BOOK REVIEWS

Lewis R. Fischer, Harald Hamre, Poul that by Nicholas Rodger on "Shipboard Life Holm, Jaap R. Bruijn (eds.). The North Sea: in the Georgian Navy," has very little to do Twelve Essays on Social History of Maritime with the North Sea and the same remark Labour. Stavanger: Stavanger Maritime applies to Paul van Royen's essay on "Re• Museum, 1992.216 pp., illustrations, figures, cruitment Patterns of the Dutch Merchant photographs, tables. NOK 150 + postage & Marine in the Seventeenth to Nineteenth packing, cloth; ISBN 82-90054-34-3. Centuries." On the other hand, Professor Lewis Fischer's "Around the Rim: Seamens' This book comprises the papers delivered at Wages in North Sea Ports, 1863-1900," a conference held at Stavanger, Norway, in James Coull's "Seasonal Fisheries Migration: August 1989. This was the third North Sea The Case of the Migration from Scotland to conference organised by the Stavanger the East Anglian Autumn Herring Fishery" Maritime Museum. The first was held at the and four other papers dealing with different Utstein Monastery in Stavanger Fjord in aspects of fishing industries are directly June 1978, and the second in Sandbjerg related to the conferences' central themes. Castle, Denmark in October 1979. The pro• One of the most interesting of these is Joan ceedings of these meetings were published Pauli Joensen's paper on the Faroe fishery in one volume by the Norwegian University in the age of the handline smack—a study Press, Oslo, in 1985 in identical format to which describes an age of transition in the volume under review, under the title The social, economic and technical terms. North Sea: A Highway of Economic and Cul• James Coull inevitably touches on the tural Exchange and led to the formation of a employment of women in the Scottish fish• number of North Sea Societies in different ing industry but the main paper on the countries bordering the sea, and to an involvement of females with the sea, Brit Association of North Sea Societies, one of Berggreen's "Dealing with Anomalies? Ap• the objects of which is to continue the proaching Maritime Women" is disappoint• conferences on a bi-annual basis. ing and the commentator, Karel Davids, The papers presented at the third con• asks some pertinent questions. Your ference were concerned mainly with the use reviewer feels that Berggreen might have got of the North Sea as a source of food and new angles on her subject from that classic routes for transport. The organisers decided of its kind, James W. Balano's The Log of that contributions should concentrate on the Skipper's Wife (Camden, Maine, 1979). social, rather than technical or economic Here is a first-class, first-hand account of aspects of their subjects. Each paper is the role at sea of the wife of an American followed by comments by an appropriate merchant shipmaster, free of sociological authority present at the conference. jargon or self conscious feminism. Inevitably the closeness of the papers' subjects to the North Sea theme varies. One Basil Greenhill of the most interesting and valuable papers, Saltash, Cornwall

49 50 The Northern Mariner

Finnur Magnusson. The Hidden Class: comparison with "culture building and class Culture and Class in a Maritime Setting. formation" in other societies, both European Iceland 1880-1942. Aarhus, Denmark: Aar- industrial capitalist societies and with other hus University Press, 1990. 160 pp., maps, maritime societies, especially around the figures, photographs, bibliography. DKK North Atlantic. 220, cloth; ISBN 87-7288-279-4. Magnusson's perspective is theoretically informed by broad familiarity with critical This thoughtful volume explores the histori• anthropological studies in Scandinavian cal and recalled experience of life in two maritime ethnology. He eschews the evolu• small villages—Eyrarbakki and Stokkseyri- tionary and materialist bias of others in on Iceland's south coast. In eleven highly favour of "culture and human agency in informative and well illustrated chapters the social change," a dynamic theoretical per• author delivers an object lesson in the actual spective inspired by E.P. Thompson, the complexity of small maritime communities Swedish scholar Mats Lindqvist, Gerald that are often misconceived as rather Sider, and others. For Magnusson, class con• socially and culturally homogenous. Magnus- sciousness emerges from struggle rather son takes the reader through a highly soph• than the other way around, demonstrating isticated ethnohistorical examination of the this viewpoint through a presentation of data "cultural formation of a working class and from a diverse body of ethno-historical ac• working class consciousness among [Ice• counts and interviews, both by others and land's] maritime proletarians in 1880-1942." himself. The volume is structured around three Perhaps more than any other maritime themes. 1) Change in Icelandic society in the scholar to date, Magnusson reveals how the nineteenth century which led to permanently day worker-proletarians and landless of settled "maritime urban communities" (the Iceland operated within a moral economy of two villages described, and others). Emerg• old beliefs about rights and unwritten laws ence of class consciousness figures centrally that supported their claim to rights. These here, as the landless struggle against a triple conditions made their history more like that bondage imposed by land ownership, traders of changing agrarian peasantries than indus• and their middlemen, and fishing. 2) Rela• trial societies. Each reader will have his or tionships between labourers and merchants. her special reasons for valuing what the 3) The "creation of ideas and attitudes author accomplishes here. For my part, I attached to work" in the ordinary life of find his discussion and analysis of worker- labourers. Work is revealed to have many and fishermen-relations with fish merchants meanings, "ranging from freedom to per• particularly invaluable. It makes sense of a sonal reputation...," in and outside of groups. relationship widely portrayed and not very The result is a rich human document well comprehended under the heading that is both testimony and discovery of the "paternalistic" in terms of a tense moral diverse and harsh life experience of an older economy where both merchant and workers generation. It is an ethnohistorical window are bound by constant fears of lost employ• on general changes in Icelandic society ment and economic wherewithal, exploita• (especially during the late nineteenth cen• tion, suspicion, destruction of reputation, tury to World War H) and contributes im• and reciprocal rumour and character des• portantly to social anthropological scholar• truction. In the context of small commun• ship, European ethnology, and maritime his• ities where the lines and connections tory. Scholars who seek to understand the between people are many and unavoidable, nature and course of maritime societies and the stresses in this relationship are usually cultures will find this account invaluable for hidden by a thin disguise of non-antagonistic Book Reviews 51

personal relationships on a day-to-day basis. The data on which this account is based This study illustrates the dual realities of reveal the resourcefulness of an accomp• North Atlantic maritime ethnography, the lished ethnohistorian. Magnusson uses: literature on these societies has grown internal migration records that reveal a pop• greatly in the last quarter century to the ulation constantly on the road, regularly re• point where comparison and the search for turning to Eyrarbakki and Stokkseyri during general processes and theory is a realistic the period 1882-1901, and an economy high• aim. Yet, in each part of this area, its chang• ly dependent upon migratory labour; local ing societies command new and deeper history, local municipal records (1919-1936) study, instructed by distinctive environ• and poor relief; the archive book on local mental-ecological realities, changing family government 1907-1919, which reveals poor and community life, and economies and relief and distress, with letters from labour• political life and values. Hence study of ers and tenants that illustrate views of pov• Iceland's maritime working class culture erty and its handling; Danish merchant rec• contributes importantly to this purpose. ords 1880-1920 that reveal relations between Such research is desirable not simply for company, farmers, fishers; especially Minute academic understanding. Iceland's fisheries, records of local labour unions, where a new like those of other North Atlantic fishing consciousness emerges 1910-1942. But much countries, especially Norway, Canada, and of the data consists of forty interviews with Faroes, now experience unprecedented twenty-six people taped during 1984-1986. social and political crises due to resource While Magnusson speaks of the content of failures in state managed fisheries and wider the interviews, he says little about the indi• economic and political developments. Where vidual informants, permitting their accounts each of these countries goes from here to speak for themselves. Interview material should be instructed by a sound understand• is used in the text as "examples of individual ing of their respective "histories" in the situations and life cycles." He also drew broadest sense, and what their peoples are from a rich literary tradition on local his• in social and cultural terms. tories, but found that their value varies. The We should note that, as Magnusson author devotes some time to justifying the stresses, our academic understanding of partial, fragmentary nature of material. It is Iceland's relatively small society is built perhaps unnecessary in our time. upon false images of social homogeneity and The Hidden Class is a valuable contribu• traditional stasis, mythic images borne of tion to our understanding of Iceland's mari• folklore's preoccupation with Iceland's time/fishing social life and to the social popular culture. Iceland had long been a anthropology of maritime societies and cul• society divided between landowners and tures. Magnusson's ethnography and inter• landless. Its fishing proletariat emerges from pretive approach offer important lessons for the latter. And before Iceland's twentieth- understanding other North Atlantic coastal century adoption of industrial fisheries, societies and the changes they face. As the fishing had been an important component of first volume in a new North Atlantic mono• its primarily agrarian society. Magnusson graph series, Aarhus University Press sets a argues that scholars, especially historians, fine and compellingly interesting standard. have not illuminated this historical relation• Future volumes should be of great interest ship. Rather, they were preoccupied with to readers. And Magnusson's subsequent economic cycles, legal reforms, and Airing publications should draw wide attention. debates. In result, there was neglect of "aspects of everyday life, [and] descriptions Raoul Andersen of the working class " St. John's, Newfoundland 52 The Northern Mariner

Stephen J. Hornsby. Nineteenth Century omy than society, and economic production Cape Breton: A Historical Geography. takes precedence over an analysis of dis• Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, tribution and marketing. There are, for 1992. xxvi + 274 pp., maps, figures, tables, example, detailed maps of the physical en• photographs, bibliography, index. $44.95, dowment (topography, soils, forest zones), cloth; ISBN 0-7735-0889-9. of crown land grants from 1786-1880, of improved land, livestock, butter production, Cape Breton has a long and complex Euro• of fishermen and their catch, coal produc• pean past. Migrants from France and the tion, and of population. Each of the three Basque country had reached its shores by economies spawned different settlement 1600 and, following the loss of traditional forms and social structures. Although given fishing grounds in Newfoundland's south less attention, it is the intricate cultural coast in 1713, the French intensified their geography of Cape Breton-patterns of fishery on the neighbouring island. Louis- ethnicity, kinship, language, religion - that bourg replaced Plaisance as a regional captivates. Hornsby's reconstruction of capital; by 1750 it was one of the busiest Scottish migration and the adaptations ports in North America. There is a rich and forced by new conditions in a frontier set• sophisticated literature now on patterns of ting is a major contribution to the literature. everyday life for the French period. The As a staples-producing colony, Cape British period, commencing with the capture Breton conducted a vigorous commerce of Louisbourg in 1758, is less well known overseas through the nineteenth century. from this perspective. Stephen Hornsby has Shipping is not a central theme in this produced for the crucial nineteenth century volume, but it was vital and the author's what scholars such as Donovan, Johnston holistic approach ensures maritime enter• and Moore have done for the early eight• prise is given considerable attention. Ship• eenth: an intimate portrait of society, econ• ping returns, merchant letter books, newspa• omy and settlement on the island. His vol• pers, and census data are combined to re• ume differs in the close attention paid to the construct intricate trade routes, both local spatial distribution of activities. These pat• and international, and mercantile strategies. terns are subtle, the result of complex pro• Two thirds of the island's population cesses, and in attempting to explain them depended on the cod fishery in 1800. It was the author provides what is probably the an international economy with headquarters most comprehensive account of Cape Bret• mainly in Jersey and markets in the West on's nineteenth century experience to date. Indies and southern Europe. A triangular Hornsby's historical geography has its pattern of shipping evolved, involving Jersey conceptual roots in A.H. Clark's seminal mercantile capital and the movement of Old work on Prince Edward Island. It is organ• World supplies and specialist labour to a ized into two temporal cross-sections focus• colonial island where resident fishermen ing on the early and late nineteenth century; were preponderant in the production of cod each section has common themes that dis• for distant markets. By mid-century, in the cuss processes of change. The book begins wake of massive Scottish immigration, agri• with a chapter on the human geography of culture was the leading occupation. Farm Cape Breton in 1800 and ends with a com• exports, with coal, generated extensive parative account in 1891. In between there shipping locally, primarily to St. John's and are chapters on agriculture, fishing and Halifax. Coal, which employed far fewer mining, Scottish immigration, and outmigra- men at the production end, actually domi• tion from the island in the second half of nated outbound cargoes through the century. the century. The emphasis is more on econ• Shipping is discussed in the context of Book Reviews 53 staples theory, where backward linkages or Publishing in 1967, deals admirably with economic spin-offs, such as shipbuilding, both, and twenty-five years later, 77ie develop around the export base or port. Salmon People is surprisingly relevant. Data on shipbuilding are sparse and scat• From 1959 until 1963, McKervill served tered, and the author's graph of its growth at Bella Bella as a United Church minister. and decline as steamers entered local waters During the summer, his Kwakiutl parish• is but one example of the impressive ioners disappeared in fishing boats or into research that has gone into the making of canneries, so he purchased a gill netter and this volume. One would like to see similar went fishing, too. This experience enabled calibrations for other multipliers such as him to gather stories of all the people who barrel-making and small-boat construction, depended on or exploited the salmon- but the sources probably are not there. Indians, fur traders, Chinese, Japanese, Hornsby's geographical instincts lead to cannery owners, cannery workers and fish some interesting conclusions on relationships boat proprietors of every nationality. The between colonization, settlement patterns, book is replete with anecdotes, but most are and shipping. Farmers sold timber off their about Europeans. The Indians (with a few lots to local merchants and traders for vessel exceptions), the Chinese and the Japanese construction, using the capital to further are dealt with as cultural groups, not sur• expand their farms. Some of the more pros• prisingly since integration has been so diffi• perous frontland farmers bypassed the mer• cult for them. He pleads a case for the chants, building or chartering schooners to Indians, their way of life drastically dimin• transport produce to markets. Only 5% of ished by the effects of contact. He also Cape Bretoners lived in towns. The lack of makes clear, by tracing the history of their urban growth, particularly of a single entre• involvement in the fishing industry, that the pot like Louisbourg in the previous century, motivation behind the wartime evacuation of is in part explained by the highly decentra• the Japanese was economic. However, for lized pattern of shipping, involving a dozen the Chinese, displaced early by machinery, ports, to markets within the Atlantic region. he shows less sympathy. He adopts the Surprisingly little has been written on comic tone of the cannery owners as he the maritime history of Cape Breton in the repeats their tales-one a quite horrifying century under review. A comprehensive bib• account of striking Chinese being forced liography lists only a handful of references. back to work by the threat of having their Because of the wealth of data on the island's bunk houses burned down as the indignant economy, particularly the spatial distribution owner splashed gasoline on the walls. of economic production, this is a crucial McKervill is no "social gospeller." His read for any scholar entering the field. sympathy is for the men who established businesses, and he does not begrudge them John Mannion "the just reward of risk." Strike leaders are St. John's, Newfoundland usually seen as threats to the industry. Neither is he above taking a sly poke at Hugh W. McKervill. The Salmon People. some church activity though he clearly Special 25th anniversary edition; North respects the work of medical missionaries. Vancouver, BC: Whitecap Books, 1992. xiv The evocative descriptions of the coast + 198 pp., notes, bibliography. $15.95, make this book a pleasure to read. Port paper; ISBN 1-55110-017-7. Essington, "an organism," and Rivers Inlet are as richly drawn as the individuals and History is, or should be, about people and the cultures. The style is graceful with many place. This book, first issued by Gray's an original turn of phrase to delight the 54 The Northern Mariner

reader, like "the brittle-brained, anti-Asiatic claims were often taken on steep hillsides movement." where the logs were easily skidded into the Though primarily about people, woven water. Who could blame them? throughout is the story of the salmon and I experienced some of the anecdotes she the history of both the canning and the describes with colour and exhilaration while fishing industries. In a brief introduction to visiting friends in Jervis Inlet. There were no this new edition, McKervill discusses recent video-taped movies filled with American vio• developments in the themes he pursued. His lence to corrupt a young child's mind. concerns for the salmon and the salmon Instead, nature, the smell of the forest, the people are no less today than they were lapping of the waves under the floats or twenty-five years ago. peering down into the clear green water of the inlets watching for fish to take a baited Morag Maclachlan fishing line, or exploring the little sheltered Vancouver, British Columbia bays in rowboats was her way of life. Food supply wasn't a big problem then. The for• Florence Tickner. Raincoast Chronicles 14: ests were full of deer and fish were abun• Fish Hooks & Caulk Boots. Madeira Park, dant. There were berries to harvest for jams BC: Harbour Publishing, 1992. 80 pp., pho• and jelly, so there was little time for bore• tographs, sources. $10.95, paper; ISBN 1- dom. Schooling was a problem, so corre• 55017-078-3. spondence was the only answer. Communi• cation with the outside world was by small Here's a story that portrays a young girl's gas boats used by loggers to buy their re• life with her family on a floating logging quirements from outpost trading stores like camp back in the depression era of the Minstrel Island or Echo Bay in Gilford 1930s on the British Columbia coast. There Island. Tickner describes the thrill of meet• are not many BC people today who have ing one of the old Union Steamships that ever seen a floating camp; it's a way of life serviced these remote areas; to hear what• rarely found today. ever news the vessels brought and to receive Tickner knows the subject well having orders of goods purchased in Vancouver. lived with hand loggers, those hardy inde• When a timber claim was logged out, a pendent types that preferred to do things new site was located and the floating camp their way rather than work with others or was moved, usually by a small tug. Florence under hard-driving bosses. They were known didn't mention all the tricks hand-loggers as "gypo" loggers. They worked hard and used to get logs into the water, but I'm sure dangerously for what little money they she's well aware of them. Tugboat skippers earned, but they got by, and rarely went liked their booze, and many were addicted. hungry like so many on relief in the cities. When loggers had problems moving stub• Tickner gives the reader a vivid account of born logs, a bottle would entice a tugboat the gypo loggers. They had small timber owner to pull some logs into the chuck, and claims in places rarely visited by city folk, no one would know the difference. remote inlets such as Knight Inlet, King- The book has sixty photos of floating come Inlet, Bute Inlet, and Jervis Inlet, to camps, of loggers' families, logging oper• name only a few. The loggers were real ations and get-togethers. There are photos characters. Some worked together but others of coastal steamships like the little Comox, were loners. They had many tricks of their the Venture, Cassiar and Chelosin. All in all, trade. Although they had certain areas to Florence Tickner's book is a valuable addi• log, there were times when they yielded to tion about British Columbia's coastal loggers temptation. A few choice trees outside their and their way of life. Because the stories are Book Reviews 55 short anecdotes, the book can be picked up together in a pleasing maritime yarn. One and put aside for brief intervals without leaves the book with a sense of the west losing the plot or essence. As for myself, I coast, and with a good feeling for the per• found it hard to break away from. So will sonalities which give the coastal commun• you. ities their special character. Journeys is not simply a poetic rendering of a passing A.C. (Fred) Rogers coastal lifestyle; Upton provides critical, Qualicum Beach, British Columbia even biting accounts of the dangers, the fear, the constant rain and the rough seas that Joe Upton. Journeys Through the Inside are part of west coast life. Passage: Seafaring Adventures along the Inevitably there are gaps. Aboriginal Coast of British Columbia and Alaska. North people of the coast receive very little atten• Vancouver: Whitecap Books, 1992. 189 pp., tion, leaving the book with a rather narrow maps, illustrations, bibliography, index. sense of coastal life. Unfortunately, Upton $14.95, paper; ISBN 1-55110-000-2. did not make full use of the available litera• ture on the history of the northwest coast, a The west coast has attracted an increased small but rich body of writing which would number of chroniclers in recent years. The have clarified some of Upton's stories and region has lacked the rich published folk added new ones to the list. The book also tradition of the Eastern seaboard, but not focuses on the quixotic—what northerners for want of stories, experiences, disasters often refer to as the "colourful 5%"—rather and lifeways. Recently, the story-tellers and than the ordinary, giving an incomplete publishers have come together producing a impression of the coast and its residents. rich and vibrant literature on west coast One should not look to this book for a maritime life. Upton has contributed signifi• definitive account of the history of the west cantly to this growing body of insightful, coast; Upton makes no claims for inclusive - personal accounts of west coast life. An ness or completeness. His goal was to bring earlier book, Alaska Blues, focused on an understanding of place and of different southeast Alaska; in Journeys Through the times, and in this he generally succeeds. The Inside Passage, he extends his reach some• strength of the book lies with what Upton what to include the British Columbia section knows best, the lives of the fishermen and of the Inside Passage. the nature of the water. As it is, the book is Journeys is an interesting blend of per• a useful memoir and an evocative descrip• sonal narrative and historical account. Using tion of the people who have lived, worked the Inside Passage as the basis for the and died in the cold waters of the Inside book's organization, Upton takes readers up Passage. the passageway by section. For each seg• ment of the journey, he offers poetic des• Ken Coates criptions of the geographic setting, a marin• Prince George, British Columbia er's account of the ocean waters, historical highlights which illustrate the significance of Joan Skogan. Voyages: At Sea With Strangers. each portion of the route, and descriptions Toronto: Harper Collins, 1992. 149 pp. of residents which remind us that the char• $21.95, cloth; ISBN 0-00-223756-6. acter and personality of the places and waterways lay as much in the present as in Joan Skogan has written a book like no the past. other I have read. It is an elegiacally beauti• This is an easy read. His short vignettes ful account of an extraordinary situation. of peoples, places and events are strung Seamen over the centuries have found them- 56 The Northern Mariner

