper was already familiar, and about which he had written in his first novel featuring Natty: The Pioneers. They passed on to Lake George and Glens Falls.
Impressed with the caves behind the falls, one member of the party suggested that "here was the very scene for a romance." Susan Cooper says that Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, made this remark. Cooper promised Stanley "that a book should actually be written, in which these caves should have a place; the, idea of a romance essentially Indian in character then first suggesting itself to his mind."
Cooper began work on the novel immediately. He and his family stayed for the summer in a cottage belonging to a friend, situated on the Long Island shore of the Sound, opposite Blackwell's Island, not far from Hallett's Cove (the area is now part of Astoria). He wrote quickly and completed the novel in the space of three or four months. He suffered a serious illness thought to have been brought on by sunstroke and, at one point, he dictated the outline of the fight between Magua and Chingachgook (12th chapter), to his wife, who thought that he was delirious.
In the novel, Hawkeye refers to Lake George as the Horican. Cooper felt that Lake George was too plain, while the French name, Le Lac du St. Sacrament, was "too complicated". Horican he found on an old map of the area; it was a French transliteration of a native group who had once lived in the area.
Cooper grew up in Cooperstown, New York, the frontier town founded by his father. His daughter said that as a young man he had few opportunities to meet and talk with Native Americans: "occasionally some small party of the Oneidas, or other representatives of the Five Nations, had crossed his path in the valley of the Susquehanna River, or on the shores of Lake Ontario, where he served when a midshipman in the navy." He read what sources were available at the time—Heckewelder, Charlevoix, William Penn, Smith, Elliot, Colden, Lang, Lewis and Clark, and Mackenzie.
By using the name Uncas for one of his characters, he seemed to confuse the two regional tribes: the Mohegan of Connecticut, of which Uncas had been a well-known sachem, and the Mahican of upstate New York. The popularity of Cooper's book helped spread the confusion.
In the period when Cooper was writing, deputations from the Western tribes frequently traveled through the region along the Mohawk River, on their way to New York or Washington, DC. He made a point of visiting these parties as they passed through Albany and New York. On several occasions, he followed them all the way to Washington to observe them for longer. He also talked to the military officers and interpreters who accompanied them.

The novel was first published in 1826 by Carey & Lea, of Philadelphia. According to Susan Cooper, its success was "greater than that of any previous book from the same pen" and "in Europe the book produced quite a startling effect."
Cooper's novels were popular, but reviewers were often critical, or dismissive. For example, the reviewer of the London Magazine (May 1826) described the novel as "clearly by much the worst of Mr Cooper's performances."Mark Twain notabley derided the author in his essay, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," published in North American Review (July 1895). Twain complained that Cooper lacked a variety of style and was overly wordy. In the essay, Twain re-writes a small section of The Last of the Mohicans, claiming that Cooper, "the generous spendthrift", used 100 "extra and unnecessary words" in the original version.
Re-reading the book in his later years, Cooper noted some inconsistencies of plot and characterization, particularly the character of Munro. But, he wrote that in general, "the book must needs have some interest for the reader, since it could amuse even the writer, who had in a great measure forgotten the details of his own work."

The Last of the Mohicans has been James Fenimore Cooper's most popular work. It has continued as one of the most widely read novels throughout the world, and it has influenced popular opinion about American Indians and the frontier period of eastern American history. The romanticized images of the strong, fearless, and ever resourceful frontiersman (i.e., Natty Bumppo), as well as the stoic, wise, and noble "red man" (i.e., Chingachgook) were notions derived from Cooper's characterizations more than from anywhere else. The phrase, "the last of the Mohicans," has come to represent the sole survivor of a noble race or type.

Films
A number of films have been based on the lengthy book, making various cuts, compressions, and changes. The American adaptations include:
a 1912 version starring James Cruze,
The Last of the Mohicans (1920), starring Wallace Beery;
The Last of the Mohicans (1932), a serial version starring Harry Carey;
The Last of the Mohicans (1936) starring Randolph Scott and Bruce Cabot;
Last of the Mohicans (1963) starring Jack Taylor. Jose Marco, Luis Induni and Daniel Martin;
The Last of the Mohicans (1971), another serial produced by the BBC; and
The Last of the Mohicans (1992), starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
The 1920 film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. According to the director Michael Mann, his 1992 version was based more on the 1936 film version. Mann admits that he believes Cooper's novel is "not a very good book," finding issue -- in particular -- with Cooper's sympathy for the Euro-Americans and their seize of control over the American Indians' riches.
In Germany, Der Letzte der Mohikaner, with Béla Lugosi as Chingachgook, was the second part of the two-part Lederstrumpf film released in 1920. Based on the same series of the novels, Chingachgook die Grosse Schlange (Chingachgook the Great Serpent), starring Gojko Mitic as Chingachgook, appeared in East Germany in 1967, and became popular throughout the Eastern Bloc.
Stage drama
Since 2010, Last of the Mohicans Outdoor Drama, Inc. has presented a full-length dramatic version of The Last of the Mohicans. It was adapted for the stage by the author Michael Dufault and has been produced by Steven O'Connor at various locations in the Lake George, New York region.
Comics