selves in versions of the situation that Sko- how and why these particular men, from gan describes. Male writers, especially from these cultures and political systems got to be middle class backgrounds, have revelled in where they are and how that cultural back• the social and emotional consequences of ground informs their mode of survival and throwing together the rugged individuals relationships. If you read it, you will also who seem to go to sea. But crosscut with learn something of how the sea can mould gender and cultural difference, this descrip• and transform the people who work and live tion of a few voyages in the life of a female on it. It's not an academic lesson, but it is a Canadian fisheries observer becomes a profoundly rich emotional one. microcosm for exploring a whole range of social and emotional relations, responses to Marilyn Porter extreme situations, the sociology of isolated St. John's, Newfoundland groups, gender relations and so on. I have no doubt that her identity as the Cabot Martin. No Fish & Our Lives: Some only woman on the boat or in the fleet, and Survival Notes for Newfoundland. St. John's: her sensitive playing of that part opened Creative Publishers, 1992. xiii + 209 pp., Skogan to privileged accounts of the men map. $14.95, paper; ISBN 1-895387-12-4. she shared her life with. The book contains accounts of Russian, Polish and Canadian This collection of Cabot Martin's columns fishing boats, their crews and their experi• from the now defunct Sunday Express is an ences at sea and in port. Skogan has learnt exercise in consciousness raising. Insofar as and can convey the rich, and very different a central theme can be discerned it would cultures her fellow crew members were appear to be what the author sees as the embedded in. Unusually, she is just as aware disastrous consequences for Newfoundland's of their perception of her, and of how to society, economy, environment, and general build relationships of trust in such circum• culture deriving from destructive fish man• stances. It is a gift most anthropology grad• agement strategies employed or condoned uate students would give their eye teeth for. by the Canadian government and exacer• The life of a fishery observer is not bated by foreign activities within and outside easy. I didn't think it was, but before I read Canada's 200 mile economic zone while the Skogan's book, I didn't know what they Department of External Affairs, uncaring, actually did. She has resisted the temptation impotent, or pusillanimous, looks on. to give us a factual job description, allowing Martin approaches his task as a knight her activities to permeate her description, errant wearing in his helm a splitting mitt as but nor does she shy away from technical his pledge of commitment to the cause of terms, and any reader without at least a the inshore fixed gear fishermen. His grail is passing glossary of fishing and nautical the conservation of fish stocks and, perhaps terms is going to get lost from time to more significantly, the conservation of a time—not that it would matter. This book is Newfoundland coastal community made not about being a fisheries observer as such. viable through a revived inshore fishery, Indeed, it is not about the sea, or sea• supplemented perhaps by fish farming, faring as such. Yet the sea, and all that it under the aegis of an enlightened manage• entails, is the inescapable context of Sko• ment regime in which Newfoundland plays gan's account. This could not be a book an important role. The chief dragon to be about woods workers or miners or any other slain in pursuit of his quest is the offshore extreme and isolated context to which men dragger with its monstrously and indiscrimi• go in order to work. Yet it tells us little nately efficient otter trawl whose intrusion directly about ships or sea-faring. It tells us into the spawning domain of the northern Book Reviews 57

cod marked the beginning of the disastrous ated such topical material as would have decline of that stock. Other giants and meaning only for those living through the dragons that beset his way are such constitu• events in question. tional arrangements as, for example, permit Even so, this is a worthwhile publica• the government of Canada to set at naught tion. The issues Martin raises are all import• Newfoundland's own "magna carta," the ant ones and his views are not lightly to be Laboucherc despatch of 1857, and grant to set aside even though passion sometimes France perpetual access to northern cod; overtops reason. As an eclectic reader who and, to set at naught both historical preced• haunts second hand book stores, his writings ent and the undoubted prior rights of are, moreover, replete with references, not coastally contiguous communities by admit• only to the scientific highfliers of today, or ting Nova Scotian deep sea trawlers to to Newfoundland giants like Wilfred Tem- replace Europeans as plunderers of the pleman, but to people like Fanhi, the Chi• northern fish stocks. As well, he tilts against nese scholar who produced his Fish Breeding such political jiggery-pokery as cynically in 475 BC; Dr. Bellamy of Billingsgate who makes mockery of the concept of historical published his Guide to the Fishmarket in rights to give Quebec fishermen access to 1842; Phillip Henry Gosse of Carbonear; or the fishery off the Labrador coast. such an unlikely scientist as Oliver Gold• Other enemies he identifies are scien• smith. Titbits from such sources are as a tific ignorance, and scientific arrogance that piquant sauce making both technical fare dismisses as inconsequential the knowledge and rhetoric more exciting. gained by fishers through centuries of exper• In short, despite my reservations, many ience; institutional indifference or incompe• of which are editorial in nature, I commend tence; public apathy, plain stupidity and a this book to all Newfoundlanders who have management regime neither in tune with nor a care for their historical and cultural heri• responsive to the needs of those who have tage, and to all those who are concerned for been the principal stakeholders in the fish• biodiversity and particularly for the great ery for some four centuries. renewable resources of the northwest Atlan• All of this is good meaty stuff. And, tic ecosystem which greed and bungling have indeed, many of the individual columns are, placed in jeopardy. Having read the book, I sui generis, excellent. Some, however, show would hope that you will join with me in the marks of hasty preparation, as, indeed, wishing that some, at least, of Mr. Martin's does the collection itself. The author, his giants may be transformed into peaceable own editor, we suppose, has merely done a windmills, and that, at any rate, the quest quick scissors and paste job. The untouched for his grail is crowned with success. material has been separated into ten sec• tions in each of which the individual items Leslie Harris bear a relationship, sometimes tenuous, to St. John's, Newfoundland each other and to a common theme. The brief introductory essays introducing each E. Paul Durrenberger. It's All Politics: South section seem, too, to have been hurriedly Alabama's Seafood Industry. Champagne, written. A strong editorial hand with a good IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992. xvii + blue pencil and a mandate to tighten up, to 216 pp., figures, tables, sources, index. US emphasize the theme, and to delete extra• $34.95, cloth; ISBN 0-252-01910-5. neous material including weak and less consequential columns, would have pro• This book examines how Alabama's seafood duced a far better book. Perhaps, too, it industry has been shaped by political might have been desirable to have elimin• struggle and a complex set of state régula- 58 The Northern Mariner tions throughout its three main periods; but ations and sports fishermen in the framing these periods are defined by technology and and enforcement of regulations. the species caught, not by politics per se. Durrenberger's key points are well pres• Durrenberger distinguishes three stages of ented in the first and final chapters. His development. Fish and oyster production specification of the key variables and their from inshore waters was boosted by the interconnections is convincing, while his cri• emergence of rail links with the interior and tique of Gulf fisheries science and his argu• local ice production (1819-1915). Canneries, ment in favour of a serious effort to improve introduced late in the period, required more "sociopolitical" analysis are sound. However, favourable tax laws and processing of other much of the book is devoted to a tedious species if their capacity was to be utilized history of the three periods. Only the keen profitably. Thus shrimp production was area specialist would want to read these encouraged, providing a stimulus for indus• chapters in which organizations, individuals, trial canning which became the focus of the events and policies appear in considerable industry in the second stage (1915-1945). number, yet without really coming to life for For much of this time, shrimpers were this reader. Part of the problem is that the organized and engaged in numerous disputes author may be a much better anthropologist with processors. The final period (1945 to than writer of historical narrative. The the present) is rooted in shrimp trawling presentation fails to flow in these chapters. and freezer plant technology. More recently, Some issues are left hanging, unfinished per• excess capacity and low prices for shrimp haps because the information was lacking. A relative to costs have been serious problems. certain "jerkiness" followed from a tendency In all three periods, the author tries to dem• to jump forward and backwards in time, even within the same thematic presentation. onstrate that fisheries policy reflected the Nevertheless, there is much to be gained relative power of the interest groups in the from this book, especially its convincing industry, while at the same time the experi• demonstration of the need to understand ence of actors in the fishery was conditioned politics if one wishes to understand fisheries. by decisions outside their control (e.g., import rules or environmental controls). The analysis is based on a combination Peter R. Sinclair of historical documentation, especially the St. John's, Newfoundland use of local press reports, contemporary observations and interviews. It is the recent Heide Gerstenberger (ed.). Von Land zu analysis that I find most interesting, particu• Land: Aus der Geschichte Bremischer See- larly the author's presentation of the inter• fahrt. Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1991. 192 play of science, environmental activism and pp., maps, photographs, figures. 19,80 DM, fishermen's resistance to the introduction of paper; ISBN 3-926958-60-X. devices to save sea turtles from becoming trapped in shrimp trawls. It is intriguing to This is the fourteenth publication in the read how each side can call on "neutral" series "Contributions to the Social History of science to justify its position. Durrenberger Bremen." As its title (From Land to Land- shows that the shrimpers are likely to pay Some Notes on the History of Bremen Sea• the costs of saving whatever turtles are faring) suggests, the collection focuses on the protected by the devices. Moreover, this history of Bremen shipping, though one es• presentation, along with the other cases say concerns port labour in Hamburg. discussed in the chapter, documents the Ulrich Welcke describes the many dan• relative weakness of shrimp boat operators gers from piracy or freebooting which compared with environmentalists, corpor• threatened ships' crews on the high seas. Book Reviews 59

The increase of these threats is regarded as to arbitrate in the case of disputes between one reason for the tightening of disciplinary shipmasters and crews. Welcke emphasizes regulations aboard ship. Welcke examines this as a most important innovation, for now business connections between freebooters the supervision of the ship's crew no longer and merchants, who occasionally made remained purely a concern of the ship• common cause for their own profit; he also master. This was already one of the tasks of discusses the problems of differentiating the wasserschout elsewhere, as in Hamburg. between robbery and trade in cases before There, however, after 1766, the wasserschout the courts. This was all the more difficult as was only responsible for the amicable settle• different sea laws were in force in the vari• ment of possible disputes; if an agreement ous trading areas. Welcke refers to the could not be reached, the commercial court Hamburg Schip-Recht of 1270 which, after was called upon. the Rolls of Oléron of the twelfth century, is Welcke concludes his essay with a regarded as the oldest maritime code of detailed description of the disputes concern• northern Europe and had a marked influ• ing the maritime ordinance of 1802. He ence on the maritime laws of Visby and the characterizes it as a paradigm of political Hanse. Welcke follows the further develop• opposition in a preparliamentary govern• ment of maritime law and illustrates with a mental system. In these disputes the main few examples how everyday punishments issue was whether the interests particularly were administered. Conflicts and disputes of the overseas merchants, now becoming not only between the captain and his crew increasingly assertive, would prevail. As a but also the relationship of crew and mer• result of the objections and criticisms of the chants are examined from maritime court seamen, an attempt was made to revise the files. These reveal that, according to mer• ordinance and thus take the protests of the chants and shipmasters, disciplinary prob• sailors into account. The sailors did actually lems on board ship were increasing. Yet, succeed in being granted a say in the phras• despite the recognition that new laws were ing of the maritime contracts of employ• needed, their codification was continually ment. But in spite of these concessions the postponed for reasons of additional expense, reservations of the seamen about this new particularly for the authorities. Instead, ordinance persisted for years. reference was constantly made to the In an essay based on an extract of a already existing laws and their observance. ship's journal from 1866, Heide Gersten- A turning point in the development of berger reports on the structural change of Bremen maritime law was the ordinance the social relationships on board. The issued in 1802, which dealt above all with author, using ship's articles issued in the the required regulations concerning the previous century, tries to explain the devel• movement of goods. No statements are opment of the hierarchical structures. In made on the sailorly and nautical duties of ship's articles of 1852, the organization, the shipmaster. The attached muster roll already practised internally, of the hierarchy regulated the duties of the seamen. There into captain, officers and the rest of the was plenty about their obligations but in crew had by now been laid down by govern• fact, contrary to Hamburg ordinances, no ment regulations. But in this connection provision was made for seamen in the case attention is also drawn to the difference of permanent disablement. An important in• between theory and practice. A muster roll novation of this ordinance was the intro• for the ship Ella from the year 1852 is duction of a wasserschout (ombudsman/ reproduced in the appendix to this essay. mustering official), who was supposed not The third contribution by Jochen Schôn- only to supervise the seafarers but also try wald deals with the development of the 60 The Northern Mariner

Sager Shipyard between 1814 and 1869, with liners, paddlesteamers and sailing ships. particular attention to wooden sailing mer• Metal Industries, founded as the Alloa chantmen built there and their fates. Further Shipbreaking Company in 1922, was one of information is provided in the appendix by the few companies organized during the a description of ships which were built on 1920s to survive the Great Depression. It this shipyard. became a major industrial group, not only as The last contribution by Uwe Kiupel one of Britain's largest shipbreaking com• describes, with Hamburg as an example, the panies but as an oxygen manufacturer and development of port labour in this century, distributor and as an electrical and mechani• including mechanization and rationalization cal firm during the next forty years. The and the health risks resulting from these company was formed by three men: Robert developments. This is particularly noticeable W. McClure, who had served with distinc• when comparing general cargo handling and tion with the Royal Engineers during World containerization, which started in the 1960s. War I; Stephen Hardie, a chartered account• Here it can be seen that, despite the wide• ant; and Dr. Donald Pollock, Surgeon Cap• spread use of modern techniques—like infor• tain, RNVR, who had valuable contacts at mation and communication technologies—the the Admiralty as a result of his war service. man working in this sector continues to be The company was registered in Glasgow on exposed to health hazards, even though 15 December, 1922. these may take a qualitatively different form. The depth of water at Alloa and diffi• Though specific to the experiences of culties with the Town Council over the use Bremen and Hamburg shipping, these essays of the town quay caused the company to provide important insights into shipping and move to Charlestown, a small port near the seafaring labour that would interest mari• Rosyth Dockyard. The yard was enlarged in time historians specializing in the port 1925 when the company bought out the Ros• histories of other countries as well. yth Shipbreaking Company. Then, after the Admiralty placed the Rosyth Dockyard on a Carsten Prange "care and maintenance" basis as part of Hamburg, Germany defence cuts, the company obtained a lease, on a time-to-time basis, of one or more of Ian Buxton. Metal Industries: Shipbreaking at the three graving docks. This made possible Rosyfh and Charles town. Kendal, UK: World the breaking up of the scuttled German war• Ship Society, 1992. 104 pp., photographs, ships salvaged by Cox and Danks at Scapa tables, ship index. £8 (plus £130 postage Flow. A change of name to Metal Industries and packing), paper; ISBN 0-915617-69-X. Ltd. was announced in November. In 1930 scrap prices collapsed but The history of a ship is incomplete without rallied as the result of the London Naval details of its final end. Naval and merchant Treaty and the consequent scrapping of casualties are well documented but worn out warships. In July 1935 MI bought out Cox ships are usually listed as scrapped or not and his Scapa Flow operation. Thomas registered. Liners like Leviathan and Mauri• MacKenzie, his Chief Salvage Officer, was tania, make headlines, but the fate of hun• hired to continue the work until interrupted dreds of warships and merchant ships, by World War LI. MI then became respon• particularly small ones, is difficult to trace. sible for the supply and scuttling of several This book is the history of one of Britain's of the blockships at Scapa. The major part largest shopbreakers and a record of the of Mi's war work was salvage along the ships broken up in their yards, everything Scottish coast. It was at this time that the from battleships to boom vessels, luxury British Iron and Steel Company (Salvage) Book Reviews 61

Ltd. (BISCO) was formed to organize scrap Johann Gerdes, Heiner Heseler, Martin recovery from wrecks and other vessels for Osterland, Bernhard Roth, Gabriele Wer• delivery to war industries. The actual metal ner. Betriebsstillegung und Arbeitsmarkt: Die recovery and demolition was subcontracted Folgewirkungen der Schliessung der AG to regular shipbreakers, including MI. This "Weser" in Bremen. Bremen: Edition Tem- system was continued after the war when men, 1990. 255 pp., tables, figures, photo• surplus naval vessels were scrapped. The graphs, appendix, bibliography. 46 DM, 1940s and 1950s saw MI expand into electri• paper; ISBN 3-926958-50-2. cal and mechanical engineering subsidiaries. Shipbuilding continued until 1964. Takeovers Johann Gerdes and Heiner Heseler. Rick- and mergers eventually forced the company mers: Das Ende einer Traditionswerft. to relinquish its charter in 1987. Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1990. 59 pp., The second section of the book lists the tables, figures, photographs, appendices, vessels broken up at Rosyth and Charles- bibliography. 10 DM, paper; ISBN 3-926958- town between 1923 and 1963 by name and 41-3. type. Dates are given for sale or handing over, arrival and start of demolition. The list In the past thirty years the number of work• shows an interesting error that exists in ers involved in shipbuilding has declined many reference books. The FLOWER class sharply in many countries, causing hardships corvettes Bittersweet, Clematis, and and dislocation for many thousands of Mayflower were purchased by BISCO in skilled tradesmen, engineers, and others. 1949. Two were allocated to Charlestown These two books are case histories of what and one to C.W. Dorkin of Gateshead. happened to employees when two shipyards BISCO notified MI(S) that Bittersweet and in northwest Germany closed in the 1980s. Clematis were being delivered and demoli• They are based on studies by a research tion contracts were signed. When the cor• institute at the University of Bremen. The vettes arrived at Charlestown, a faded name- authors include social scientists, economists, board was discovered bearing the name and a professor of industrial sociology. Their Mayflower, not Clematis. BISCO refused to focus is entirely on what happened to the alter the contracts. Mayflower was demol• professionals and tradespeople at the two ished at Charlestown as Clematis, and the shipyards. They examine the impact of plant real Clematis was demolished at Glasgow as closures on regional unemployment in gen• Mayflower, an error that has caused con• eral, and follow the subsequent job searches fusion in reference books ever since. of the displaced shipyard workers. The book is well illustrated with photo• The more substantial book, Betriebsstil• graphs of ships in various stages of demoli• legung und Arbeitsmarkt, includes compari• tion, particularly of the Mauritania and the sons with plant closures at the same time in German ships salvaged at Scapa. There are the USA and with shipyard failures in two aerial photographs of the yard, one Sweden and the UK It also looks at what being a German reconnaissance photo. The happened to workers at other large indus• bibliography is limited to acknowledgement trial plants that were closed at the time of the various organizations and persons elsewhere in Germany. These studies are who made available records or personal written in a clinical manner. The authors use recollections of the company and its activ• shipyard closures as examples of failures by ities and footnotes in the text. large industrial plants. There is little specu• lation and just enough history to set the Arthur W. M ears scene. The only opinions about whether the St. Stephen, New Brunswick closures might have been avoided appear in 62 The Northern Mariner

statements by individual workers. The find• change their employment; over half had ings are based on extensive surveys of the found jobs in new fields (regional factors at displaced workers. Questionnaires and play included the expansion of a Daimler- interviews were used as well as data from Benz plant outside Bremen which absorbed employment agency records. many younger workers from both yards). Both of the shipyards had been estab• Generally similar results were found in lished when northwestern Germany became the US and Swedish cases, although in industrialized in the first half of the nine• Sweden the transition when the Uddevalla teenth century. When it closed at the end of yard in particular closed in 1985 was made 1983 AG "Weser" in Bremen had existed for much easier for the workers by social and 140 years. It was considered one of the most employment legislation. Results were differ• modern shipyards in Europe. Large amounts ent in the UK The shipyard workers who of capital had been invested by its owners, lost their jobs in large-scale lay-offs by Swan Krupps, to build supertankers efficiently. It Hunter in Newcastle in 1978 remained un• had pruned its workforce from 5,000 to employed much longer, and were less suc• 2,200 between 1975 and 1983. Eventually, cessful in eventually finding re-employment. worldwide overcapacity in both supertanker These studies include a wealth of find• tonnage and suitable building yards brought ings and observations about the impact of on a final crisis. Two thousand two hundred industrial closures on the workers involved. employees had to find new work. The Rick- For example, just roughly a quarter of the mers Shipyard in Bremerhaven closed in employees from both yards found better- 1986 after a 152 year-history. When it went paying jobs. They are contrasted with the under it had a total workforce of 950. In its quarter who maintained their incomes—the final years the yard had specialized in build• "survivors," and the half who were "losers" ing container ships in series. The crisis because their incomes declined. In the case which finished off the yard was brought on of AG "Weser" there is also an examination by changes to the laws governing investment of the impact of the closing of the shipyard write-offs in shipbuilding in Germany. on other industrial concerns. The books are In both cases displaced employees were written clearly in a jargon-free manner and on average older than more typical unem• there is ample use made of excellent graph• ployed workers. Over 80% of the AG "Wes• ics. These topical books should be of inter• er" employees had been at the yard for est to those trying to assess the results of more than ten years when it closed, and the plant closures in other industrial countries. average age had climbed from thirty-seven in 1975 to forty-three by 1983. Indeed, age Jan Drent was the most important factor in determin• Victoria, British Columbia ing whether the search for new employment was to be successful. Former employees Ken McCarron. Meat at Woodside: The Bir• were checked three years after the yards had kenhead Livestock Trade 1878-1981. Liver• closed. Broadly speaking, professionals (eng• pool: Merseyside Port Folios, 1991. 78 pp., ineers, etc.) had been able to find new posi• maps, figures, illustrations, notes, bibliogra• tions quickly. Roughly two thirds of all phy, index. £2.95, paper; ISBN 0-9516129-2- employees had found new positions, about 1. 17% had retired early, and about 14% were unemployed. It appears that flexibility on the Merseyside Port Folios, a joint imprint of part of the workers was a major factor in the Trustees of the National Museums and their successes in being re-employed~80% Galleries on Merseyside and Countyvise of "Weser" workers said they were ready to Ltd., publishes an occasional series of book- Book Reviews 63

lets on the history of Merseyside's tectionist features of the livestock legislation. docklands. In something like a hundred Inevitably, in such a slim volume there pages this volume in the series examines the are some gaps and, given its market, the traffic in cattle, sheep and pigs at Birken• booklet is more descriptive than analytical. head. Mounting concern about diseases such It is, perhaps, surprising that there is no as foot and mouth led to the passage of the discussion of the shipping companies like Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act of 1878 Houlder Brothers which brought livestock to which required imported livestock to be Britain. Nor has the opportunity been taken landed at the special Foreign Animals to provide a time series of livestock handled Wharves subsequently created at the port. at Birkenhead. It is also a pity that no data The wharf at Woodside was closed only as is given about the economic performance of late as 1981. the Foreign Animal Wharves at Woodside A great deal of information is packed and Wallasey. Nevertheless, at £2.95 this into this little book. Ken McCarron sum• book is good value. It contains many inter• marises the historical development of the esting photographs and illustrations, there is Birkenhead Docks and describes the factors a useful bibliography, and production stan• which led to livestock imports. Britain's dards are generally high. The text sheds expanding population and higher real light on a number of themes which go incomes created a demand for meat which beyond merely local or antiquarian interest. domestic farmers could not satisfy, condi• tions particularly evident in the manufactur• Robert G. Greenhill ing towns of northwest England. At the Tonbridge, United Kingdom same time, overseas suppliers of livestock in North and South America, as well as Ire• Mike Clarke and Allison Hewitt. Liverpool land, were anxious to fill the gap, while and Its Canals. Liverpool: Merseyside Port technological changes in shipping brought Folios, 1992. 112 pp., maps, photographs, about cheaper freight rates. The resulting notes, bibliography, index. £3.95, paper; development of the lairages at Woodside ISBN 0-9516129-3-X. and Wallasey required considerable invest• ment in plant—wharves, stores, offices, This little piece falls between not two but warehouses, animal pens and slaughter three stools: local history, walkabout guide, houses. Eventually, chilled rooms stored and serious history. None succeeds particu• carcasses before their rail shipment through• larly well. As a tourist I would not be drawn out Britain. Imports seem to have reached a to follow in the footsteps of the authors; I peak around the turn of the century and, am not a Liverpudlian so I am not automati• although the two world wars temporarily cally interested in the topic; and as an his• boosted business, long-run decline soon torian I am neither stimulated nor edified by occurred as improved refrigeration and the contents. It is however a good pointer to transportation removed the need for live• those who wish to do these things separately stock imports. McCarron chronicles the very (as apparently the authors are in fact doing). serious issues of sanitation, working condi• It takes the history of the Liverpool tions and the mistreatment of animals. The canals and waterways from beginning to end, reliability of refrigeration equipment, the as they meandered through the task of prov• disposal of unwanted by-products, like man• iding a means of transportation, to being a ure, and the escape of lively bullocks into source of water for locally based industry, to the surrounding residential areas also cre• the present, where tourism and recreation ated problems for wharf administrators. In have supplanted the industrial purpose of addition, McCarron briefly explores the pro• the network. All the activities connected 64 The Northern Mariner with the canals are covered: in that regard vain in this book for elucidation. One sus• the book is satisfactory, although perhaps a pects that the canals had a role to play in degree of humour would have helped, as the import business, but what was it? when the authors discuss the issue of night As a local publication inexpensively soil and its disposal! The authors make a produced the book has problems in quality. good start in hinting at the inter-relationship It comes out second-best in comparison with between those who lived and worked cheek- a similar Canadian publication, Normand by-jowl with the canal and the environ• Lafrenière's little book Canal Building on mental problems imposed both on people the St. Lawrence River, published by Parks and on operation. There are not too many Canada in 1983. The illustrations are indis• waterways, for example, which on occasion tinct, and the captions not always helpful (is were too hot or too cold for users. The good old Tommy Abrams driving the barge potential for disaster was large—soap fac• or the bridge at the bottom of page 62?), tories, the manufacture of gas from whale and the maps are singularly unhelpful to oil, tanneries, the manufacture of synthetic those unfamiliar with the territory in trying alkali-to mention just a few of the more to discover precisely where the canals went. malodorous ones. From all of this it is However, where the work is successful interesting to note that successful pollution is in fulfilling its goal as avowed in the charges were brought before the courts foreword describing the "Merseyside Port some 150 years and more ago. Verily there Folios;" its bibliography and end notes are is nothing new under the sun. indeed useful for the "scholarly user" and in On a broader scale we learn that Chan• fact are a joy to see in this age of volumi• dler's dictum concerning the defeat of canals nous footnotes that take the place of bibli• by railways in remarkably quick time was ographies, as has happened in recent Cana• uniquely American; Canada's survived to a dian scholarly publications. far greater extent, and Liverpool's even more so. Far from being instant losers in Kenneth S. Mackenzie the local transportation sweepstakes, canals Ganges, British Columbia in Liverpool survive to the present (with perhaps a few hiccoughs) and without the Larry Turner (comp.). Rideau Canal Bibli• subsidies paid to railways during periodic ography, 1972-1992. Smiths Falls, Ontario: times of trouble. Herein lies inspiration for Friends of the Rideau, 1992 [1 Jasper those Canadians trying to turn abandoned Avenue, Smiths Falls, Ontario, K7A 4B5]. 37 railway rights-of-way into recreational areas. pp. $10 (+ $4 postage and handling), spiral- But there is one thing Canadians will bound; ISBN 0-9696052-0-X. not learn from this book. Even though the authors note how Liverpool developed "into As Canada's first significant canal, the the main English port for trade with the Rideau Canal has long attracted an unusual American colonies," (p. 40) we learn nothing degree of attention from students, scholars, about how these imports—our exports- of and local historians. This booklet is a useful pot and pearl ash (for which there was a compilation of recent publications and res• heavy demand in the canal-based industries), earch reports on the Rideau. I say "useful" timber and grain were handled. This is a because many of its entries are government question that has long intrigued this reports in print and microfiche that often reviewer; we know how we got the stuff escape the attention of the public, though down to the ships and into them, but how they were funded by taxpayers. The booklet were they dealt with once they reached the also identifies a number of more obscure other side, often at Liverpool? We look in works published by small museums, histori- Book Reviews 65 cal societies, and the like; often known only Pritchard's concern, expressed in a review to a small readership, these kinds of works elsewhere in this issue, that we cannot will now receive a wider circulation as a "afford to ignore...a contextual approach to result of Rideau Canal Bibliography. technology. " As useful as this bibliography The booklet is organized into a brief will be in identifying the many titles now introduction, followed by three categories of available on the Rideau Canal, it would have entries. The first consists of Canadian Parks been even more useful had it also identified Service Historical Reports on the canal pro• works that would have provided the more duced between 1972 and 1992; five subsec• specialized studies with such a framework. tions are devoted to the Preliminary Site Studies Series, the Manuscript Report Ser• Olaf U. Janzen ies, Microfiche Report Series, and other Corner Brook, Newfoundland manuscript and microfiche report series with information significant to the Rideau Canal. Robert Shipley and Fred Addis. Schooners. A second section identifies materials pro• St. Catharines, Ontario: Vanwell Publishing, duced by federal, provincial or public institu• 1991.64 pp.,photographs, further readings. tions other than the Canadian Parks Service. $13.95,hardboard; ISBN 0-920277-59-4. A third section provides an annotated bibli• ography of non-government books and select Robert Shipley and Fred Addis. Paddle bibliographies, but it seems fairly obvious Wheelers. St. Catharines, Ontario: Vanwell that the materials described in the other sec• Publishing, 1991. 64 pp., photographs, fur• tions were the real inspiration for the bibli• ther readings. $13.95, hardboard; ISBN 0- ography. The booklet confines itself to mat• 920277-61-6. erial produced since 1972, in keeping with the intent of The Friends of the Rideau to Robert Shipley and Fred Addis. Wrecks and observe in this way the twentieth anniversary Disasters. St. Catharines, Ontario: Vanwell of Canadian Parks Service administration Publishing, 1992. 64 pp., photographs, fur• and operation of the canal as well as the ther readings. $13.95, hardboard; ISBN 0- seventy-fifth anniversary of Canada's Nation• 920277-77-2 al Historic Sites system; these are the two government agencies which have played key Robert Shipley and Fred Addis. Propellers. roles in the preservation, restoration, and St. Catharines, Ontario: Vanwell Publishing, research into the Rideau Canal. 1992.64 pp., photographs, further readings. This approach is not without its draw• $13.95,hardboard; ISBN 0-920277-75-6. backs. By restricting the timeframe in this somewhat artificial way, the bibliography Shipley and Addis and their publisher are to omits important works that have a direct be commended for bringing out these small, bearing on the history of the Rideau Canal hardcover collections of illustrations of but which were published before 1972— historic Great Lakes ships. All four books works like Kenneth Bourne's Britain and the are part of a "Great Lakes Album" series Balance of Power in North America 1815- and, as this might suggest, each volume is an 1908 (University of California Press, 1967) "album" of over fifty pictures: photographs, or J. MacKay Hitsman's Safeguarding engravings, paintings, even sheet music. The Canada 1763-1871 (University of Toronto four covers offer the only opportunity for Press, 1968). Such works have a great deal colour ranging from the delightful schooner to say about the strategic and political Maple Leaf to the surreal fantasy that pur• considerations which went into the decision ports to show the "Wreck of the Waubuno. " to build the Rideau Canal. I share Jim The four volumes are all organized in a 66 The Northern Mariner generally similar fashion. In each, six or sent the growth of the institutional collec• seven sections cover a range of topics. tions of photographs in the Great Lakes Wrecks and Disasters is more thematic; the region, although a few personal credits others have several sections illustrating the appear. There is a balance between Ameri• development of specific technologies. Each can and Canadian sources and illustrations. section has a simple one page introduction, As usual, this is a sign of Canadian author• consisting of a few paragraphs covering ship and publication since, with few excep• some of the general facts on the subject. tions, American collections of photographs While marine enthusiasts are likely to pick of the Great Lakes rarely have more than a up these inexpensive little volumes for the token selection of Canadian vessels or illustrations, the challenge for Shipley and Canadian institutions represented. The 1992 Addis is to convey an appropriate amount of additions to the series add a welcome index information to a less informed audience. of ships, companies and places to the slim They do not always succeed. Take, for back matter. All four volumes have a brief example, the introduction to Wrecks and list of suggested further readings including a Disasters which concludes: "While the threat few of the traditional Great Lakes works by of disaster remains ever present, stricter Greenwood, Metcalfe, Boyer and Bowen. regulations and better design have produced They might consider adding the periodical a much improved safety record." (p. 5) Not literature devoted to the Great Lakes: until later is the full explanation offered: almost fifty years of Inland Seas, over thirty "there are just many fewer ships in the lakes of Scanner and seven volumes of FreshWater. While harder to find on many library than there used to be." (p. 49) The impact shelves, they reflect the value of member• of these increased regulations on the viabil• ship in the organizations that publish them. ity of the existing passenger fleet is tossed out in a picture caption on p. 35. Moreover, the captions in these volumes Walter Lewis sometimes pick up a story line, but on most Acton, Ontario occasions serve only to identify the vessel, its location, and one or two facts about its Henry N. Barkhausen. The Riddle of the career or a specific incident. In general the Naubinway Sands: A Report on the Milleco- pictures appear solely on their own merits. quins River Wreck. Manitowoc, WI: Associ• There is little evidence of serious research ation for Great Lakes Maritime History, into the history of the vessels which appear, 1991. 23 pp., drawings. US $4.50 (+ $1.25 or indeed into the specific incidents shown. shipping), paper. Order from David T. The propeller St. Magnus is depicted lying Glick, P.O. Box 292, Matlacha, FL 33909 on her beam ends at dockside in Cleveland. [Winter] or P.O. Box 25, Lakeside, OH Beyond this fact we are only told "it was 43440 [Summer]. later righted and returned to service." (Wrecks and Disasters, p. 48) When did it In early 1990, the Millecoquins River's capsize? Why? Was anybody hurt? How was scouring of the west bank sands on its way it righted? Did this happen again to the St. to Lake Michigan exposed the bow of a Magnus? Was the vessel altered to stop this ship, luckily on land owned by the Hiawatha happening again? Did facilities for resolving Sportsman's Club. Henry Barkhausen has these problems exist in ports like Cleveland? written an interesting account of the vessel's Answers to one or two of these questions discovery, the subsequent archaeological could have been provided without straining activities, and the search for its identity. the size of the caption. Experts on Great Lakes wooden ships On another level the illustrations repre• hope that the wreck may be a link between Book Reviews 67 the merchant vessels, of the pre-1812 era, identity continues. and the centre board schooners of the 1830- Henry Barkhausen's account of the 1840 period. There were suggestions, based Naubinway Sands Riddle held my interest on some records, that the vessel was the and I look forward to the next instalment. Forester which went ashore in the area in 1846. The excavation proved the vessel was Dan. G. Harris not the Forester. Nepean, Ontario Neither the Michigan Bureau of His• tory, University, nor museums in the area David D. Swayze. Shipwreck! A Comprehen• had any funds available for an archaeologi• sive Directory of Over 3,700 Shipwrecks on cal examination of the wreck. In July 1990, the Great Lakes. Boyne City, MI: Harbor there were surprising developments. Two House Publishers, 1992. 260 pp., bibliogra• members of the Association were looking at phy, index. US $19.95, paper; ISBN 0- the wreck when F. Cantelas, a graduate 937360-12-0. student in Maritime history at East Carolina University, drove up. He was interested in No matter how many books on the subject excavating the wreck as a subject for his are published, there is an almost insatiable Master's thesis. Negotiations began, financ• fascination with shipwrecks. The interest ing was arranged and finally, in September probably stems from the dramatic image of 1991, the excavation by the East Carolina life-threatening struggle against the sea that team under Professor Gordon Watts began. the term "shipwreck" conjures up. For what• The purpose of the investigation was to ever reason, there is a continuous flood of "document architectural and constructional shipwreck books, each with its own special detail to allow a thorough physical analysis angle to pursue. David Swayze's book is new and evaluation of the vessel" and to compare only in that it claims to be "the most com• it with known lake ships. plete and accurate body of data yet ass• The booklet describes the methods used embled on the subject of Great Lakes ship• to excavate the wreck, and the environment• wrecks." (p.13) While his goal was a noble al protection measures taken. The plans one and his efforts were prodigious, sadly, were for one student team to work the his knowledge of basic historical methodol• vessel's bow section and another, the stern. ogy, particularly the availability of accurate The latter's excavation revealed a cabin primary sources, and his inexperience with where eight berths may have been. A single the historical context of the Great Lakes berth was found in the bow. Time did not have caused his goal to remain unfulfilled. allow the crew to excavate the midship Swayze's book seeks to provide short section which, had it been possible, would descriptions of all known Great Lakes ship• have disclosed if the hull was equipped with wrecks. The alphabetically arranged entries a centre board. on approximately 3,700 Great Lakes ship• Professor Watts washed off the star• wrecks (defined by Swayze as "only signifi• board face of the stern post and found the cant losses of commercial vessels...those roman numeral VII, which determined the which involve loss of life or total loss of the vessel's underwater profile. As a result, Mr. vessel" p. 6) include vessel length, gross C. McCutcheon completed the fine sketches tonnage, year and location built, sketch of the inboard and outboard profiles. Before silhouette (if possible), and a brief descrip• leaving, the teams covered up the wreck tion of the date and circumstances of loss. with sand hoping, at some time, to return to Swayze's book is jammed with information finish the work. In the meantime, the but, unlike excellent works such as Charles archival research to establish the vessel's and Jeri Feltner's Shipwrecks of the Straits of 68 The Northern Mariner

Mackinac (1991), it also includes errors of Hahn-Pedersen begins the task of compiling fact, over-generalizations, and omissions of a detailed account of the lightship service in valuable primary and secondary sources that Denmark from its beginning in 1829 to the would have greatly enhanced Swayze's ef• removal of the last staffed ship from station forts. Especially unfortunate is his devotion Mon SE in 1988. Although this is not a to newspapers as his most important histori• comprehensive account, the author includes cal resource. Had he used these in conjunc• a wide variety of information about all tion with readily available vessel enrolment aspects of the Danish Lightship Service and data, Life Saving Service records, and pub• the men who worked aboard the vessels, as licly accessible data bases, he might have well as some general data about lightships produced a book that was indeed "compre• around the world. hensive." In Denmark it was crucial that shipping For all of its faults, Shipwreck! can be routes be marked as sea trade grew useful for those getting started in Great throughout the nineteenth century. The Lakes history. History buffs will find the author concentrates on the establishment written descriptions of individual wrecks and growth of the western Jutland port of tantalizing but must turn to other sources Esbjerg, and the lightships which marked (few of which are included in the book's shipping lanes to the port. One of these was bibliography) to gain a better understanding Motorized Lightship #i which served at of Great Lakes maritime history in general, more than a dozen locations in Denmark or of the specific incidents described. Pro• from 1914 to 1988. In 1990 it was opened as fessional historians and serious amateurs a museum in Esbjerg. will likely pass this book by, but might be Hahn-Pedersen provides insight into all encouraged to purchase a second edition if facets of the lightship with a detailed look at the defects of the first are rectified. Motorized Lightship #1—its construction, technical specifications, light and foghorn Jay C. Martin technology, alterations over the years, and Bowling Green, Ohio the ship's positionings during its lifetime. Statistical analysis of lightship crews (their Morten Hahn-Pedersen. Danish North Sea home ports, age, positions aboard the light• Lightships. Esbjerg: Fiskeri- og Sofarts- ship and years of service), maintenance costs museet Saltvandsakvariet, 1991 [order from: of lighthouses versus lightships and periods Fiskeri- og Sofartsmuseet, DK-6710 Esbjerg of lightship service off Esbjerg reveal to V, Denmark]. 64 pp., figures, maps, photo• some degree the importance of the lightship graphs. DK 75, paper; ISBN 87-87453-54-1. fleet in Denmark in the late 1920s and the backgrounds of the men who served aboard Since the introduction of the first lightship them. The author also details life aboard at The Nore in the Thames estuary in 1731, Danish lightships, including the specifics of floating beacons have marked dangers to watch hours, meals served during a typical shipping in areas where it was difficult or week of duty and a crew member's account impossible to establish fixed structures. of his first tempestuous week on station Although the lightship is a relatively recent "Horns Rev." development in marine navigation, it has Hahn-Pedersen's work is well res• until lately played a crucial role alongside its earched, but as an introduction to a larger ancient counterpart, the lighthouse, in the study of Danish lightships and their crews, it evolution of safe navigation for domestic is somewhat burdened with statistical analy• and international trade. sis. Perhaps some of this detail, such as the In Danish North Sea Lightships Morten correlation between the number of seamen Book Reviews 69

from Fano employed in the lightship service 1845. By 1861, the United States government and the state of the shipping fleet in Fano, had built twelve light stations on the Texas would be more appropriate for inclusion in coast. Ironically, the lights were then extin• a later volume of research. This work is guished when Texas seceded from the union important though in increasing the amount and civil war began. The state government of detailed literature about lightships, which believed that the lights were of more advan• have been studied less than lighthouses. The tage to the Union naval blockade than they text is well complemented with photographs, were to their own confederate ships. The maps and six profiles and overviews of the lighthouses were repeatedly affected by war. original and present day fitting out of Motor- The outbreak of World War I delayed the ted Lightship #i. Danish North Sea Light• construction of the Galveston Jetty light ships represents a significant addition to the station and, in 1938, the Heald Bank light• growing literature on the world's floating ship was mounted with a three-inch gun and beacons. Let us hope that the larger and stationed at the harbour entrance of Nor• more comprehensive work mentioned in the folk, Virginia. preface will be forthcoming. The book also investigates the duties of the lighthouse keepers, which, aside from Chris Mills tending the light included repairing roofs, Ketch Harbour, Nova Scotia painting boats, cutting grass, monthly report• ing and, in one case, collecting birds' eggs. T. Lindsay Baker. Lighthouses of Texas. Baker successfully uses excerpts from keep• College Station, TX: Texas A&M University ers' logs to convey the drama of hurricanes, Press, 1991. xv + 128 pp., colour plates, the frustration caused by bureaucratic in• photographs, notes, bibliography, index. US competence, and sometimes the humour of $39.95, cloth; ISBN 0-89096-481-5. a human situation. The Heald Bank light• ship was, to the dismay of mariners, regular• This handsomely produced, thoroughly ly removed from its station by the Light• researched book documents the planning, house Service in the autumn when thick, building and operation of the Texas light foggy weather was expected. In another stations from 1840 to 1988. Its coffee table case, a much-needed lens for a light was size does justice to the vibrant water colour sent to a world's fair for public display, paintings of each lighthouse. An overview is rather than to the light station. Interviews given in the introductory chapter. Each of with people who were associated with the the following chapters then provides a lights relate hardships and danger from detailed history, colour plate and a photo• malaria, yellow fever and isolation. Hard• graph of the ten light stations and two light• ships of another kind were endured by the ships which survive either in whole or in young daughters of a keeper who would not part today. The author traces the develop• allow suitors to call at their remote Sabine ment of lights from kerosene, coal with Pass location. steam and electricity to fog signals and radio Baker's extensive use of primary sources beacons. He describes the different types of including the official records of the U.S. light stations and the reasons for the choice Lighthouse Service, keepers' logs and his of design in each case. interviews with the people who were associ• Baker loses no opportunity to put each ated with the lights, provide historical accu• light station in the context of events of his• racy and a sense of drama. The book also toric importance. In fact, it was the need to supplies interesting information for those build lighthouses which had promoted the who are planning a visit to Texas, since annexation of Texas by the United States in some of the lighthouses have been restored 70 The Northern Mariner and are open to the public. Although the technical evolution of light sources. Fog book ends rather abruptly, it is suitable for warnings and signals are mentioned but both the casual reader and the lighthouse briefly, more detailed descriptions having enthusiast. Baker has either modestly under• been relegated to the end notes. estimated the international appeal of his In the bulk of the book, the chapters on book, or overestimated the world level of Cross Island, Seal Island, Gannet Rock and knowledge of Texas geography. He neglec• Machias Seal Island, the author's somewhat ted to include a map! Lighthouses of Texas dreary experience as what was, in reality, is a pleasure to read and a delight for the little more than a custodian/watchman, is art lover as well as the marine historian. relieved by tales of former keepers, snippets of island history and comment on the flora Suzanne Spohn and fauna. The book is generously illus• Lions Bay, British Columbia trated with fifty-eight photographs, some historical, but the majority taken by the Chris Mills. Vanishing Lights: A Lightkeeper's author. Most are relevant and interesting, Fascination with a Disappearing Way of Life. but it is difficult to understand the inclusion Hantsport, NS: Lancelot Press, 1992. 167 of two virtually identical photographs of the pp., photographs, map, sources. $10.95, stranded hulk of the MV Fermont, or that of paper; ISBN 0-88999-487-0. a rotting deer head at the base of Cross Island Light. In Vanishing Lights, Chris Mills combines A brief glossary of lighthouse terminol• general notes on lighthouses with selected ogy might have added to the reader's enjoy• lighthouse histories and his experiences as a ment of Mills' book, but, on the whole, keeper on the last manned light stations in apart from a rather disjointed style and a the Maritime Provinces. He recalls his early somewhat erratic course in the second fascination with lighthouses, attributed to chapter, he is to be commended for his living on the coast, and to extended vaca• contribution to the recorded history of tions on Seal and other Islands with his navigation in the Maritime Provinces. bird-watcher parents. Mills first attempted to find employment as a lightkeeper at Robin H. Wyllie sixteen years of age. However, it was not East LaHave, Nova Scotia until 1989, when he was twenty-four, that he finally attained this goal. Joseph O'Flynn. Nautical Dictionary. Boyne Chapter one is an introduction of sorts, City, MI: Harbor House, 1992. 108 pp. US containing information on the author's $9.95 (+ $2.50 postage and handling), paper; background, comment on "de-manning" and ISBN 0-937360-16-3. summaries of the contents of chapters three through six. In chapter two, entitled "A W.H. Smyth. The Sailor's Word-Book of Maritime Tradition," the author mentions 1867: An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical the 1731 Louisbourg Light and touches upon Terms. London: Conway Maritime Press, the history of the second and third light• 1991; reprint of 1867 edition, vi + 744 pp. houses in Eastern Canada, Sambro and £40, cloth; ISBN 0-85177-594-2. Cape Roseway. He then veers to the subject of fire as a major cause of lighthouse des• These two dictionaries can hardly be com• truction before rambling off into general pared since, from a purchaser's point of notes on navigational aids, automation and view, they are not really alternatives. One is traditional lighthouse-keeping. Also con• a useful modern dictionary of practical use tained in this chapter are some notes on the to yachtsmen and yachtswomen, the other is Book Reviews 71 a definitive work originally published at the contains the authentic vocabulary of the first zenith of the wooden sailing ship era. half of the nineteenth century, the peak of Joseph O'Flynn is a yacht broker who the development of the wooden ship with saw a need among his customers for a nau• hempen rigging: the last of the ships of the tical dictionary, so he compiled this slim line and frigates, and the heyday of the volume of 3,800 words. All the terms relat• coastal traders, packet ships and clippers. At ing to the hulls, sails, engineering and main• the same time the terminology of the early tenance of pleasure boats can be found steam engines and iron construction is here, though many words pertaining to included. Thus we learn about "Compart• larger vessels and to earlier times can also ment Bulkheads. Some iron ships have be found. Although modern in all respects, adopted the admirable Chinese plan of the book is curiously but entertainingly dividing the hold athwartships into (water• illustrated with miniatures of nineteenth tight) compartments," (thus giving credit century woodcuts. Several similar diction• where credit was due. Natural history was of aries have been published~I have two of great interest to the author. Not only does them on my shelf—but what happens to he describe marine creatures encountered them all is a mystery, perhaps not enough world-wide but gives the local names for all copies are printed. A quick survey of stores species of commercial fish. He must have selling nautical books, new and used, found questioned fishermen all around the coast of no nautical dictionaries in stock, so perhaps the British Isles. Ancient nautical and mili• this one is needed. tary terms and the origin of words dating Admiral W.H. Smyth's Sailor's Word- back to Anglo-Saxon times also intrigued Book is a happy re-issue at a time when a him. Most of the words are concisely and number of books about seventeenth and practically defined, but here and there are early eighteenth century seafaring are being examples of the admiral's occasional persi• published. There seems to be more interest flage. My favourite is "Ditty- Bag....îiom dittis than ever in how sailing evolutions were or Manchester stuff of which it was once carried out and what things were called. made. It is in use among seamen for holding William Henry Smyth (1788-1865) went to their small necessaries. The ditty-bag of old, sea during the Napoleonic wars. He spent when a seaman prided himself on his much of his naval career as a surveyor and rig,....was a treasured article, probably was a Fellow and President of the Royal worked in exquisite device by his lady-love." Geographic Society and a considerable (!) Another fancy of the author is to illus• scholar. As the editor's preface says, "in trate definitions with quotations from addition to naval terms he has introduced Shakespeare and other poets. others relating to fortifications, to ancient The Sailor's Word-Book is both educa• and modern arms and armour; to objects of tional and entertaining. It is an insight into natural history occurring at sea, in travel, a world, long past but not forgotten. The etc." He was also a lover of words, especial• language of the ships and their crews, famil• ly, as he says, "of the real sea-terms that are iar to us in paintings and early photographs, pregnant with meaning," and a proponent of survives for those who are interested in the "the pithy conciseness of nautical language." sea, not least the legions of amateur sailors Like Dr. Johnson, he adds his own salty who, as our Merchant Marine disappears, flavour to selected definitions. are becoming North America's chief connec• What makes this book particularly tion with the sea. valuable is its date of publication. Smyth compiled it between 1858 and 1865; it was Douglas Maginley published shortly after his death. Thus it Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia 72 The Northern Mariner