Issue #4.
Classic Comics #4, The Last of the Mohicans, first published 1942.
Marvel Comics has published two versions of the story: in 1976 a one-issue version as part of their Marvel Classics Comics series (issue #13). In 2007, they published a six-issue mini-series to start off the new Marvel Illustrated series.
Radio
The Last of the Mohicans was adapted for radio in two one-hour episodes directed by Michael Fox and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1995 (subsequently on BBC Radio 7), with Michael Fiest, Philip Franks, Helen McCrory and Naomi Radcliffe.
TV
A Canadian-produced TV series, Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans in 1957 with Lon Chaney, Jr..
The British Broadcasting Corporation made an eight-chapter TV serial of the book in 1971, with Philip Madoc as Magua, Kenneth Ives as Hawkeye and John Abineri as Chingachgook. Some critics believe this to be the most faithful and the best adaptation.
In a 1977 American made-for-TV movie, Steve Forrest starred as Hawkeye with Ned Romero as Chingachgook and Don Shanks as Uncas.
In the movie and the TV series M*A*S*H, the character of Benjamin Franklin Pierce was nicknamed "Hawkeye" by his father from the Last of the Mohicans.
Animation
In 2004, an animated Italian TV series version (originally named L'ultimo dei Mohicani) was produced by MondoTV and RaiFiction in association with The Animation Band and Studio Sek, consisting of 26 episodes.
Opera
In 1977, Lake George Opera presented an opera version The Last of the Mohicans by composer Alva Henderson.
Parody
In 2011, The Last of the Mohicans was parodied as The Last of the Meheecans in an episode of the popular animated series South Park.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere) is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss. Along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The Mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The Wedding-Guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience and fear to fascination as the Mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: for example, Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create either a sense of danger, of the supernatural or of serenity, depending on the mood of each of the different parts of the poem.
The Mariner's tale begins with his ship departing on its journey. Despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven south off course by a storm and eventually reaches Antarctica. An albatross appears and leads them out of the Antarctic but, even as the albatross is praised by the ship's crew, the Mariner shoots the bird ("with my cross-bow / I shot the albatross"). The crew is angry with the Mariner, believing the albatross brought the south wind that led them out of the Antarctic. However, the sailors change their minds when the weather becomes warmer and the mist disappears ("'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay / that bring the fog and mist"). However, they made a grave mistake in supporting this crime as it arouses the wrath of spirits who then pursue the ship "from the land of mist and snow"; the south wind that had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship into uncharted waters, where it is becalmed.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

Here, however, the sailors change their minds again and blame the Mariner for the torment of their thirst. In anger, the crew forces the Mariner to wear the dead albatross about his neck, perhaps to illustrate the burden he must suffer from killing it, or perhaps as a sign of regret ("Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks / Had I from old and young! / Instead of the cross, the albatross / About my neck was hung"). Eventually, the ship encounters a ghostly vessel. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-Death" (a deathly-pale woman), who are playing dice for the souls of the crew. With a roll of the dice, Death wins the lives of the crew members and Life-in-Death the life of the Mariner, a prize she considers more valuable. Her name is a clue as to the Mariner's fate; he will endure a fate worse than death as punishment for his killing of the albatross.
One by one, all of the crew members die, but the Mariner lives on, seeing for seven days and nights the curse in the eyes of the crew's corpses, whose last expressions remain upon their faces. Eventually, the Mariner's curse is temporarily lifted when he sees sea creatures swimming in the water. Despite his cursing them as "slimy things" earlier in the poem ("Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs / upon the slimy sea"), he suddenly sees their true beauty and blesses them ("a spring of love gush'd from my heart and I bless'd them unaware"); suddenly, as he manages to pray, the albatross falls from his neck and his guilt is partially expiated. The bodies of the crew, possessed by good spirits, rise again and steer the ship back home, where it sinks in a whirlpool, leaving only the Mariner behind. A hermit on the mainland had seen the approaching ship and had come to meet it with a pilot and the pilot's boy in a boat. When they pull him from the water, they think he is dead, but when he opens his mouth, the pilot has a fit. The hermit prays, and the Mariner picks up the oars to row. The pilot's boy goes crazy and laughs, thinking the Mariner is the devil, and says, "The Devil knows how to row." As penance for shooting the albatross, the Mariner, driven by guilt, is forced to wander the earth, tell his story, and teach a lesson to those he meets:
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
After relating the story, the Mariner leaves, and the Wedding Guest returns home, and wakes the next morning "a sadder and a wiser man".