William P. Stephens. Traditions and Mem• particular attraction for him, such as sailing ories of American Yachting: The 50th Anni• canoes and the great sloop vs. cutter contro• versary Edition. Brooklin, ME: WoodenBoat versy, which pitted proponents of deep, Publications Inc., 1989. xi + 467 pp., exten• narrow British yachts against those who sively illustrated with plans and photographs, favoured wider, shallower American craft. index. US $49.95, hardcover; ISBN 0-937822- There is much of interest here for 20-5. historians of Canadian yachting. There are Atalanta and Countess of Dufferin's unsuc• In the late 1930s, Charles F. Chapman, ed• cessful challenges for the America's Cup. itor of the influential American yachting There is the Royal Canadian Yacht Club's magazine Motor Boating, asked William P. Aemilus Jarvis and the crew of the victori• Stephens to write a series of articles about ous Canada. There is a photograph of G.L. yachting history. Few people were more Watson's great cutter Madge, which ended qualified for the job. By that point, Stephens her days on Lake Ontario derelict in a had been variously a canoe and boatbuilder, swamp outside Rochester, New York. And a founding member of the New York Canoe there is the story of the iron cutter Rivet, Club, canoeing and yachting editor of Forest one of the earliest yachts in Toronto, built and Stream, one of the organizers of the in Glasgow in the 1850s and surviving until Society of Naval Architects and Marine 1912, before being finally broken up in Engineers and editor of Lloyd's Register of Toronto. American Yachts for some twenty years. The book is worth purchasing for the The series eventually numbered more plans alone. Amply illustrated, it contains than eighty parts and appeared in progress• draughting of the first order, including the ively more complete versions beginning in work of such masters as Stephens' fellow 1940. This new edition is a significant im• yachting journalist CP. Kunhardt and the provement on the earlier ones. It has been English artist and designer Albert Strange. completely re-set in new type, unlike earlier The book is extensively indexed, and all of volumes which were photographically repro• the numerous illustrations are credited. duced from the magazine columns. New WoodenBoat Publications is to be congratu• illustrations have been added, and new and lated for finally doing justice to Stephens' better prints found for some photographs. monumental work. The text has been lightly and sympathetically edited, and repetitions resulting from the John Summers original serial format have been removed. Oakville, Ontario This is a central text for any student of yachting and boating history. Stephens wrote Jerry Cardwell. Sailing Big on a Small Sail• from first-hand knowledge about a time of boat. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Sheridan House, tremendous technical development in the 1993. 165 pp., figures, photographs, appen• sport. Beginning with schooner America, dices, index. $19.95, paper; ISBN 0-924486- whose victory over a fleet of British yachts 34-1. Distributed in Canada by Nimbus gave rise to competition for the eponymous Publishing, Halifax, NS. cup, Stephens unfolds the progress of yacht• ing from large schooners, through the As a small sailboat sailor, I approached this sandbagger era of over-canvassed racing small book hoping to learn some new tricks machines, to theories of design and mea• to increase the comfort and safety of sailing surement, to the development of rigs and my boat. In this, I was very disappointed. the America's Cup. He devotes considerable Cardwell set an ambitious task for him• attention to parts of the sport which held a self in such a small book. He wants to show Book Reviews 73 us how to sail big in small sailboats. By in general: "Sails and Motors;" "The Chal• small he means boats between twenty-two lenges;" "The Necessities;" and "The Amen• and twenty-six feet LOA, with eight foot or ities." While the first two are innocuous less beam, weighing less than 2,500 pounds, enough, I feel compelled to comment on the and priced under US $15,000. The category last two. "The Necessities" seem appropriate includes several boats which are easily towed but is not complete. The compass and the by mid-sized cars, trucks or vans. Sailing grab rails mentioned in the "Amenities" with comfort and safety in boats of this size should be included here as should a second has several advantages. Initial purchase price adequately sized anchor. In addition, a is reasonable, maintenance costs are low and couple of fenders would help eliminate a variety of areas can be sailed without the damage caused by the bumps Cardwell cost of shipping the boat to new locations. seems so concerned about. The "Amenities" Cardwell begins with detailed descrip• include such things as a television! The tions of the Hunter 23, Catalina 22 and impression left by this book is that Cardwell MacGregor 26—all good examples of small has tried to do too many things in a very sailboats. The standard and optional small book and has done none of them well. equipment for each is listed, followed by over $7,000-worth of equipment that Card- Roy Hostetter well thinks is necessary for sailing big. I Corner Brook, Newfoundland cannot disagree with any of the items on this list. He also offers a few suggestions on Don Ferguson. The Jeffrey Boat. Manotick, what to look for when one goes shopping ON: Manotick Classic Boat Club, 1992. 73 for a boat in this class, berth size, footroom pp., photographs. Paper; ISBN 0-9696288-0- in the cockpit, size of the table, etc. 3. The chapters on Topsides" and "Belowdecks" should be the meat of the To wooden boat enthusiasts, be they power book and it is here that Cardwell lets us or sail, the vintage years were the two dec• down. He mentions all of the appropriate ades between the wars and the dozen years items such as control lines led to cockpit, which followed. Nowhere was this more sheetstoppers, window curtains and below evident than in Southern Ontario as the deck storage. However, we are not shown Muskoka builders such as Ditchburn, Greav- any methods for improvement in these ette and Minett-Shields gained prominence areas. Anybody who has sailed in a small (and customers) throughout North America boat knows these would be valuable im• together with their counterparts in the St. provements; what is needed is some sug• Lawrence Valley, notably Gilbert of Brock- gestions as to how this can be accomplished ville. Less well known was Myles Jeffrey of without running the cost up too much more. Athens whose low profile was largely of his Nothing is mentioned about getting the big own doing as he usually chose to work alone stick up and down with limited help. This is building one, maybe two, occasionally three a major concern if you plan to trailer your boats each winter and preferring to go small boat during the season. One of the fishing in the summer. biggest belowdecks problems in small boats Myles Jeffrey did not set up his own is storage room. Though Cardwell is surpris• shop until 1932 at age 48. He had learned ed at the ingenious methods used by others his trade thoroughly with several established to make more storage space, he refuses to builders in his native St. Lawrence Valley, share any of this information with us. but also spent a number of years with Chris The remaining chapters are devoted to Craft in Michigan. The years of the "Jeffrey considerations best left to books on sailing Boat" extended to 1958 and total construe- 74 The Northern Mariner tion is believed to have been fifty boats. The Baltimore and, following the tragic loss of majority survive, to-day much sought-after. that vessel, the Pride of Baltimore II. Accor• Almost all were of "runabout" or "utility" dingly, the book falls neatly into two almost configuration, differing little in design from equal halves for the purposes of review. others of the time. Inevitably some per• The first or historical half of the book formed admirably and achieved notable rac• begins with a survey of the origins of the ing successes while others behaved less hap• Baltimore clipper in the sharp-built vessels pily. Certain details set the Jeffrey boat of Europe and the North American colonies apart, notably a "rumble seat" arrangement of Great Britain, proceeds to a description in many, and always, a dash compartment of the configuration, design and building of running the full length of the foredeck for Baltimore clippers and of the clippers' storing boathooks and paddles. Material contribution to the U.S. naval effort during choices were sometimes unusual. Jeffrey the War of 1812, and concludes with a frequently used butternut for decking, plank• discussion of the clippers' involvement in the ing and even framing. His earlier boats were Caribbean and slave trades during the 1820s all iron fastened (later he turned to plated and the early 1830s. This section of the book steel), the rationale being that by rusting in is complemented by several useful appen• place they tended to hold fast. Today's dices that set out, for example, a glossary restorers would agree! and a list of ships that sailed from the The first twenty pages profile the man, Chesapeake Bay immediately prior to the his times, his shop and his boats. The book War of 1812. Although Gillmer recounts the is then committed, a page at a time, to story of the Baltimore clipper in a lively and profiles of almost all of those fifty boats and engaging fashion, this section of the book is, closes with some personal accounts and in the end, somewhat unsatisfactory, owing anecdotes. It all makes for good browsing mainly to the author's handling of his his• with a strong dash of nostalgia. torical material. In addition to simply narrating the story George H. Cuthbertson of the Baltimore clipper, Gillmer is also Keswick, Ontario determined to prove both that the activities of the privateers who sailed in the clippers Thomas C. Gillmer. Pride of Baltimore: The made an important, though, in Gillmer's Story of the Baltimore Clippers, 1800-1990. view, unjustifiably ignored contribution to Camden, ME: International Marine, 1992. bringing the War of 1812 "to an honorable xiii + 226 pp., drawings, tables, photographs, end" and that the launching of the Ann appendices, index. US $24.95, cloth; ISBN 0- McKim in Baltimore during 1832 marked 87742-309-1. the true beginning of the Clipper Ship Era. In both instances, the author argues his case This book, by an experienced naval archi• with more vigour than rigour and, as a tect, tells the story of the Baltimore clipper consequence, fails to present a convincing from its development on Maryland's Eastern argument in support of his point of view. Shore during the late eighteenth and early For example, Gillmer asserts that the nineteenth centuries through its demise, role of the Ann McKim in the development owing principally to changing economic of the clipper ship has been "falsely mini• conditions in the years following the War of mized" by unnamed historians (pp. 101-102), 1812, to the rebirth of this fascinating ship owing primarily to the fact that the yards in type during the 1970s on the shores of which the great clipper ships were built were Baltimore's revived waterfront with the located in New York and New England. So building of the replica schooners Pride of sweeping a statement seriously misrepre- Book Reviews 75 scnts the work of historians such as Howard combined to rekindle interest in that meta• Chapelle and blithely ignores the complex phorical prelude to a disaster-prone century. evolution of the design of the clipper ship. It Thus, some eighty years after that memor• is certainly regrettable and perhaps surpris• able night, Titanic: An Illustrated History ing that Gillmcr, given his evident desire to seeks to bring the tragedy-cum-morality play make a case for the Ann McKim and given strikingly to life while stripping away long- that he recognizes the contentious nature of encrusted layers of mythology. Undertaken his claims, is content merely to reject the on a scale fully commensurate with its once work of Chapelle and others out of hand so stately subject, this glossy volume should with a few acerbic remarks, without assess• be prized by the well-versed Titanic lorist ing that work critically and at some length and the first-time reader alike. or without providing even a bibliography so Introduced by Robert D. Ballard, dis• that the interested and possibly sympathetic coverer of the wreck, the text is authored by reader could do so for himself and then Donald Lynch of the Titanic Historical come to his own conclusion. Society. Comprehensive in sweep, it leaves The second half of the book presents few elements of a complex story uncharted. Gillmer's personal account of the building of Against a background of heated competition the Pride of Baltimore, the investigation into for the luxury liner trade, the origins of the the loss of that vessel and the building of a vessel are traced to the ambitions of White newer, larger sistership, Pride of Baltimore Star's British directors and the blossoming II. This will be of particular value to those maritime empire of their financial backer, readers with a practical interest in the build• American J.P. Morgan. Technical details of ing of replica sailing ships. design and construction are considered, but Gillmer's book had its origins in his pas• not laboured. Instead, emphasis is given to sionate interest in the history of the Balti• the personal experiences and perceptions of more clipper and in his own involvement in those aboard the ill-starred leviathan. Vivid the building of two replica dippers. The immediacy is the author's strong suit as he book is written with style and verve, but, as reacquaints us with well-known officers and a historical study of this particular ship type, well-heeled habitués of the Café Parisien. the book is unlikely to replace Chapelle's But Lynch also combs the lower decks more The Baltimore Clipper. thoroughly than most and thereby adds depth and freshness to a total impression. G. Edward Reed After five full chapters on the disaster, the Ottawa, Ontario author passes to perennial questions along with new ones arising from inspection of the Don Lynch. Titanic: An Illustrated History. shattered but still imposing hulk itself. New York and Toronto: Viking/Madison Placing the whole affair in a broader per• Press Limited, 1992. 227 pp., photographs, spective, he concludes by charting the evol• illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $65, ution of Titanic lore in books, plays, films cloth; ISBN 0-670-84669-4. Canadian dis• and memorabilia spawned by successive tributor, Penguin Canada, Toronto, Ontario. generations. Appended is a series of bio• graphical sketches and a short but useful Heavily laden with symbolic potential, the bibliography. Throughout, the text is well spectre of the Titanic resurfaces periodically paced, occasionally dramatic and readily to fascinate antiquarians, historians and accessible to all. legions of the curious. In our own day dis• It is the visual lavLshness of this volume, covery of the wreck and, one suspects, an however, that distinguishes it from all other Anglo-American obsession with decline have general treatments of the subject. Indeed, 76 The Northern Mariner this is unquestionably the best single pictor• Gordon Turner. Empress of Britain: Cana• ial record of the Titanic ever. Here, the dian Pacific's Greatest Ship. Erin, Ontario: undoubted highlight is the collection of Boston Mills Press, 1992. 216 pp., photo• evocative, carefully researched paintings by graphs, figures, appendices, bibliography, Ken Marschall. Superbly reproduced, they index. $35, cloth; ISBN 1-55046-052-8. convey tone and texture in a way that words alone never could. Adding to the effect, To say that a history of Canadian Pacific's specially commissioned illustrations serve to second Empress of Britain has been long clarify several technical points and photo• overdue would be an understatement. A graphs in profusion reinforce the sense of myriad of books have been issued relating to vivid reality. The layout and editing, more• every facet and nuance of the lives of the over, are deftly done so that images mesh Queens, Mary and Elizabeth, and their chief neatly with the text and frequent page turn• rival the Normandie. However, until now, ing is unnecessary. As befits a good illus• little has been written about "Canada's trated history, words and pictures merge Challenger," a vessel more popular amongst into a harmonious whole. the ten-thousand-man workforce of the By its very nature, of course, a general Clyde than either of Cunard's big two. Now, work will not completely satisfy everyone. Of Gordon Turner has corrected that oversight. necessity, several highly controversial issues Turner relates the story of the Empress are dealt with rather briefly. Foremost of Britain in a straightforward "cradle to among these is the perpetually debated grave" format providing every detail and question of the Californian. Lynch inclines statistic that a reader could want—and then towards those who would rehabilitate the some-along with enough interesting anec• reputation of her captain, Stanley Lord. In dotes and stories to bring the liner back to so doing, however, he tends to leave a large life for the few brief hours it takes to read body of contrary argument and evidence this book. After reading Empress of Britain: unassessed. Indeed, those familiar with the Canadian Pacific's Greatest Ship, George literature may find Lynch somewhat bland in Bernard Shaw's A Village Wooing takes on comparison with Walter Lord when it comes a new meaning as a play entirely written on to apportioning blame for the incident as a board the Empress during a world cruise. whole. It may, in fact, be not at all pedantic After taking the Empress of Britain from to suggest that at least a few key footnotes the builder's yard to her maiden voyage, might have been supplied. Where, in some Turner is able to depart from the conven• instances, much hangs on precise words tional history of any other liner of her day, uttered casually or in haste; where so many because the Empress of Britain was purpose- spoke with one eye on their reputations and built to serve also as a cruise ship. Turner another on insurance claims, it would be has written two chapters for each year of helpful to know whether or not evidence is service; one for her transatlantic crossings corroborated and when it was adduced. The and one for her world cruises. The Empress author is clearly aware of such problems, was ahead of her time as a cruise ship, and but readers will occasionally like to weigh given the Great Depression and the instabil• things for themselves. Even so this book, ity of a world rushing to embrace what just as it stands, should find a wide audience became World War II, she clearly chose the and long endure as the best all-round intro• wrong time to come into existence. duction to an ever-compelling story. Turner's book is profusely illustrated with photographs which showcase the James G. Greenlee Empress both inside and out, from her Corner Brook, Newfoundland inception to her demise. If there is one Book Reviews 11 complaint in this quarter, it is the absence of crew of forty-four, MV Derbyshire was lost a colour section which could have made use without trace. The Formal Inquiry com• of the many stunning artist renditions of the pleted in 1989 concluded that the Derbyshire Britain's interiors produced for her pre- was overcome by the natural forces of maiden and maiden voyage booklets, as well Typhoon Orchid. A Ship Too Far is a con• as the many posters turned out to promote troversial account which disputes this finding her; of these, the most famous has been and criticises industry practices and govern• reproduced on the cover. This exclusion ment policy alike. prevents me from calling this the definitive A Ship Too Far describes how the frag• work on the Empress. ile balance between bulk carrier survivability As to content, Gordon Turner has and severe seas was not maintained. It concentrated almost exclusively on the places this tragedy in context with a com• Empress of Britain, so that her relationship petitive market place where bulk carrier with the rest of Canadian Pacific's fleet maintenance standards are sacrificed by becomes virtually ignored. We are not made some owners in favour of flags of conveni• aware that the arrival of the Empress of ence (FOCs), resulting in the lowest cost; Britain spelt the end for the Empresses of not necessarily the safest ships. It discusses Scotland and France in the service of the the decline of the British shipbuilding indus• company. Nor do we learn of that little- try due to FOCs, containerisation, and known scheduling problem which made it government policy. The system in which impossible for a traveller to sail on the classification societies set standards, issue Empress of Britain, catch the train across licenses and certify ships on behalf of Canada, and take CP's Pacific flagship, the owners who also provide their compensation Empress of Japan, to the Orient. is questioned. The technical arguments Save for these minor criticisms, this is a portrayed are plausible and the human particularly fine book, and Gordon Turner tragedy real. MV Derbyshire is held up to has done an exemplary job, according the symbolise these broader issues. Empress of Britain her place not just in The primary scientific source used world maritime history, but more important• extensively in A Ship Too Far is a paper by ly Canada's history. In an era where the Bishop, Price and Temarel published by the superliners were ambassadors for their Royal Institution of Naval Architects countries and the cultures that produced (RINA) in 1991 entitled "A Theory on the them, the Empress of Britain served that role Loss of the MV Derbyshire." Advanced for Canada on a world stage, not just a dynamic theories of hydroelasticity are transatlantic one. utilised. A report by then British Ship Research Association using a conventional John Davies approach derived a similar conclusion. A New Westminster, British Columbia Salvage Association surveyor, Mr. Ridyard, whose son was lost with the Derbyshire, has Dave Ram well and Tim Madge. A Ship Too dredged up considerable information related Far The Mystery of the Derbyshire. London: to Derbyshire's five sister ships. The authors Hodder & Stoughton, 1992. xiii + 162 pp., use this along with inquiry transactions and figures, photographs, appendix, notes, gloss• material from discussions with relatives to ary, index. £14.99, cloth; ISBN 0-340-56997- complete the picture. 2. The failure theory is presented with a tone of conclusiveness not found at the On 10 September, 1980, two hundred miles inquiry, in essence a design change in the from Japan, with a load of iron ore and area of frame 65 left the local structure 78 The Northern Mariner

discontinuous and particularly vulnerable to a comprehensive knowledge of maritime fatigue cracks. Field stresses, reported in the history with an artistic and refined RINA paper (by time dependent simulations draughtsmanship. Previously, he has pub• which account for fluctuations in loads and lished two volumes illustrated by a thematic resulting hull responses) were high in rela• selection of his ship paintings: Aile Meere tion to material strength of the ship subject haben Ufer: DieAbenteuer der Entdeckungen to typhoon type wave loading. Stresses, (All Seas Have Shores: The Adventure of magnified by local discontinuous geometry, Discoveries) (Munchen 1974) andAbenteuer were singled out as causing rapid crack Walfong (Adventure of Whaling) (Herford propagation (brittle fracture) across the 1977). It therefore seems natural that in this weather deck just forward of the bridge latest volume, Jûrgens supplies each of the (some question exists amongst fracture reproductions with his own text on the mechanics experts whether brittle fracture vessels portrayed as well as particulars of could have occurred). The ship was thought the incident delineated. Thematically the to have then split in two, sinking almost illustrations are divided into four chapters: instantaneously. "Sailing ships;" "On the road and in the A Ship Too Far is an intriguing account harbours;" "Steamers and fishing boats;" and of what may have occurred. It suggests that "Whalers, research vessels and others." Derbyshire's weakness may be common to In each of these chapters, several motifs bulk carriers and that improved design and have their background in the artist's own maintenance practices are in order. The story. Born in Cuxhaven in 1924, Jûrgens authors suggest government intervention; spent his growing years in that seaport on licensing and certification by Britain, the North Sea. Like his father, now a cap• America and Europe is advanced as an tain, Hans Peter got his chance of beginning important first step. his education at sea from the Laeisz Ship• Is this the definitive statement on the ping Company, in 1939 he signed onto the MV Derbyshire disaster? This reader four-masted barque Priwall on a voyage believes not. Yet there is reason for concern which turned out to be the last passage which cannot be treated lightly. The RINA around Cape Horn by a sailing ship before paper is highly recommended as supplemen• World War II. As the war broke out, Priwall tary reading for those particularly interested found herself in hostile waters, and she was in the technical arguments. placed under embargo in the port of Valpar• aiso. The crew, including Jûrgens, succeeded KB. Holt in running the blockade on board the Ger• Belleville, Ontario man vessel Erlangen, only to be caught in the South Atlantic by a British cruiser. Lars U. Scholl. Der Marinemaler Hans Peter Jûrgens became a prisoner of war first in Jûrgens. Herford, Germany: Koehlers Ver- Sierra Leone, then in Scotland, and finally in laggesellschaft, 1991. 163 pp. photographs, Canada. He did not return to Germany until colour and black & white plates. 58 DM, 1946, on the Cunard liner Mauritania. After cloth; ISBN 3-7822-0523-5. a break of seven years, he took up his mari• time education again and, after passing his Hans Peter Jûrgens is held to be Germany's final examination in 1957, served as captain most important living marine painter. He is for the H ansa Shipping Company in also well known abroad. His works were Bremen. For almost thirty years beginning shown twice in New York, in the White Hall in 1960, Jûrgens served as a pilot in Kiel Club in 1982-83 and in the South Street the Baltic seaport. Seaport Museum in 1985. Jûrgens combines In his paintings, Jûrgens has specialized Book Reviews 79 in watercolours, the surfaces of which con• ing the editors. Each essay ends with a sist of very thin layers of translucent colour• relevant bibliography. The opening essay ing. Many of his works feature the fine discusses methodically the complimentary threads of foam and a dust of atomized function of ground plans and aerial archae• drops on the surface of the sea. Most of his ology, emphasizing the advantage of balloon ship paintings are of specific vessels, accu• photographs over those made by airplanes, rately drawn as ship portraits, but in each in recording and interpretation of excava• composition, ship, sea and sky are combined tions. After briefing the history of balloon with equal mastery- During three decades, photography, its method and equipment are his way of portraying ships has not altered detailed. The second essay is devoted to the thematically, except that a still more delicate geomorphology of Crete, showing the direct handling of his brush can be recognized. correlation between the geological setting, Most of the present works date from the the characteristics of soils, the ground water last decade. Jurgens stresses that he does and the distribution of archaeological sites not feel himself influenced by the German in the island, during the prehistoric period marine painters from the grande epoche only. However, in light of the Minoan mari• before 1918. He also dissociates himself time activity, it would have been proper to from the propagandistic note in the German discuss more thoroughly the configuration of painters' works, to the extent that he unwill• the Cretan shoreline and the Bronze Age ingly admits that a number of his own paint• harbours, with reference to the alteration in ings were ordered by shipping companies land-sea relations during the past five and organizations. Instead, he considers the millennia. The next short chapter, discussing British marine painters such as Nicholas Cretan vegetation shaped by climate, geol• Pocock, William Turner, Richard Parkes ogy and soils, gives a perspective on the Bonington and John Ward as his models. environment of the sites treated in the atlas. Jurgens' fine paintings will therefore seem Still, there is no indication of wine, oil or familiar to all Anglo-American art lovers. olives as Cretan products of the Minoan maritime export trade. The writer of the last Hanne Poulsen essay sketches a vast historical survey of Espergaerde, Denmark Crete since prehistoric times to the present, focusing on the characteristics of the dis• J. Wilson Myers, Eleanor Emlen Myers and tribution areas of habitation, their culture Gerald Cadogan. The Aerial Atlas of Ancient and monuments. Again, the maritime aspect Crete. Berkeley, CA: University of California is very marginal or completely missing. Press, 1992. xix + 318 pp., maps, photo• Referring to later periods, the predominant graphs, figures, glossary, index. US $85, role played by Crete in the Venetian mari• cloth; ISBN 0-520-07382-7. time empire (1205-1669) cannot be ignored. Although the Venetian sites are, unfortu• This atlas aims to introduce in one single nately, outside the scope of the book, it volume a comprehensive documentation of should have been mentioned that the main archaeological sites in the island of Crete, northern ports—Heraklion, Chania and from the Bronze Age till Late Roman, Rethimno—gained their major urban land although there are also references to later and marine layout during the Venetian periods, for a comparative study, based on period. These cities should have been indi• balloon photography. cated in Figure 1.1 as "modern cities with The volume is divided into two parts. archaeological sites." The first introductory part contains a series The second and major part of the vol• of brief essays written by specialists, includ• ume is the atlas itself, containing forty-four 80 The Northern Mariner archaeological sites, alphabetically organ• thirteenth centuries; under Edward I, patron ized. The entry to each location's wonderful of alien merchants, it won legal and fiscal aerial photographs side by side with drawn privileges in England. By the fifteenth cen• plans demonstrates their complimentary tury, Hanse freedom from tonnage and functions—one of the editors' well-achieved poundage gave it a considerable advantage goals. The entries also contain brief tabular over native merchants, who regarded it with text, ground-level pictures of monuments rising hostility, especially in London. There, and views, technical and bibliographical its trade was increasingly concentrated in its information. It is unfortunate that the headquarters, the Steelyard, as Hanse mer• Roman port of Chersonisos, surveyed in chants withdrew from outports such as Bos• 1955, is missing. On the other hand, the ton which had earlier played a large part in different marine aspects of Bronze Age Anglo-Baltic trade. They were predominant• harbours like Mallia, Pseira and Classic and ly exporters of English cloth, their imports Roman Olous, ignored in the introductory of furs, metalware, German wines, wax and part, are well treated in the atlas. yarn being insufficient to balance the trade. As a whole, the editors have launched Friction reached a peak with the seizure in an impressive atlas to be appreciated by May 1449 off the Isle of Wight of the salt scholars and laymen alike. fleet sailing back from Bourgneuf. Nearly half the ships were Hanse, and this naked Ruthi Gertwagen piracy, condoned by the Crown, deeply Qiriat Motzkin, Israel embittered relations. Worse was to come. War in 1468-74 was followed by a period of T.H. Lloyd. England and the German Hanse diplomatic stability and commercial growth, 1157-1611: A Study of Their Trade and but all over the commercial world there Commercial Diplomacy. Cambridge and were ominous signs that the League's days New York: Cambridge University Press, were numbered, such as the closure of the 1991. ix + 411 pp., tables, appendices, bibli• Novgorod Kontor (staple) in 1494, and in ography, index. £45, US $79.95, cloth; ISBN England, the rise of the Merchant Adven• 0-521-40442-8. turers and the attack on Hanse privileges by Wolsey. The cardinal fell but the Hanse This is the first study of relations between survived and flourished; its cloth exports England and the Hanseatic League during from London in 1547-8 were the highest the entire period of their commercial and ever recorded. Yet just when a low profile diplomatic contacts. The Hanse was a curi• might have ensured a long period of calm ous hybrid, not a territorial state but certain• under the conservative government of Eliza• ly a political power. As a community of beth, the Hanse chose after 1578 to attempt commercial interest, it existed solely to to keep the Merchant Adventurers out of promote the trade of its members, initially Germany, a battle it could not win. The individual merchants but later, the citizen Eastland Company was founded in 1579, and bodies of the German and Baltic trading in 1598 the Lord Mayor of London took towns, above all Lubeck. Trade was also the possession of the Steelyard, giving the few primary concern of the English in relations merchants remaining there several days' with the Hanse, and there was constant grace to remove their possessions. bargaining over the status each granted to Lloyd charts centuries of complex nego• the other's merchants. tiations with meticulous detail revising Lloyd describes how the Hanse emerged several generally-held assumptions. Each amidst the precocious economic develop• chapter consists of a chronological outline of ment of the Baltic region in the twelfth and the phases of diplomacy, followed by an Book Reviews 81 analysis of the trade structure over the same Yet the book bears the distinct scars of period, derived from extensive work on the a re-worked PhD thesis (which it is!). It is a customs accounts in the Public Record highly detailed and complete description of Office in London. He also makes good use the two shipbuilding processes of Venice, of printed German materials unfamiliar to that carried out in the state-owned Arsenal most English readers. However, as he com• and the commercial process carried out in ments, what needs explaining is not why the private yards. Masters found employment in Hanse finally succumbed but why it lasted both areas, and had the right of return to so long. Frequently the book becomes the Arsenal if they found no employment in bogged down by its sheer mass of informa• private yards. After eight years of inden• tion and the endless accounts of embassies tured service with a Master, a nod from him patching up disputes over piracies or other was sufficient assurance that an apprentice stoppages to commerce. There is relatively had learned his craft. little on the Hanse merchants' commercial This is less a book for the casual reader expertise, their feel for the continental than it is for the specialist. The research markets in which they sold such quantities that was done for this work was obviously of English cloth, and their financial skills; painstaking and thorough in the extreme. we have no sense of entering the Steelyard. Indeed, when one thinks of the hours that Lloyd makes a solid and scholarly contribu• must have been spent in the musty and tion to economic history, but readers will damp libraries of Venice collating, sorting, still need Philippe Dollinger's general sur• and often translating the necessary docu• vey, The German Hansa (London 1964) ments that could be found, one can hardly while Johannes Schildhauer's splendidly blame Lane for being highly protective of illustrated The Hansa: History and Culture his original work. For instance, in addition (Leipzig 1988) conveys the wealth and to the extensive text, the book contains vitality of the League at its height, a dimen• seven additional appendices and ten tables. sion sadly lacking here. These data show the construction measure• ments of Venetian ships, from which it is Pauline Croft possible to calculate the sizes of the various London, England types. A useful table of Venetian weights, measures and monetary equivalents is also Frederic Chapin Lane. Venetian Ships and provided. Information on the number and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance. Baltimore, types of ships built by the Venetian masters MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992; is given as well as details of construction reprint of 1934 edition, ix + 285 pp., figures, costs, rough times of sailing on various tables, appendices, index. US $15.95, paper; voyages, and types of cargo carried. In short, ISBN 0-8018-4514-9. the book provides such a useful mass of information within its covers that it cannot Fred C. Lane is well known as the quintes• help but be of great value to anyone who is sential historian of the Venetian maritime studying this period of Venetian history. past and the ships and shipbuilders of Apart from the quantifiable data, Lane Venice. Thus, the re-publication of this work is full of fascinating nuggets of information in an affordable paperback format will be which he scatters liberally throughout the welcomed by students of fifteenth- and book. He quickly disabuses one of ideas sixteenth-century Venetian history. More• taken for granted, such as the fact that an over it has all the hallmarks of a work Admiral was not the senior rank in the originally published in 1934: it is virtually Venetian fleet, but rather the senior navigat• error-free and a quality publication. ing officer, and when in the employ of the 82 The Northern Mariner

Arsenal, was paid less than the Chief Book• Santa Maria replica (1927); the Martinez- keeper! One is also surprised to learn that Hidalgo Santa Maria replica (1964); and oars were not the main propulsive power of more recently, the reproductions of the the galleys, but were only used for Santa Maria, Nina and Pinta for the manoeuvre in confined waters, or in an Columbus quincentenary. These last replicas emergency. Sail was their main power. are all based heavily on Martinez-Hidalgo's It is this rich vein of information that earlier work. Although only briefly makes this book well worth its purchase; described, the major features of each recon• indeed, it is cheap at the price. struction is covered. As the author considers the Martinez-Hidalgo reproductions to be Jim Lawless the most accurate, the most extensive des• Ottawa, Ontario criptions are reserved for these. In fact, Martinez-Hidalgo's work also forms the Xavier Pastor. The Anatomy of the Ship: The basis for the bulk of the drawings. The lack Ships of Christopher Columbus—Santa Maria, of figure references in the text was some• Nina and Pinta. London: Conway Maritime what irritating. Press and Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute The rest of the book is composed of a Press, 1992. 118 pp., photographs, figures, wealth of illustrative material in two sec• maps, tables, bibliography. £20, cloth; ISBN tions. The first section consists of photo• 0-85177-585-3. Distributed in Canada for graphs and illustrations depicting the Fern• NIP by Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, andez-Duro and Guillen reproductions, Ontario. iconographie material, the Matarô model as well as models of the Martinez-Hidalgo This latest addition to Conway's acclaimed Nina and Pinta. The second section is con• "Anatomy" series does not measure up to fined solely to a great number of plans and some of the other titles in the series. The drawings. These include lines, sections, problem is not with the quality of the pres• elevations, profiles and deck plans plus entation, for this is a handsome volume with details of fittings, rigging, masts and yards, well-executed line drawings and photographs sails, armaments, flags and ship's boats. The which meet the high standards set for the emphasis here is on the Martinez-Hidalgo series. Rather, the problem is with the Santa Maria, although the Fernandez-Duro content of the subject matter. and Guillen replicas as well as Martinez- The book purports to provide a defini• Hidalgo's Nina and Pinta are treated to a tive and up to date description of each of lesser degree. As stated above, the drawings Columbus' ships from his first voyage to are finely executed, but their accuracy has to America. Unhappily, the author's focus is be questioned. narrow and he ignores much current res• As an example, Pastor relies almost earch bearing on the subject. Serious ship solely on the Matarô model, a fifteenth- researchers will find precious little new century votive model for the internal struc• information in this book. ture of the Santa Maria. This results in first Ten pages are devoted to text. This is in futtocks that start at the centreline of the keeping with the goal of the series, which vessel and run up to above the main deck. provides detailed descriptions of ship types At midships, this would require futtocks using principally illustrative material. After approximately seven metres long, an unreal• a short history of Columbus' first voyage, istic length. One can envisage the difficulty Pastor focuses on the four main Spanish in obtaining suitably curved timbers of the reproduction projects: the Fernandez-Duro correct length from which to make the fut• Santa Maria replica (1892); the Guillen tocks. Also, the excavations of a number of Book Reviews 83 sixteenth-century Spanish vessels, some ceeds as an illustrated historical summary of dating to only shortly after Columbus' voy• the various Spanish efforts to replicate ages, have not demonstrated this method of Columbus' ships. It may also hold some frame construction. In every case, the first interest for modelmakers who might want to futtocks have been attached near the out• duplicate these reconstructions. I believe board end of the floor timbers and do not that both the author and the publisher have meet over the keel. Similar arguments can missed a fine opportunity to further the be mounted for other internal features of research of these important vessels by failing the reproduction. For example, the inclusion to incorporate the latest information. A of hold pillars and the lack of ceiling plank• more in-depth and current study of these ing is not supported by the most relevant ships is still required. archaeological evidence. These examples, among the many others R. James Ringer that could be cited, point out a major failing Ottawa, Ontario of the book, that is, the selection of a rather narrow range of historical sources while John Frye (trans, and ed.). Seafaring in the completely ignoring pertinent archaeological Sixteenth Century: The Letter of Eugenio de information and other research. This is Salazar, 1573. San Francisco: Mellen evidenced by the disappointingly short bibli• Research University Press, 1991. iii + 69 pp. ography. While it is true there is precious US $14.95, paper; ISBN 0-7734-9880-X. little information on how fifteenth-century vessels were constructed, there is important The purpose of this slim volume is to repro• research bearing on the subject. For duce in facsimile an 1866 Spanish publica• example, the late John Sarsfield has demon• tion, with original English translation on strated the ethnographic survival of pre- facing pages. A bilingual prologue is pro• sixteenth century Mediterranean shipbuild• vided by José-Maria Martfnez-Hidalgo, ing techniques in Brazil which are particu• former director of the Maritime Museum of larly germane to the topic. In fact, a repro• Barcelona. The text is a letter from one duction of a caravel based on his work university-trained lawyer to another, rec• recently outperformed all the competition in ounting a distasteful, but uneventful, voyage the "1992 Columbus regatta." from Tenerife to Santo Domingo in July A sounder approach, I feel, would have 1573. No information is provided on the been to study the wealth of new information, location of the original letter, and very little both archival and archaeological, on six• is said concerning the 1866 publication. The teenth-century Spanish vessels and to extrap• voyage was upon a Spanish merchantman, olate the important elements for the recon• the Nuestra Senora de los Remedios; Salazar structions. This information, and particularly (1530-1602) provides no information on the the extant vessel remains, are close enough nature of the vessel the number of in time to the Columbus era to be con• crewmen, or the other passengers, and no sidered seriously as valid sources of research effort has been made to trace the ship in knowledge. The reliance on a single model surviving sixteenth-century records. No com• of doubtful accuracy for important internal parative information on early-modern Euro• structural elements is academically unsound. pean seafaring, published or unpublished, is One wonders whether this book was provided. published to capitalize on the Columbus Salazar makes it clear this was his first quincentenary. People seriously interested in deep-sea voyage. The value of the narrative the ships of Columbus will be disappointed account is that the writer, as a wide-eyed for this is not a new study. At best, it suc• novice, provides information otherwise taken 84 The Northern Mariner for granted and seldom recorded. The pean seafaring in this period, in southern or principal limitation is that, as a novice, northern waters, is at present undetermined Salazar obviously possesses little understand• and must await further study. ing of what he observes. For example, in commenting extensively upon the language J.D. Alsop of the sea (considered a principal merit of Hamilton, Ontario the tract), he confesses, "I understood no more than the babbling of the roaring Peter Earle. The Last Fight of the Revenge. crowd." (p. 39) This being the case, how London: Collins & Brown, 1992. 192 pp., useful or authoritative are his observations? illustrations, maps, tables, notes, bibliogra• What is required is careful editorial scholar• phy, index. £18, cloth; ISBN 1-85585-106-7. ship informing the reader of the meaning and significance of Salazar's information. Peter Earle, the accomplished narrator of None whatsoever is forthcoming. What The Wreck of the Almiranta and of The Sack Salazar does understand he deprecates. The of Panama, makes considerable use of fare at meals for the crew included "biscuit, documents in the Archivo General de Siman- as white and clean as piles of dung." (p. 41) cas in this careful and gripping description An understanding of shipboard provisions of how Sir Richard Grenville and the related to food consumed by similar socio• Revenge met their fate. economic groups within this society would A squadron of some twenty-two English be valuable; Salazar's observation that "all naval and privateering vessels was cruising in that is eaten is corrupt and fetid" is so value the Azores in August 1591, hoping to catch laden as to be valueless (notably, he pro• the rich plate fleet from the Spanish Carib• vides no information on morbidity or mor• bean. However, the Spanish navy had re• tality apart from the extensive seasickness covered from the disaster of 1588, and Don suffered by himself and other passengers). Alonso de Bazan's fleet of fifty-three ships He concludes that the ship's complement is had been sent to escort the plate fleet from "a noisy crowd": "the citizens of this city [the the Azores. The English squadron was sur• ship] have no more amity, faith, or charity prised, out-manoeuvred, and out-numbered, when at sea than the sea snails" (p. 35). Is but all save the superbly-equipped 42-gun this an astute observation on the absence of Revenge managed to escape the trap. shipboard camaraderie—a topic of serious Earle's retelling of this tale sinks a fleet scholarly interest—or merely uninformed of myths. We now know that the arrogant, class snobbery? One does not expect Salazar privileged, and brutal Grenville had never to transcend his own cultural context. One been to sea except as a passenger before his does expect informed editorial guidance on forty-second birthday, but became a cel• the pressing issues of typicality and reliabil• ebrated seadog by dying after his first genu• ity. Salazar is at his best where his own ine sea battle seven years later. Grenville knowledge is relevant, as in bis account of a was simply attempting to rejoin his squad• religious ceremony on the Sabbath. Unfortu• ron, commanded by Lord Thomas Howard, nately, he generally prefers carefully crafted when he challenged the encircling Spanish humanist puns and a knowing tone of fleet. Contrary to legend, only five Spanish superior suffering, characteristic of a genre ships were directly involved in the action, of travel literature in this period, to dispas• and two English ships tried in vain to help sionate observation. the doomed Revenge. Overhauled and This account deserves to be readily rammed by the larger and faster San Felipe, available in an English edition. The precise the Revenge had only half an hour of free contribution to our understanding of Euro• play with her splendid bronze guns before Book Reviews 85