The poem may have been inspired by James Cook's second voyage of exploration (1772–1775) of the South Seas and the Pacific Ocean; Coleridge's tutor, William Wales, was the astronomer on Cook's flagship and had a strong relationship with Cook. On this second voyage Cook crossed three times into the Antarctic Circle to determine whether the fabled great southern continent existed. Critics have also opined that the poem may have been inspired by the voyage of Thomas James into the Arctic. "Some critics think that Coleridge drew upon James's account of hardship and lamentation in writing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
According to William Wordsworth, the poem was inspired while Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Wordsworth's sister Dorothy were on a walking tour through the Quantock Hills in Somerset in the spring of 1798. The discussion had turned to a book that Wordsworth was reading, A Voyage Round The World by Way of the Great South Sea (1726) by Captain George Shelvocke. In the book, a melancholy sailor, Simon Hatley, shoots a black albatross:
We all observed, that we had not the sight of one fish of any kind, since we were come to the Southward of the streights of le Mair, nor one sea-bird, except a disconsolate black Albatross, who accompanied us for several days ..., till Hattley, (my second Captain) observing, in one of his melancholy fits, that this bird was always hovering near us, imagin'd, from his colour, that it might be some ill omen. ... He, after some fruitless attempts, at length, shot the Albatross, not doubting we should have a fair wind after it.
As they discussed Shelvocke's book, Wordsworth proffers the following developmental critique to Coleridge, which importantly contains a reference to tutelary spirits: "Suppose you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the south sea, and the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime." By the time the trio finished their walk, the poem had taken shape.
Bernard Martin argues in The Ancient Mariner and the Authentic Narrative that Coleridge was also influenced by the life of Anglican clergyman John Newton, who had a near-death experience aboard a slave ship.
The poem may also have been inspired by the legends of the Wandering Jew, who was forced to wander the earth until Judgement Day for taunting Jesus on the day of the Crucifixion, and of the Flying Dutchman.
The poem received mixed reviews from critics, and Coleridge was once told by the publisher that most of the book's sales were to sailors who thought it was a naval songbook. Coleridge made several modifications to the poem over the years. In the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, published in 1800 (see 1800 in poetry), he replaced many of the archaic words.

In Biographia Literaria XIV, Coleridge writes:
The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural, and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life...In this idea originated the plan of the 'Lyrical Ballads'; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least Romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. ... With this view I wrote the 'Ancient Mariner'.
In Table Talk, 1830–32, Coleridge wrote:
Mrs Barbauld told me that the only faults she found with the Ancient Mariner were — that it was improbable and had no moral. As for the probability — to be sure that might admit some question — but I told her that in my judgment the poem had moral, and that too openly obtruded on the reader, It ought to have no more moral than the story of the merchant sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well and throwing the shells aside, and the Genii starting up and saying he must kill the merchant, because a date shell had put out the eye of the Genii's son.

Wordsworth wrote to Joseph Cottle in 1799:
From what I can gather it seems that the Ancient Mariner has upon the whole been an injury to the volume, I mean that the old words and the strangeness of it have deterred readers from going on. If the volume should come to a second Edition I would put in its place some little things which would be more likely to suit the common taste.
However, when Lyrical Ballads was reprinted, Wordsworth included it despite Coleridge's objections, writing:
The Poem of my Friend has indeed great defects; first, that the principal person has no distinct character, either in his profession of Mariner, or as a human being who having been long under the control of supernatural impressions might be supposed himself to partake of something supernatural; secondly, that he does not act, but is continually acted upon; thirdly, that the events having no necessary connection do not produce each other; and lastly, that the imagery is somewhat too laboriously accumulated. Yet the Poem contains many delicate touches of passion, and indeed the passion is every where true to nature, a great number of the stanzas present beautiful images, and are expressed with unusual felicity of language; and the versification, though the metre is itself unfit for long poems, is harmonious and artfully varied, exhibiting the utmost powers of that metre, and every variety of which it is capable. It therefore appeared to me that these several merits (the first of which, namely that of the passion, is of the highest kind) gave to the Poem a value which is not often possessed by better Poems.

Upon its release, the poem was criticised for being obscure and difficult to read. It was also criticised for using archaic words, not in keeping with Romanticism. In 1815–16, Coleridge added to the poem marginal notes (still deliberately written in an archaic style) that gloss the text, ostensibly explaining the meaning of verses. While the poem was originally published in the collection of Lyrical Ballads, the 1817 version was published in his collection entitled Sibylline Leaves (see 1817 in poetry).
The gloss describes the poem as an account of sin and restoration. While some critics see the gloss as spelling out clearly the moral of the tale, others point to the inaccuracies and illogicalities of the gloss and interpret it as the voice of a dramatized character that only serves to highlight the poem's cruel meaninglessness. In particular, Charles Lamb, who had deeply admired the original for its attention to "Human Feeling", claimed that the gloss distanced the audience from the narrative, weakening the poem's effects.

The poem on the surface explores violation of nature and its resulting psychological effects on the Mariner, who interprets the fates of his crew to be a direct result of his having shot down an albatross. Although the poem is often read as a Christian allegory, Jerome McGann argues that it is really a story of our salvation of Christ, rather than the other way round. The structure of the poem, according to McGann, is influenced by Coleridge's interest in higher criticism, and its function "was to illustrate a significant continuity of meaning between cultural phenomena that seemed as diverse as pagan superstitions, Catholic theology, Aristotelian science, and contemporary philological theory, to name only a few of the work's ostentatiously present materials."
In his 1946-47 essay "The Mariner and the Albatross", George Whalley suggests that the Ancient Mariner is an autobiographical portrait of Coleridge himself, comparing the Mariner's loneliness with Coleridge's own feelings of loneliness expressed in his letters and journals.