she was lashed to the attacking San Bemabe icy, and of those who delight in the relation• from stem to stern. While the English con• ship of sailors, and indeed soldiers, to one tinued to damage other attacking vessels another. However, it is one thing to attempt with impressive heavy guns, the fight became to describe, in a short space, the politico- a small arms duel for control of the deck of military relationship between the English the Revenge. When the badly-wounded and the Dutch, it is quite another to carry it Grenville proposed blowing up the ship, off. This book does it—triumphantly. A good along with the three Spanish ships lashed to deal of the reason for this was accomplished it, he still had seventy of his original ninety by the very selection of the speakers invited barrels of powder. However, few of the to the conference to commemorate 1688 at surviving hundred of the 260 sailors were Den Helder. Good people make for a good willing to commit suicide after fighting so conference, and with good editors the result hard for their lives. They surrendered, were can be a good book. This is a good book well-treated, and were promptly repatriated. because, addressing military-naval relation• Grenville and the Revenge both died of their ships across nearly four centuries, the vari• wounds and were buried at sea. Ingenious ous authors have managed to write, all of Spanish salvage workers recovered the last them, chapters that speak to the theme, of the bronze cannons from under the wreck trenchantly address aspects of importance, some thirty-four years later. For decades and yet aim at future publication. thereafter they defended the castle of San The last two chapters, by nature general Phclipe in Terceira, becoming scrap cen• and dealing with the military-naval responses turies before scuba divers began pursuing of the two protestant societies to their the legend that the guns were still off-shore. continental and world-wide situations, are Stirring myths about the last fight of the models of pointed intelligence. Eric Grove is Revenge, initially generated by Sir Walter especially balanced notwithstanding his Raleigh to salvage something from the enthusiasm for Haig & Co.; indeed there is English defeat and by embarrassed Spanish hardly a foot put wrong. It is interesting to naval officers trying to explain the damage see Rodger, who deals with his topic in the suffered in so small a victory, have lived too broadest possible way, end by strongly point• long. Earle's excellent little volume demon• ing out that it was the naval partnership that strates that recovering the incomplete and did most to bind the two countries together provisional truth can be much more interest• through an interaction that went beyond the ing than either repeating or forgetting a Zuider Zee on the one hand and the Good• chauvinist legend. wins on the other. Van Heslinga, writing primarily of the pre-1700 period, had per• Ian K Steele haps the hardest part of the story to tell London, Ontario which he did in almost completely economic terms, mentioning the name Michael Ruyter G J A. Raven and NAM. Rodger (eds.). not once! Zwitzer, in his detailed work on Navies and Armies: The Anglo-Dutch Rela• the relationship of British and Netherlands tionship in War and Peace, 1688-1988. armies 1688-1795 has hard words for the Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1990. x lack of symmetry between the professed and + 118 pp., index. £25, cloth; ISBN 0-85976- real aims of his countrymen. Looking at the 292-0. East Indies, de Moor was struck by the fact that Dutch policy was determined by the This book is a welcome addition to the inexorable fact of British Imperial growth, shelves both of those who see sea-power as and the consequent heavy-handed behaviour. an outcome of national aspiration and pol• When Professor Teitler came to deal with 86 The Northern Mariner the modern era (post-1936) he kept an even- ing old myths but not attempting to present handed approach. At a time when the Brit• new research. In all of this they have suc• ish were under pressure from the Americans ceeded admirably. and at the same time attempting to distance The core of both books is a set of indi• themselves from Dutch Colonial practice, vidually-authored chapters. Each describes sharp opinions were sparked everywhere, the development of a single category of not least in Amsterdam and London. In this ships, be it aircraft carriers or oared war• magnificent chapter Teitler lets the reader ships, during the period covered by the see the contending difficulties and yet he volume. The chapters are as varied as their never allows them to assume such propor• authors, many of whom here present digests tions in his narrative that they block con• of their own recent monographs on the sideration of what was, after all at base a same topics. Some, like Norman Friedman's history of comradeship. treatment of carriers, are excellent. Others I hope that this book is widely read, degenerate into little more than incomplete and, even more, that it is used both in listings of classes (something that reprints of civilian universities and military-naval Jane's do better for 1906-45), in some cases schools. An absolute gem of a book! marred by unfortunate reduction from longer texts or else by a too literal attention Donald M. Schurman to the dates covered by the volume (thus, Sydenham, Ontario destroyer development cannot be under• stood from an account that begins in 1906). Robert J. Gardiner and Brian Lavery (eds.). This arrangement has obvious virtues but it Conway's History of the Ship: The Line of can leave the reader unsure of the relation• Battle: The Sailing Warship 1650-1840. Lon• ships between different ship types. For don: Conway Maritime Press, 1992. 208 pp., example, by 1945, were navies primarily illustrations, bibliography, glossary, index. composed of major units or of flotillas of £28, cloth; ISBN 0-85177-561-6. escorts? The chapters range widely, extending far Robert J. Gardiner and David K. Brown beyond the topics of each book's main title (eds.). Conway's History of the Ship: The to encompass mercantile conversions, land• Eclipse of the Big Gun: The Warship 1906-45. ing craft, fire ships and other poorly-known London: Conway Maritime Press, 1992. 223 types, in addition to the obvious capital ships pp., illustrations, bibliography, glossary, and cruisers. Eclipse of the Big Gun, how• index. £28, cloth; ISBN 0-85177-566-7. ever, lacks net layers, harbour auxiliaries (which Line of Battle has), midget submar• There have been many and varied "histories" ines and others. It includes some "human of ships, some useful but most notable only torpedoes" but lacks the German variant. for the numbers of errors on every page. Line covers everything down to the gunboats Now Conway, the leading publisher in the that were so popular after 1800 but excludes field, has launched a new series, of which ship's boats, even though they were often these are the first volumes of twelve to used on independent service at the time. All appear. On their evidence, this will be by far relevant varieties are included, though the the best work of its kind. The editors' emphasis is necessarily on those on which declared intent is to provide a first point of research has been done; largely the RN and reference for specialists in one period or USN in Eclipse, the RN and the French in ship type who wish to cross into others. To Line. Canada barely rates a mention. this end, they have aimed for a detailed, Following these core chapters, there are authoritative and up-to-date account, avoid• others on more general topics. These are Book Reviews 87 particularly well developed in Line, where Blaise OUivier; David H. Roberts (ed. & they cover ship design, gunnery, seamanship, trans.). 18th Century Shipbuilding: Remarks tactics and other topics. Eclipse explores on the Navies of the English & the Dutch weapons, electronics and camouflage but has [1737]. Rotherfield, England: Jean Boudriot nothing on naval aviation, leaving a very Publications, 1992. viii + 384 pp., illustra• strange view of the progress of carrier tions, drawings, glossary, appendices, lists of warfare. Each book has an excellent anno• ships, bibliography, index. £45 (+ £5 ship• tated bibliography spanning primary sources ping, £7.50 abroad), US $100, cloth; ISBN 0- and research papers as well as books. These 948864-11-7. are rare delights in a field where photo• graphs are generally preferred to footnotes In 1737 Blaise OUivier, Chief Constructor of and, once those from all twelve volumes are the French navy's largest dockyard at Brest, available, would merit separate publication. was ordered by the Minister of the Marine There is also a glossary, though that in to go on a secret mission to England and Eclipse tends to give trite definitions of the Netherlands to inquire into the tech• terms explained at greater length in the text. niques employed to build warships. Ollivier's These would have been better replaced with mission lasted nearly five months, during index entries. which he visited major dockyards in both Both books are as error-free as current countries, evaluated English and Dutch knowledge permits. Most of the myths have shipbuilding practices, compared them with been purged, though Eclipse persists in the those employed in France, and considered belief that specialized landing craft were a whether they should be adopted. Ollivier's twentieth-century development whereasLj'/ie findings were reported in a 360-page manu• describes their eighteenth-century form. The script which is here translated and repro• principal deficiency of these books, however, duced together with the original French text. and particularly of Eclipse, is that they OUivier illustrated his report with thirteen concentrate on the "what" and "when" of sheets of drawings which are also repro• nautical technology with too little of the duced. "why," the technical, strategic and economic Blaise OUivier's report is probably the forces that shape ships. Still less do they most important document on naval con• address the men on board, the battles they struction written during the age of sail. fought or their impacts on human affairs. It Unlike other works that are prescriptive and is as though some of the authors had written highly theoretical, this report is intensely their chapters after examining a very com• practical, unpretentious and uniquely com• prehensive collection of models but without parative. Above all it is as clear a descrip• ever seeing a real ship. Eclipse does not tion as ever existed of contemporary prac• even comment on whether the development tice. OUivier identified and discussed the decisions made were proven right or wrong significance of differences between English, by experience. In these respects, Line is Dutch and French shipbuilding practices; at relatively better balanced. Within its the same time, he also noted variations restricted focus, it is the best single-volume between individual shipwrights and between treatment of its topic available. dockyards within each country. No other Readers might note that both volumes document has ever been found that comes are also available by subscription in a close to the detailed analysis which is pres• limited edition for £21 per volume. ented here. The English translation is of the com• Trevor Kenchington bined text as contained in two French ver• Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia sions; one can still be found in the naval 88 The Northern Mariner archives at Brest, while the other is in the shipwrights there continually altered and private possession of the distinguished naval innovated more than previously thought. architect and historian, Jean Boudriot. David Even though these craftsmen were not H. Roberts is already well known for his engineers applying the lessons of science- translation of Boudriot's magnificent four- whatever that might mean—neither were volume work, The Ship of Seventy-Four they tinkerers; they understood that in the Guns (Jean Boudriot Publications, 1986- real world of here and now, there are no 1989; the original French edition appeared perfect ships. There are only better ones. 1973-1977). Once again the two men have Best is the enemy of better. closely collaborated to produce Ollivier's This is a fully annotated complete Remarks and they have done an excellent translation of a highly technical document, job. and the editor-translator has expended great Blaise Ollivier was the foremost among effort to make it yield all the information it several little known but highly innovative contains and to aid the reader's comprehen• French master shipwrights active during the sion. The translation includes Ollivier's quarter century before 1744. During this marginalia, which was added at a later date period, when the French navy's funds were to one French copy. It is also accompanied sharply reduced and warship construction by part of a glossary of shipbuilding terms slowed to a near lifeless pace, they intro• written by Ollivier in 1736. The only disap• duced some of the most significant changes pointment is the lengthy introduction which, in naval shipbuilding in the entire eighteenth though quite informative, is chopped up into century. The first of the famous French thirteen poorly connected sections. It seventy-fours had been laid down in 1719 includes a factual account of Ollivier's life, but Le Terrible, the first to mount twenty- cut short by death at age forty-five, but it eight 36-pounders on her main gun deck fails to place Ollivier and French shipbuild• (designed by Ollivier's uncle) only appeared ing in any real social or political context and at Toulon in 1739. The first sixty-four rede• ignores completely the interaction between signed (also by one of his uncles) with culture and technology. Ships are not simply twenty-six 24-pounders had appeared at material objects to be studied for then- Rochefort four years previous, and in 1741 details of construction. They are human the first modern single-deck frigate to constructs, social artifacts, and while they mount twenty-six guns of the same calibre, reflect a given level of technical knowledge, La Medée, designed by Ollivier himself, they also embody a socioeconomic context, came off the ways at Brest. Finally, three which unfortunately, the editor ignores. years later the first eighty-gun ship to mount Societies shape their technological innova• cannons of a single calibre on each of two tors as well as their innovations; historians continuous gun decks was launched at Tou• can no longer afford to ignore such a con• lon. All of these developments add to the textual approach to technology. significance of Ollivier's report of his secret Having said this, Ollivier's Remarks on mission, for they reflect the fruitful eclecti• the Navies of the English and the Dutch is a cism and openness that characterised French major and very welcome addition to a grow• naval construction during this period. ing collection of original sources being made Readers may also find it of considerable available to an increasing audience of appre• interest that during these same years, which ciative readers. in England are identified with the 1719 Est• ablishment, shipwrights were not as rigid as James Pritchard some have claimed. The keen-eyed Ollivier Kingston, Ontario saw and marked many practices, indicating Book Reviews 89

William Henry Flayhart ILL Counterpoint to blockade of Cadiz, enter the Mediterranean Trafalgar: The Anglo-Russian Invasion of and destroy the expedition while it was still Naples, 1805-1806. Columbia, SC: University at sea. The expedition itself had no such of South Carolina Press, 1992. xiii + 198 glorious success. Dogged by shortages and pp., tables, maps, illustrations, bibliography, sickness and threatened from the north by index. US $34.95, cloth; ISBN 0-87249-824-7. an advancing French army, it evacuated Naples two months later, amidst Neapolitan By 1805 a third coalition, of Austria, Britain recriminations and quarrelling between and Russia, had been formed to resist Nap• Craig and the British ambassador. Yet oleon's ambition and a British expedition to despite confusion and mismanagement, the the Mediterranean planned, to check French original aim of the British expedition was expansion and keep Sicily out of French achieved and Sicily secured, as British troops hands. From the first things went wrong. confronted the French across the Straits of Despatches informing Admiral Nelson of the Messina in January 1806, though its most expedition miscarried. He first learned of its unexpected by-product was the destruction existence, sheltering at Lisbon, while at of the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar. Gibraltar, preparing to pursue the French This is the first detailed study of this fleet which had escaped from Toulon. Flay• episode and an original contribution to the hart convincingly describes the anxieties of history of the period, interesting to the this period and the steps taken by the Brit• general reader and the specialist. It illus• ish to limit its dangers. Only on reaching trates major themes in warfare: the need for Gibraltar did the British commander, Sir clear objectives, exact information and James Craig, a capable, experienced soldier, planning, sufficient resources, reliable com• learn that his force would be part of a joint munications and cooperation between allies. Anglo-Russian expedition, commanded by On these counts the joint expedition failed. the Russian general, Lacy. Of Irish Jacobite The author conveys the professionalism of descent, Lacy was brave but elderly. His British naval and military commanders and plans, formed by subordinates, envisaged an the significance of those less spectacular but attack on the French army in Calabria important aspects of sea power, of which the rather than the protection of Sicily. Though protection of the British transports, while at Lacy himself was co-operative, his staff was Gibraltar, from predatory Spanish gunboats hostile to the British. The commander of the is an instructive example, drawn from the Neapolitan army, a French emigre favourite Graham Eden Hamond Papers in the Uni• of the queen, despised by his own staff, was versity of Virginia Library, which Flayhart jealous of Lacy. Moreover, the covert diplo• uses here to good effect. He has used a macy by which the Neapolitan monarchy wide range of primary sources, both official sought to preserve itself was dishonourable and private papers in British national and contradictory, Plans for an Anglo-Rus• archives, though he has not consulted other sian invasion to protect the kingdom of foreign collections. There are some proof Naples from the French army continued, reading errors, notably the date of Trafalgar despite that army's evacuation of the coun• (p. 116) and maps are not always clear, but try. Lacy did not inform Craig of this fact he succeeds admirably in presenting an epi• and the British commander could get no sode which blended elements of farce and accurate idea of his allies' troop numbers. drama in achieving a successful conclusion. The unnecessary invasion took place two weeks after the battle of Trafalgar, which Patricia K. Crimmin had been precipitated by Napoleon's orders Egham, Surrey to Admiral Villeneuve to break the British 90 The Northern Mariner

James Tertius de Kay. The Battle of Thomas M. Hardy of Nelson and Trafalgar Stonington: Torpedoes, Submarines, and fame; it was he who led the attack on Ston• Rockets in the War of 1812. Annapolis, MD: ington. We meet Jeremiah Holmes, an Naval Institute Press, 1990. 224 pp., illustra• American merchant captain, who led the tions, appendices, bibliography, index. Cdn defence of Stonington, as well as Stephen $33.95, US $24.95, cloth; ISBN: 0-87021-279- Decatur and Robert Fulton. Fulton was 6. Canadian distributor, Vanwell Publishing, involved in the updated design and con• St. Catharines, Ontario. struction of a submarine in cooperation with a certain Elijah Mix. However, the original Notwithstanding his title, the author takes us design may have come from David Bushnell, back to the American Revolution in order to whose submarine Turtle was used during the set the stage for the events at Stonington, Revolution. Bushnell was still alive and east of Mystic on the Connecticut shore, in active in 1813, a year prior to the battle. mid-August, 1814. Until now, this battle has Thus, through solid research, de Kay gives been a minor footnote in American history, us some interesting background to the devel• over-shadowed by Rear Admiral Sir George opment of submarines as well as torpedoes. Cockburn's attack on Washington later that For those who are interested in reading month and by Vice Admiral Sir Alexander this well researched and most interesting Cochrane's assault on Baltimore a few book, it is difficult to write too much more weeks later. Both events pushed the action without spoiling some of the highlights. at Stonington into the background. De Kay's Suffice to say that on the fourth day of the book is therefore useful for directing atten• battle, having utterly failed to achieve their tion to this battle. De Kay also examines goal, the British pulled up anchor and sailed several new weapons, such as American sub• away. De Kay has explained the build-up to marine vessels, torpedoes, and British this in a very engaging style which makes for rockets and bombs, which played significant very enjoyable and informative reading. roles during this period and would revol• utionize the art of war. Bob Cook In de Kay's words, "In rummaging Whycocomagh, Nova Scotia around through the old naval records, ships' logs, and newspaper reports in search of Ken McCarron. Fort Perch Rock and the answers, it became evident that the root Defence of the Mersey. Liverpool: Merseyside causes of the battle were surprisingly com• Port Folios, 1991. iv + 78 pp., maps, figures, plex and involved some totally unanticipated illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. elements." (p3) One of the major contribut• £2.95, paper; ISBN 0-9516129-1-3. ing factors was the burning of Newark, now Niagara-on-the-Lake, which occurred eight Located at the entrance of the Mersey River months earlier. In December 1813, that leading to Liverpool, Fort Perch Rock was village was held by American forces under one of the many fortifications built by the General McClure who decided to burn it British following the Napoleonic wars. Like rather than have it fall undamaged into the most of the others, it had a brief history: hands of advancing British forces. It was, de built in the 1820s, it was already essentially Kay says, a "totally unnecessary brutality redundant by the 1850s, though it continued [which] escalated the level of violence in the to be maintained on a very limited scale war" (p. 79) and contributed to the attack on until the end of World War II. The purpose Stonington in August 1814. of this little book is to argue the case for its As de Kay develops his story, we meet preservation and restoration as "the last a fascinating cast of characters, including substantially extensive" Merseyside defensive Book Reviews 91 battery and lighthouse (p. 62) and an impor• John S. Guest. The Euphrates Expedition. tant example of nineteenth century British London & New York: Kegan Paul, 1992. xiv coastal defence planning. + 182 pp., illustrations, maps, photographs, Despite its title, this little book does not bibliography, index. £45, cloth; ISBN 0-7103- provide a history of Fort Perch Rock and 0429-3. the defence of the Mersey, nor does it even attempt its stated objective of assessing the In 1835 a 62-man British expedition and the fort's importance "on a national scale." (p. parts and stores of two iron-hulled steamers iii) While it does provide a useful brief were deposited on the shores of what is now narrative of the fort's construction, with Lebanon. It took animal and human power detailed information about costs and 329 days to move these materials to an changes made over the years, the import• assembly yard on the upper Euphrates. On ance of Liverpool and the fort's strategic the descent of the river one vessel, the significance are skimmed over very superfi• Tigris, sank in a freak storm in which twenty cially. There is no treatment of World War drowned and the expedition's leader, Cap• I and, more surprisingly, McCarron offers tain Francis Chesney, barely survived. The only three paragraphs on World War II, other vessel the Euphrates, grounding fre• although acknowledging that "the Battle of quently, took ninety-one days to reach the Atlantic was fought from Liverpool and Basara near the river's mouth in June 1836. bombs rained down on the area." (p. 57) This 105-foot paddle wheeler, designed by In fact, Fort Perch Rock was a curiosity Lairds of Birkenhead and powered by side- from the outset because it was built below lever engines and a low-pressure boiler, the high-water mark and a lighthouse was drew three feet of water. It made several placed directly in front of it. This meant that surveying voyages on the Tigris and its in the event of a naval attack, its gunners tributary the Karun as well as the Euphrates would have to level the lighthouse, which during 1836-1842 before it was towed to blocked their line of fire. In addition, when• Bombay where it was scrapped in 1847. ever the guns were fired, they shattered The expedition was financed by the Brit• windows in New Brighton, the community ish government, ostensibly as a quest for across the channel and unless they hit their knowledge to facilitate communication bet• target their shells were likely to land there ween Europe and South Asia. Its main pur• as well causing serious danger. Fortunately, pose was to show the flag in the Ottoman the guns were seldom fired over the years, empire to thwart real or imagined Russian even for practice. It would appear, as a influence in this strategically sensitive newspaper commented in the 1890s, that the region. The government accepted Chesney"s fort was more important as a tourist attrac• bad advice that the reconnaissance should tion than as a military installation. begin on the upper rather than the lower The author badly missed having a com• Euphrates. Subsequently it abandoned the petent editor, as his book is riddled with project because of the difficulty of navigating grammatical errors and tortured syntax. the rivers with the current technology, the There are good illustrations and diagrams viability of the alternate Overland Route but only one rather poor map. Regrettably, through Alexandria and Suez, and the easing it will likely take a more serious effort than of the Russian threat. this to persuade many that Fort Perch Rock John Guest argues that historians have is of much significance. dismissed the expedition as an "irrelevant sideshow" (p. xiii). Yet Daniel Headrick in Brian Douglas Tennyson his ground-breaking work, The Tools of Sydney, Nova Scotia Empire (1981), and Sarah Searight, in Stea- 92 The Northern Mariner ming East (1991) have established its place reveals a conflict which ought to be con• in the expansion of Europe and the transfer ceived in much broader strategic terms than of its technology. Guest's very detailed work has been allowed by the label the "Crimean neatly fleshes out these themes. War." The author, a senior lecturer at Sand• Having visited the rivers, dipped into hurst, claims that the term "has no historical antiquity and thoroughly examined the ac• reality" and that it is the creation of "mis• counts of the expedition's participants, Guest guided and derivative scholarship." (p. xvi) provides a compelling saga of their trials According to Lambert, failure to consider and travails. On occasion he follows uncriti• the grand strategy and other geographical cally the travellers' impressions of the be• theatres of the war has created and sus• haviour of the peoples they encounter. So tained a popular myth of the limited nature for a late twentieth century audience the of the war and has led to misunderstanding work is rather Euro-centric. His archival for• of the peace. Readers may agree with his ays, especially in the records of the India point of view. Even so, it would be a monu• Office, provide an authoritative analysis of mental task to overcome the notion of a the motives of the policy makers. Moreover, "Crimean War" in British historical writing he identifies and gives the movements of and quite unthinkable for the French to virtually every steam vessel operating in the abandon "la Guerre de Crimée" or the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Red Russians the "Krymskaia voina." Though Sea in the 1830s and early 1840s. But per• Lambert uses the label himself, the value of haps he is at his best probing the back• this book does not rest upon the name of ground, careers and behaviour of the men the conflict. Indeed, it obscures the fact that and one woman (Pauline Heifer who, along this work is an important and needed addi• with her husband, were passengers) aboard tion to the history of the war on two counts. the Euphrates on its first descent. In addi• First, it is a well-researched review of tion, the performance of the vessels, often the confusing tangle of the high politics and on a day-by-day basis, is meticulously des• naval strategy of the period. Lambert cribed. A useful insight into nineteenth focuses chiefly on the correspondence of the century middle class Britons' drive for status First Lords of the Admiralty, Sir James and a search for identity through the appli• Graham and Sir Charles Wood and the little cation of technology in remote environ• used papers of the naval commanders, ments, even tools quite unsuited to the Admirals Dundas and Lyons. He makes extraordinary tasks undertaken, is the result. excellent use of Admiralty, Foreign Office, private papers, and memoirs. Though his Robert Kubicek sources and perspective are navalist, Vancouver, British Columbia Lambert adds to the understanding of the Crimean War era by examining new and Andrew D. Lambert. The Crimean War: Brit• under-utilized materials. ish Grand Strategy Against Russia, 1853-56. Second, he provides a fine description of Manchester & New York: Manchester Uni• the strategy and operations in the Baltic versity Press, 1990. xxi + 369 pp., maps, region which, until recently, has been a for• tables, chapter notes, bibliography, index. gotten theatre of the "Crimean War." US $59.95, cloth; ISBN 0-7190-2978-3. Indeed, Lambert's work complements the recent volume by Basil Greenhill and Ann Despite its title, this volume in the pub• Giffard, The British Assault on Finland, lisher's series on "War, Armed Forces, and 1854-1855: A Forgotten Naval War (1988). Society" argues that an examination of He is at his best recounting the strategic British grand strategy from 1853 to 1856 concerns and operations that led to the cap- Book Reviews 93 turc of Bomarsund in 1854 and the attack for the Spanish American War. Weems cites on Sweaborg in 1855. He demonstrates that Captain Charles Sigsbee, the commanding the formation of a British grand strategic officer of the Maine, who rejected the inci• plan, in accord with British maritime and dent as a justification for an imperialistic naval interests in the Baltic, was frustrated war. However, Sigsbee did believe that the by Britain's naval unpreparedness and by the men of the Maine acted heroically during greater commitment made by the French to the fateful night of 15 February, 1898. As the land operations in the Black Sea region. Weems dutifully reminds us, the war was Lambert is most controversial when he useful in the eyes of such as Theodore reaches the strategic plan of 1856 for an Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst. attack against Kronstadt, arguing that it "has In his first five chapters, Weems never been given proper weight in explaining attempts to take us into the life aboard the the Russian decision for peace, although it ill-fated vessel as the crew moved to meet was the immediate military threat, far more their destiny in Havana harbour. In four than the campaigns in the Crimea, Asia chapters we are presented with the destruc• Minor or even Galicia." (p. 299) It is diffi• tion of the vessel and the work of the courts cult to make a judgement about the prob• of inquiry, both American and Spanish, ability of success of a campaign that did not which looked into circumstances surrounding take place or to assess accurately the impact the explosion aboard the Maine. Three more that the threat of an assault had on Russian chapters place the sinking of the Maine in decision-making. He also may be premature the context of the Spanish American in his rehabilitation of Palmerston as a War. Throughout, Weems uses personal rec• wartime leader for adopting the 1856 plan. ollections to present events in an anecdotal Nonetheless, Lambert has some well-taken manner. This has the effect of making the points, which will have to await an examin• whole tragedy appear to be the outcome of ation of Russian sources for a more defini• everyday incidents and decisions without any tive answer. He has a wonderful finish for dramatic overtones. his book, an account of the "Great Arma• Readers might well be struck by the ment" at the close of the war and the spec• lack of open hostility between the men of tacular naval review off Spithead in 1856. the two navies. This seems to have been the They are skilfully presented to demonstrate case despite the fact that some of the Ame• the concurrence of grand strategy and diplo• rican personnel were sure that the sinking macy in influencing the peace, reinforcing was the result of Spanish action. Certainly, British naval superiority, and supporting the Spanish warships sent aid to the Maine maritime interests. after the explosion occurred. Sympathy was expressed to Captain Sigsbee for the loss of Richard H. Warner his ship by a Spanish officer. In addition, Fredericksburg, Virginia Weems points out that neither before nor after the explosion were American citizens John Edward Weems. The Fate of the in Havana in any danger from the actions of Maine. College Station, TX: Texas A&M the Spanish residents of the city despite the University Press, 1958, 1992. xi + 207 pp., strong feelings of support for the Spanish illustrations, bibliography, appendix, index. colonial government in their contest with the US $12.95, paper; ISBN 0-89096-501-3. Cuban patriots. The Americans were iden• tified as supporters of the latter. This is a reprint of a work first published in So, the sinking of the Maine was an 1958. Its author challenges the view that the important trigger for the war between the sinking of USS Maine was sufficient cause United States and Spain. The question 94 The Northern Mariner

posed but not answered either at the time or photographs confirm that Henry Woodhouse in Weems' book was whether it should have was well connected and his immunity to the been. Undoubtedly, little is to be gained by blandishments of the intelligence community dwelling upon this moral question. The reflects the position of authority he had "incident," after all, is one of many illustra• reached in the American aviation world of tions of how the ostensible causes of events 1917-1918. can be manufactured and presented. The In reprinting this book, the quality of Maine was commissioned in 1895 as a unit which, especially the photographs, is excel• in the refurbishing of the United States lent, the Naval Institute Press has included navy. This was the era dominated by the an introduction written by naval historian thought of Alfred Thayer Mahan on the Clark G. Reynolds. His research reveals that importance of a battle fleet for an aspiring Woodhouse was essentially an "operator" imperial power. There were those in the who had used his highly developed inter• American administration of the time who personal skills to ingratiate himself into the were prepared to accept Mahan's line of early American aeronautical élite. By 1917, thought. War against a declining Spain was this Italian immigrant who had changed his a test of those imperial aspirations. As name and served time for first-degree man• Weems presents the part played by the crew slaughter was the publisher of the presti• of the Maine, one can see the age old way in gious Aero Club of America's periodical which great events impinge upon the lives of Flying and the ruling power of the organiz• individuals. This is an interesting read. ation. From late 1915 onwards he had asso• ciated himself with organizations preparing Gerry Panting for America's entry into the war and in early St. John's, Newfoundland 1917, evidently in anticipation of the event, he prepared his Textbook as a means of Henry Woodhouse. Woodhouse's Textbook educating both lay and naval readers on the of Naval Aeronautics. Annapolis, MD: Naval developments that had taken place in naval Institute Press, 1991. xxiii + 281 pp., photo• aviation to that point. It was a great com• graphs, illustrations, maps, diagrams, index. mercial success. However, as Reynolds' Cdn $58.95, US $42.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750- introduction recounts, Woodhouse's self- 931-X. Canadian distributor, Vanwell Pub• serving ways were ultimately exposed and he lishing, St. Catharines, Ontario. lost his influence in the early 1920s although he made appearances in print as late as This book is another of the classic titles on 1942. naval and naval aviation subjects recently Woodhouse's Textbook of Naval Aero• reprinted by the Naval Institute Press. The nautics is a fascinating book in several original publication of this book in June respects. By no means is it a textbook in the 1917, shortly after the entry by the United conventional sense, although the sizeable States into World War I, caused a mild volume of material in it cannot but have sensation and unsuccessful efforts were helped raise the consciousness of its wide made by US authorities to have it withdrawn readership about the potential of naval from circulation. aviation. This was likely its greatest contri• The furore was generated primarily by bution. It did this by presenting with varying the inclusion of many hitherto unpublished degrees of competence and depth a diverse photographs depicting the use of aircraft by body of material ranging from "Aerial Strat• the Allies on naval operations in the egy and Tactics" to "Submarine Hunting By Aegean, the English Channel and Africa. If Aircraft," "Aeronautics Related To Naval nothing else, the remarkable collection of Architecture" and comprehensive coverage Book Reviews 95 of the organization, regulation and staffing Denis Whitaker and Shelagh Whitaker. of American regular and naval militia avi• Dieppe, Tragedy To Triumph. Toronto: ation. Looked at dispassionately, the book is McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1992. xx + 372 pp., a jumble of scarcely connected chapters maps, photographs, bibliography, index. amidst which are found several on special• $26.95, cloth; ISBN 0-07-551385-4. ized topics such as over-water navigation authored by experts such as Elmer Sperry. 1992 is an appropriate year for a carefully Otherwise, the chapters contain much researched and detailed history of the "raid" material which was doubtlessly quickly on Dieppe, for it was fifty years ago, on 19 available to the author through his other August, 1942 that a largely Canadian force publishing activities and connections or landed on its beaches, suffered a major through a regular perusal of the Illustrated reversal and left most of its numbers either London News and the leading European killed within a mile of the beach or prison• periodicals and newspapers. ers in the hands of the triumphant Germans. From a vantage point seventy-five years Most historians, like Ronald Atkin (Dieppe later, all of this material serves the same 1942; Macmillan, 1980) or Brian Villa (Un• purpose for contemporary readers as it did authorized Action; Oxford, 1990), stress the for those of 1917. It is a window on naval term disaster. In hindsight, the term seems aviation as presented to a broad public and justified. Of the approximately 5,000 Cana• depicts to a large extent the kind of images dians of the 2nd Division, 3,367 became most Americans would have had of this new casualties—killed, wounded or prisoners. form of warfare. As such, and despite its Two British Commando groups survived manifest shortcomings as a "textbook," the much better, but support troops suffered book is an unusual reflection of its time. It equally. The RAF lost sixty-nine aircrew is on this ground that it can best be recom• supporting the operation, the Navy, manning mended. the too-fragile landing craft, another 344. The Naval Institute Press has done an And almost none of the stated objectives of excellent job of reproduction, with one the raid were attained. Almost none. possible minor exception, and has graced the General Whitaker, who was there as a dustjackct with an evocative painting of Ely's junior Captain of the Royal Hamilton Light first flight from the USS Birmingham in Infantry and was the senior survivor of his 1910. The exception is a lack of consistency regiment to return to England, makes a very between text and the numbering of photo• strong point that it was not an unmitigated graphs and diagrams in the chapter on disaster. It did achieve two immediate politi• navigation instruments. Not having access to cal but secret aims: the neophyte American an original edition, this reviewer was unable planners backed off on their insistence on a to confirm whether the mistake was made in full continental invasion in 1942, and the the original or the reprint. If the error was Russians, sorely beleaguered in their battles in the original, it no doubt reflects the haste for Moscow and Stalingrad, accepted that with which the book was produced in 1917. the Allies were indeed doing something to Woodhouse's Textbook of Naval Aero• harass the Germans and keep significant nautics, either in this or its original version, numbers of troops in the west. And Dieppe belongs in any library concerned with naval allowed planning for the North African inva• aviation in the United States or aviation sion, obviously an easier but still a major during World War I. task, to move forward. Any invasion of con• tinental Europe could not proceed without Christopher Terry considerably more thought and better plan• Ottawa, Ontario ning. It would have been a disaster. Whita- 96 The Northern Mariner ker feels that alone was worth the attempt, clearly presented and comprehended. And in the grand strategy of the war. The prob• one has the feeling of immediacy, of seeing lem was, no one was told that these were in all but allowed to say nothing, that, like a fact the aims, established under immense good murder mystery, which in effect it was, foreign policy pressures. No one, after the generates excitement yet outrage in its event, could convince the general public that readers. It is probably the best history of the sorry losses had achieved anything. that raid we will see. Whitaker argues convincingly that after• wards all the senior levels of the Army, the Fraser M. McKee Navy and the two major governments pusil- Markdale, Ontario lanimously "ran for the hills." (p. 273) He is particularly scathing of their desertion of Gerry R. Rubin. Durban 1942: A British Major General Hamilton Roberts, the Can• Troopship Revolt. London and Rio Grande, adians' field commander, who was refused OH: The Hambledon Press, 1992. xii + 148 proper air and sea support, intelligence, and pp., notes, index. £25, US $40, cloth; ISBN staff appreciations, yet was told to get on 1-85285-080-9. with the raid, for "commitments had been made at a high level." (p. 288) He is highly The mutiny covered by this book is unusual; and justifiably critical of this desertion by though it originated in a ship and because of Canada's General MacNaughton, General the condition of the ship, the mutineers Montgomery, Admiral Mountbatten, who were not sailors. Rather, they were airmen was responsible for raid planning, and Chur• and soldiers who were being transported chill's lies and changes of evidence. In read• from Great Britain to Singapore on the ing his careful analyses (with thirty-six pages troopship City of Canterbury. of notes reflecting ten years of research), The voyage to Durban had already gen• one is horrified by the ineptitude of the erated much discord, occasioned by over• senior planners, who ignored readily avail• crowding, poor food and inadequate drink• able intelligence of German strengths and ing water. Initially the passengers had to the refusal of bomber and Naval gunfire contend with sea-sickness and even the Cap• support while insisting that the operation tain was critical of the cooking facilities, must go forward, and by abysmal navigation given the number of passengers—the ship errors that landed troops on the wrong sec• carryed 1,480 troops, far more than the tion of beaches. He firmly dispels claims numbers stipulated in the Ministry of War that the Germans knew of the raid in ad• Transport papers. Exacerbating the situation vance and Brian Villa's contention that it was the filth and verminous condition of the was not even authorised. These proofs come ship. The mutineers later complained that from the Whitakers' considerable abilities the ship was dirty, bug-infested, lousy, un- for analysis of military documents, their seaworthy and lacking in life-saving appar• thorough searching for documentation in an atus—excellent ground to give rise to mutiny operation that was ordered to have no docu• and apparently equally excellent ground to mentation for security reasons (it had excuse such mutiny afterwards. In contrast already been cancelled due to weather, then to these conditions, the few days spent in re-mounted). Durban were "idyllic." Consequently, as the The style may not suit all historians, for City of Canterbury was about to proceed to it tends to be anecdotal and with inserted sea, close to two hundred men left the ship commentaries. But, to the civilian reader for the jetty in order to avoid sailing. with an interest, but not necessarily an There was the usual tergiversation about abiding passion for military studies, it is very whether or not the action was mutiny. In my Book Reviews 97 view it clearly was and it led to Field Gen• proper seamen. They gained their sea legs, eral Courts Martial on conviction whereby learned to be lookouts and helmsmen, took the guilty men were liable to suffer death or their turns as "cook of the mess" and on lesser punishment. Only lesser punishments shore patrol and developed a healthy cau• were awarded. My impression is that, like all tion about various aspects of life in foreign mutinies, this one was caused by those in parts, all under their guidance. Once, when authority neglecting the needs of their sub• in the midst of the dangerous and inhospi• ordinates. It was accompanied by useless table North Atlantic one young eighteen- efforts to classify the action as something year-old mourned the loss of his Civvy other than mutiny, an easy solution for all Street Saturday nights, an old Stripey was levels involved. heard to mutter, "When you lot get old, Despite much interesting detail, the you'll be proud of this." (page 34) He was inescapable conclusion is that mutiny is right, though none realized it at the time. mutiny no matter who commits it and no Still, they weren't old yet, and a run matter where it is committed. ashore was an important event in their lives. The book abounds with accounts of girls L.C. Audette won in one port and those lost in another, Ottawa, Ontario of dates made one day and broken the next because the ship had sailed. There were love G J. Williams.-nT-MS. Wellington: One Ship's affairs consummated and others postponed, War. Hanley Swan, Worcestershire, England: and there is a pathetic story of the kindness Self Publishing Association in conjunction shown by two of Wellington's young seamen with GJ. Williams, 1992. 223 pp., photo• to a crippled girl they met in the railway graphs. £14.95, cloth; ISBN 1-85421-166-8. station at Southport. Only later did they Distributed by Images (Booksellers & Dis• learn that they had brought an afternoon's tributors) Limited, Hanley Swan, Worcester• delight into what was to be a short young shire. life. There is action a-plenty in these pages, This is a sailor's book. It is an account of a too, for Wellington fought both U-boat and young man's coming of age on the lower aircraft along the North Atlantic convoy deck in HMS Wellington during the early routes, and in the Dunkirk evacuation she years of World War II. In late 1939 the used her 4.7s against enemy batteries author and fifteen members of his new entry ashore. There is the excitement of "going class were drafted to Wellington, a Grimsby foreign." At Gibraltar they bought all the class sloop at that time refitting in Cardiff. silks, scents and stockings they could afford. Once aboard, the young ODs left the gas There was Freetown with its bathing and gaiters of the Training Division behind beaches and Algiers where, in their inno• and entered the world of the small-ship cence, they confused an "exhibition" with a sailor in a navy at war. "circus." They went into Ponta Delgada in With the sailor's laconic sense of the Azores for repairs only to find them• humour, Williams recalls a variety of events selves in company with a U-boat doing the which reflect vividly life on the messdecks at same thing, but neither ship gave leave. At that period. Running through it all is the Bathurst they went swimming over the side evidence of how these inexperienced young with a marksman in the crow's nest and the men were moulded into a trained and effi• motor boat carrying out an anti-shark patrol. cient ship's company. It was largely the Some of Williams' most descriptive writing, efforts of their more senior messmates, the however, is to be found in his account of "Stripeys," that turned these youngsters into Wellington's ordeal by tempest. For more 98 The Northern Mariner than a week she fought wind and sea, her knew them. Interwoven with these reminis• convoy dispersed, until she finally made her cences are serious points about the condi• way into Londonderry for repairs. tion of the world's most powerful navy as it This smell of oil fuel, steam and salt headed towards war. These comments range water is the real strength of Williams' book. from design faults that created boiler clean• Naval historians will not find dates and ing problems to enhancements that places, courses and speeds, ships in company immobilised a quarter oiHoocTs main arma• or analyses of tactics; purists might insist on ment. Several years of war experience failed more careful editing. Yet on balance, even to convince the engineering gurus of Bath these omissions add authenticity to the that the Engineering Manual was in need of account. Much of it might have been extrac• revision. Whereas US Navy vessels using ted from letters home, painfully written at chemical water treatment could steam for sea on a mess table by an off-watch seaman, some two thousand hours before boilers and much of it was probably considered best needed cleaning, Duke of York's boilers were left untold at the time. Still, both the old required to be cleaned every 750 hours. sailor and the social historian will be glad Chemical treatment was specifically for• that Griff Williams has done just what he bidden. Despite the potential danger to did. career prospects, a "nelsonian eye" ensured that elements of the two Pacific fleets could C.B. Koester operate effectively in unison. Kingston, Ontario This is an attractive and well-written volume embracing a graphic description of Louis Le Bailly. The Man Around the active war service and a glimpse of the Engine: Life Below the Waterline. Emsworth, social and diplomatic life of a naval attaché. Hampshire: Kenneth Mason, 1990. 186 pp., Yet the reader is left with a sense of missed photographs, maps, index £14.95, cloth; opportunities. There is a tantalising, brief ISBN 0-85937-354-1. reference to the bombing of the German warship Deutschland at Palma during the Louis Le Bailly is a naval officer whose Spanish Civil War, and the fact that Hood initial ambition was not to be realised. On helped to treat some of the wounded. This completing his early training as a cadet at and other instances lead one to wish that Dartmouth Naval College and a year's sea the author had allowed himself to stray in service on the battle cruiser Hood it was greater detail from the main narrative from discovered that his eye-sight did not meet time to time. Perhaps the answer lies in the the exacting standard required by the execu• fact that the original lengthier manuscript tive branch of the Navy. At age twenty he was divided into two. The sequel, issued by was faced with a number of options: go up another publisher and entitled From Fisher to Oxford, transfer to the army, or stay in to the Falklands, deals with the way in which the navy as a paymaster or engineer. It was the Royal Navy rediscovered its strategic Captain Binney of Hood who left the young role. Through his contributions to specialist midshipman in no doubt about the indis• journals Admiral Le Bailly played a valuable pensable part played by engineers. So an part in the debate that in time made it engineer he became and his subsequent possible for the Royal Navy to sustain an career was a distinguished one. amphibious operation in the Falkland The Admiral's account of his service Islands, eight thousand miles from base. between 1929 and his retirement in 1975 will give pleasure to his surviving contemporaries Norman Hurst and his anecdotes will amuse those who Coulsdon, Surrey Book Reviews 99

MJ. Whitley. German Destroyers of World the English coast and the war in the Baltic War II. 2nd ed.; Annapolis, MD: Naval as well as famous battles such as Narvik and Institute Press, 1992. 223 pp., figures, maps, the various actions in the English Channel photographs, appendices, bibliography, (one nitpick is that the heroic sorties of the index. Cdn $47.50, US $34.95, cloth; ISBN 1- 5th Torpedo Boat Flotilla against the huge 55750-302-8. Canadian distributor, Vanwell Allied invasion fleet off Normandy are Publishing, St. Catharines, Ontario. barely mentioned). Using primary research to good effect the author not only chronicles The Kriegsmarine's destroyer arm had a actions from both sides but provides illumi• tough time during World War II. Just nine nating staff commentary, including some months into the struggle they lost over a interesting comments about the poor use of quarter of their strength in the two battles torpedoes by Canadian destroyers (but of Narvik and then suffered steady attrition Athabaskan was sunk on the night of in engagements with Allied air and surface 28/29th not 27/28th April 1944). One forces throughout the remainder of the war. weakness of the operational section is that Victories, some quite startling, were personalities are mentioned only in passing. achieved but defeat always seemed to follow The determination and professionalism of closely in their wake. British naval historian veteran destroyermen such as Kohlauf, MJ. Whitley first unveiled this interesting Hoffman and von Bechtolsheim deserves tale in 1983 with his book Destroyer! and has fuller treatment and would teach us more now followed up with a completely revised about the German destroyer service. second edition. This second edition is larger than the Whitley traces the difficulties faced by first and thus shows the many charts and German destroyers back to the design pro• photographs to much better advantage cess. Because the Versailles treaty limited (although maybe not up to scratch techni• Germany to only a few small torpedo boats, cally, the Germans certainly built handsome no destroyer design experience was accumu• destroyers!). Detailed appendices also pro• lated from 1918 to 1933. Left well behind vide a wealth of information. Whitley's book potential enemies in destroyer strength, the is a splendid companion to his Destroyers of Kriegsmarine was forced to build ships World War I and is a good buy for serious quickly, and designs were therefore laid students of twentieth century warships. down without proper evaluation or sea trials. Thus a new high pressure steam plant Michael Whitby proved unable to withstand the rigours of Almonte, Ontario operational service. Likewise, a formidable armament of either 5-inch or 5.9-inch guns Michael J. Melvin. Minesweeper: The Role of looked good on paper but their extra weight the Motor Minesweeper in World War II. caused stability problems and extremely Sansome Place, England: Square One Publi• poor seakeeping qualities. Whitley's techni• cations, 1992. vi + 226 pp., maps, photo• cal writing is interesting and informed but graphs, illustrations, tables, appendices. an apparent lack of documentation occa• £14.95 (+ £3.50 postage and handling), sionally leads to speculative explanation. cloth; ISBN 1-872017-57-6. This is not a problem in itself but should be explained in a note on sources. The Canadian Navy's renewal of interest in Most of the book is operational history minesweeping, marked by the decision to and this is also done well. Whitley's scope is build maritime coastal defence vessels and broad, covering less known operations such to reestablish mine warfare training after a as the successful minelaying campaign off gap of twenty-eight years, signals recognition 100 The Northern Mariner of the continuing significance of mine Melvin saw service in a typical wooden counter-measures as a vital element of naval sweeper in the Normandy Invasion and later operations and coastal defence. Michael in the Mediterranean. His continuing inter• Melvin's book is on that account timely, est in the sweepers led him into a prodi• reminding us of the cost of unpreparedness gious amount of research as well as a pro• in the early years of World War II. The ject for the memorial preservation of MMS book serves also as a tribute to the thou• 191, the last surviving example of her class. sands of men, mostly of the RNVR, who, Although not a professional stylist, he writes with minimal training, worked the rudimen• with knowledge, enthusiasm, clarity and tary, cramped and comfortless sweepers in conviction, lacing his text with anecdotes and the dangerous task of clearing channels for humour. There is even an appendix of merchant shipping and naval operations. irreverent songs written by the sweepermen Minesweeper spans the period from the early as an antidote to the risks, discomfort and frustrating days of striving to cope with often boredom of their occupation. The intensive enemy magnetic and acoustic formidable tabulations of flotilla composi• mine-laying to the eventual provision of tions and vessel dispositions are of special• some 550 wooden vessels that kept vital sea ized rather than general reader interest. lanes open and contributed in no small They in no way detract from the readability measure to ultimate victory. of the text while providing useful data for The motor minesweepers (MMS) of serious students. Illustrations and tables are, which Melvin writes from personal experi• unfortunately, not numbered, a hindrance in relating them to the narrative. This reviewer ence were wooden vessels 105 feet long, felt, too, that foot-noted references would displacing about 220 tons. The first of the have been helpful. Despite its minor imper• hastily-designed class came off the slips in fections, Minesweeper is clearly a labour of May, 1941. By 1942, a larger version, the love deserving a place on the naval 126-footer displacing 360 tons, was produced bookshelf. to offer greater endurance and better sea- keeping capability. Because of shortages in Britain of seasoned timber, non-magnetic George Schuthe fittings and suitable engines, orders were Ottawa, Ontario placed not only in the UK but also abroad. As a result, small shipyards in Canada built J. Gordon Vaeth. Blimps & U-Boats: U.S. significant numbers both of 105-footers and Navy Airships in the Battle of the Atlantic. 126-footers. Another class, British Yard Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992. Minesweepers (BYMS), comparable in size xii + 205 pp., photographs, figures, maps, to the 126-footers but offering conveniences appendices, sources, index. Cdn $4730, US not found in the spartan MMSs, was pro• $34.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-876-3. Canadian duced in the United States for Lend-Lease. distributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. Cathar• Of particular Canadian interest is the ines, Ontario. information on MMS construction in Canada and operational experience in Cana• J. Gordon Vaeth's Blimps and U-Boats dian waters. Melvin includes a reference to describes the role of US Navy airships in the mining of the approaches to Halifax by anti-submarine warfare during World War U-119 in June 1943, when, fortuitously, a II. Ten squadrons of blimps patrolled the number of new MMSs and BYMSs, en western Atlantic from Nova Scotia south to route overseas with crews not yet "worked Brazil; another squadron was stationed in up," were called upon to assist Canadian North Africa from 1944. Vaeth is well qual• sweepers in clearing the menacing field. ified to tell their story, having served as air Book Reviews 101 intelligence officer for the Atlantic airship plunge it into the sea in a matter of minutes. fleet, he drafted many of the papers that More often, human error was the cause of now form the archives of US Navy blimp crashes. operations. Vaeth has made little attempt to evalu• The book traces the origins of US Navy ate the performance of airships as anti• interest in airships from World War I to the submarine escorts. Nor does he address the eclipse of the rigid airship by the non-rigid criticism that they endangered convoys by blimp in the aftermath of the Hindenburg giving away their positions to the enemy. It disaster. At the outbreak of war in Decem• seems, however, that most U-boats pre• ber 1941 the US Navy had four operational ferred to submerge rather than risk detec• blimps at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The tion by a blimp which may, or may not, have blimps were active during the German been in the company of merchant vessels U-boat blitz in American waters but and which could direct surface escorts to the recorded no successes. Although they made U-boat. In this manner airships may have many attacks on suspected U-boats Vaeth provided valuable service by discouraging concludes, on the basis of careful study of enemy attack. German evidence is needed to German records, that they were rarely settle this debate. Vaeth does not tackle the actually in contact with a submarine. The cosy relationship between Goodyear, the first, and only, action between a U-boat and sole producer of blimps, and the US Navy. an airship occurred in July 1943 off Florida Some critics have argued that political when K-74 surprised U-134 on the surface. influence may have determined the extent of When the bomb releases jammed, a running the US Navy's commitment to airships. gun fight ensued that resulted in the des• The photographs are excellent and the truction of the blimp. Airships would have appendices offer additional information to wait until May 1945 before they could ranging from technical details to an account strike at the enemy again when two blimps of Pacific coast operations. Canadians may assisted US Navy warships in the sinking of be disappointed that there is only scant U-853. reference to blimp operations at Yarmouth, Yet if blimps were ill-suited to anti• Nova Scotia, but Blimps and U-Boats will submarine warfare, they found a real niche appeal to those interested in the US Navy's in search and rescue operations where many anti-submarine effort and lighter-than-air of their drawbacks became attributes. Their flight buffs. slow speed, large size, long endurance, and ability to hover and operate at low altitude Robert C. Fisher made them ideal for this purpose. Vaeth Ottawa, Ontario describes the vital services provided by blimps in rescuing the survivors of tor• Eugene B. Fluckey. Thunder Below! The pedoed merchant ships, German U-boats, USS Barb Revolutionizes Submarine Warfare and downed aircraft—both at sea and on in World War II. Champagne, IL: University land. In this role their use foreshadowed the of Illinois Press, 1992. xvi + 444 pp., maps, employment of the helicopter in postwar figures, photographs, appendices, index. US years. $29.95, cloth; ISBN 0-252-01925-3. Crashes and accidents of the blimps themselves form a spectacular, if tragic, part Thunder Below is an account by Admiral of the story of airship operations. In the Fluckey of the last five patrols of the US southern climates thunderstorms were an Submarine Barb in World War II. Fluckey, ever-present danger with vertical air currents as a Lieutenant Commander and Comman• that could lift a blimp to 10,000 feet or der was her Captain during this period. In 102 The Northern Mariner

the Pacific the 220 or so US submarines for a star actor in a Hollywood war movie. were used to even greater effect than the However, there is every evidence that, in German U-boats in the Atlantic. Their addition to possessing all the qualities carefully planned design and construction described above, Admiral Fluckey com• served them well in their tactical and stra• mands all the respect deserving one who tegic employment. Aircraft carriers were was awarded four Navy Crosses and a Con• their prime targets, next oil tankers and then gressional Medal of Honour, unequalled by merchant shipping. As a result of their any living American. efforts, the Japanese Overseas Empire was The preparation of this book occupied strangled. Only 231 out of 2,337 registered ten years of research in which the Admiral Japanese merchant ships remained afloat at was assisted by officers and men who served the war's end. Cargoes had to be carried in with him in Barb. One of the men kept a small coasters and junks sailing in shallow diary at the time, which of course was coastal waters. The cost in US submarines against the rules. He made his diary avail• was thirty-nine sunk by enemy action. Thun• able to his old captain. In addition to refer• der Below relates US Submarine Barb's role ring to USN archives, Fluckey was assisted in this saga. by Japanese naval friends in examining A graduate of the Naval Academy of relevant Japanese reports of the time. He 1935, Fluckey served in battleships, even managed to visit a remote little port in destroyers and, after war with Japan broke northern China where he had attacked out, in a submarine patrolling out of Japanese shipping. Conversations with Panama. In March 1944, he sailed in Barb as officers and men are reconstructed from the prospective captain and on that patrol they past in a convincing manner, making more sank a small merchantman and bombarded lively reading. Every attack, whether tor• a Japanese island. This was his first combat pedo, gun or rocket, is related in detail. experience and Barb's first success. In April Appendix A, a list of all hands with home he assumed his first command and just state, is impressive as a tribute to them. before he sailed on patrol he personally In US submarines alcohol whisky, was promised the Admiral Commanding the allowed for issue after depth charge attacks. Submarine Force that he would sink five Fluckey decided that beer was preferred by ships. The patrol took then to the Sea of Barbs and "spliced the main brace" with beer Okhotsk, north of Japan and there he sank all around each time a torpedo, gun or five merchant ships, just as promised, plus rocket attack was made, a very popular two trawlers. move. It is not clear how this was legalized. So many first person accounts by rec• A truly terrible event developed with an ognized war heroes are of a modest nature. attack on a convoy by five submarines inclu• Admiral Fluckey is not modest in his ding Barb. 2,100 British and Australian account. He does not hesitate to state his prisoners of war being transported from lack of fear, his lack of self-doubts, his total Singapore to Japan for slave labour were in faith in his leadership ability, his excellent the ships sunk. Days later US submarines judgement, his ship-handling skill his will• found a pitiful few British and Australian ingness to try new ideas, his personal under• survivors; Barb rescued fourteen after sear• standing of his officers and men, his ability ching in a typhoon. They were thanked by in handling senior officers and so on. Most Mr. Churchill. surprising was the way he so quickly adapted Hair-raising attacks on shipping in to taking command in battle conditions shallow waters, blocked in by islands; land• without any previous combat experience. In ing men on a Japanese home island where many ways this account could be the script among other activities they blew up a train, Book Reviews 103 experimenting with rockets fired against destroyers, landing craft, and submarines. harbour installations, observations on tor• While many histories have been published pedo reliability and even the ages of sub• about the great naval battles and campaigns marine commanders, US, UK and German, of the Pacific, there has been precious little are only some of the other subjects dis• in print or in graphic form to document cussed in this fascinating and attractive what happened to these ships, or how they book. look now in death, sleeping silently beneath the waves at times with their crews aboard. L.B. Jenson WWII Wrecks of the Kwajalein and Truk Queensland, Nova Scotia Lagoons and WW II Wrecks of Palau are carefully researched, wonderfully illustrated Dan Bailey. WWII Wrecks of the Kwajalein works in large format that ably link histori• and Truk Lagoons. 3rd rev. ed.; Redding, cal narrative, largely gleaned from after• CA: North Valley Diver Publications, 1992. action reports and other official records, xiii + 208 pp., photographs (colour, b&w), including in a number of cases contempor• maps, illustrations, appendices, bibliography, ary photographs of the actual vessel under index. US $34.95, laminated hardbound; attack or sinking. Bailey makes good use of ISBN 0-911615-05-9. the historical record in graphic form in other ways, such as diagrams showing events Dan Bailey. WWII Wrecks of Palau. Red• such as Enterprise VT-6's SBD bombing and ding, CA: North Valley Diver Publications, torpedo attack on shipping in Kwajalein 1991. xiv + 232 pp., photographs (colour, anchorage on 1 February, 1942. Profile b&w), maps, illustrations, tables, appendices, drawings of various ships and aircraft and a bibliography, index. US $38.95, laminated technical summary outlining the characteris• hardbound; ISBN 0-911615-04-0. tics of the vessel or aircraft further enhance the books. An increasing number of wreck divers are Both books offer a description of diving turning their attention from the recreational on each ship or plane, with a summary of aspects of the sport to researching the what they look like today along with the history of the vessels they are privileged to numerous black and white and colour pho• explore. A number of books on the subject tographs. The approach is not archaeologi• have appeared in recent years, well illus• cal; Bailey provides the historical context for trated with underwater views and photo• each wreck or plane. While such material is graphs of artifacts removed from the wrecks. not available for the Truk and Kwajalein Some of these are compelling and fascinat• wrecks, an archaeological survey of a num• ing accounts of the history and condition of ber of wrecks in Palau was conducted by the the sunken ships; others are merely illus• US National Park Service's Submerged trated catalogues of diver's plunder. Cultural Resources Unit prior to Bailey's Dan Bailey began diving World War II trip; that information was available and ship and aircraft wrecks in Kwajalein Atoll would have added to the book. lagoon in 1969. His lifelong interest in ships Intended primarily as background res• and the clear, warm waters of the lagoon earch for divers seeking to visit these sites were a magic combination, and he began as tourists, WWII Wrecks of Kwajalein and diving not only at Kwajalein, but eventually Truk Lagoons and WW II Wrecks of Palau at Truk, and then Palau. An incredible array are not field guides. Historians of the Pacific of ships and aircraft Utter the ocean floor war will also be interested in the books. throughout the Pacific, including ships well- Errors are few and minor and do not mar known if not famous as well as lesser known the overall effect of these fascinating vol- 104 The Northern Mariner umes. The most disturbing fact about the ational Plan 712, "Advanced Base Force books is the descriptions of artifacts col• Operations in Micronesia"~drew much of its lected and removed from the ships and inspiration from the Navy's plan which was planes by divers. As Bailey notes, however, well advanced by 1921. What is important the Kwajalein wrecks are now protected by here is Ellis' notions about amphibious law as part of the cultural patrimony of the warfare and his predictions for the future- Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the particularly in the Pacific. His ideas deserve removal of artifacts is forbidden. The ulti• more attention especially when one con• mate survival of these shipwrecks, either as siders the impact they had on Marine Corps tourism or cultural resources, depends on tactics during the Pacific war. A further the enforcement of this rule. note, Lieutenant Ellis took leave in 1921, not 1923, to study the Marshall and Caro• James P. Delgado lines and died in 1923, and not in 1922, as Vancouver, British Columbia the author contends. Also disturbing is the number of typo• graphical and grammatical errors found Chuck Lawliss. The Marine Book: A Portrait throughout the text. The reader is inundated of America's Military Elite. Rev. ed.; New with one-sentence paragraphs, misspelled York: Thames & Hudson, 1992. 208 pp., words, and awkward sentence structure. photographs, illustrations, appendix, bibli• These errors should have been caught ography. US $19.95, paper; ISBN 0-500- before the book went to print. 27665-X. Despite these criticisms this book is not without merit. It will be a good read for This new edition adds a chapter on the anyone who wants to know what it means to Marines in the invasion of Panama and in be a Marine. Lawliss provides a detailed the Persian Gulf war to the original book of account of a recruit's daily activities starting the same title that appeared in 1988. Aimed from the date of enlistment. A vivid picture at a general rather than scholarly market, it emerges of the rigours of boot camp, more provides a survey of the history and tradi• advanced training and education, ceremonial tions of the Marines and also an account of duties and the changing nature of the Corps life in the present day Corps. itself including the entry of women. The The first four chapters are devoted to strength of the book is these chapters not the exploits of the Marine Corps from its least because they feature abundant illustra• inception on 10 November 1775 to the end tions and photographs that complement the of the Vietnam war. Unfortunately, these text most effectively. chapters, in trying to cover too much material, read like a chronology. The reader Shawn Cafferky is overwhelmed with dates, and names of Ottawa, Ontario engagements and personalities. Too much space has been devoted to minor events in John B. Dwyer. Seaborne Deception: The their history. A preferable approach might History of U.S. Navy Beach Jumpers. West- have been to identify and assess the water• port, CN: Praeger Publishers, 1992. xxii + sheds in the Corps' history. 151 pp., maps, figures, photographs, gloss• There are numerous factual errors ary, select bibliography, index. US $42.95, throughout the book. Lawliss, for example, cloth; ISBN 0-275-93800-X. asserts that Lieutenant Earl H. Ellis was responsible for creating War Plan Orange. "Beach Jumpers" are members of the US (p.46) In fact, Ellis' plan—known as Oper• Navy's tactical cover and deception units Book Reviews 105 which mounted diversionary missions in in by the tactics employed by the Beach support of US and Allied amphibious land• Jumpers, and a close scrutiny of the primary ings during World War II. Using a variety of sources on which the book is based reveals tactics and devices—including radio and that they are largely personal recollections radar countermeasures, sound, camouflage, or period operational plans and after-action and pyrotechnics—their purpose was to reports. I would have liked to have seen deceive enemy forces as to the actual land• German, Italian and Japanese documenta• ing sites of Allied amphibious operations. tion that would ultimately prove or disprove This small, highly secret organization the success of the Beach Jumpers. was first developed in 1942 by two separate Nonetheless, this volume will serve as a sources-organizational on the part of Rear highly welcome addition to the libraries of Admiral H.K. Hewitt, Commander, Amphi• those interested in amphibious operations. I bious Force, Atlantic Fleet, and technical on would like to thank the author especially for the part of the National Defense Research taking the trouble to provide a glossary of Committee and the Naval Research Labora• the acronyms and technical terms contained tory. The original idea, however, came from in his text, a very useful and time-saving Lieutenant Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., actor device. turned naval reserve lieutenant, who was the It is no fault of the author, but I must driving force behind the creation of the first question the publisher's decision to ask such Beach Jumper unit. A personal friend of a high price for a book that is only 151 Mountbatten, Fairbanks had trained for pages in length, hard cover or not. amphibious warfare at various Combined Operations training centres in the United Donald E. Graves Kingdom and returned, full of enthusiasm Ottawa, Ontario for the ideas of maritime tactical deception as practised by the British. He sold the idea Jeffery M. Dorwart. Eberstadt and Forrestal. to Hewitt and the first American Beach A National Security Partnership, 1909-1949. Jumper unit was raised from volunteers in College Station, TX: Texas A&M University the spring of 1943. Press, 1991. ix + 237 pp., bibliography, John Dwyer traces the history of Fair• index. US $35, cloth; ISBN 0-89096-469-6. banks' unit which, employing a number of deception measures, was utilized during the The key to this book lies in the Appendix: major amphibious assaults on Sicily and "Names from the Good Man List, 1929- Salerno and in minor operations among the 1950." The list, including such people as Mediterranean islands. He then discusses Bernard Baruch, William Lippmann, Averell the creation and use of similar units in the Harriman, Herbert Hoover, Henry R. Luce Pacific theatre and, later, during the Viet• and Wendell Wilkie, represented Ferdinand nam war. The operational activities of these Eberstadt's vision of corporate government— highly-specialized units are discussed in "competent men of good will desirous of great detail as are their various techniques. getting along together in the national inter• Seaborne Deception is an interesting est." George Forrestal Undersecretary of book on an important but neglected aspect the US Navy and Secretary of Defense of amphibious operations. This reviewer, between 1940 and 1949, and Eberstadt, his however, has some reservations about the eminence grise, implemented the vision. claims Dwyer makes about the effectiveness Eberstadt designed the Controlled Materials of the Beach Jumpers. He presents little Plan, "which rationalised the nation's war evidence from the "other side of the hill" as resources" and at Forrestal's behest "pre• to whether enemy forces were actually taken pared the blueprint for military unification 106 The Northern Mariner

that became the National Security Act of for assistance, "personal loyalty...outweighed 1947." politics." The partnership ended in tragedy. Jeffery Dorwart's thesis is that after Forrestal, whose relationship with Truman Roosevelt's death in 1945 Forrestal lost his had always been combative, refused to best Mahanian champion for a strong post• accept Eberstadt's advice to resign after war US Navy, and had to manoeuvre so as Truman's reelection in 1948, and suffered a to achieve his object under Harry Truman, nervous breakdown. In May 1949 "he fell (or an ex-army captain who particularly admired jumped) with a bathrobe cord about his Generals Pershing and Marshall. The navy neck to his death from an unguarded upper- was quite unprepared to challenge the story hospital window in Bethesda." army's case for unification, so Forrestal Canadians might well ask, in following brought Eberstadt into the Navy Depart• this modern tragedy, if the American cor• ment as a consultant, with a blank cheque to porate culture has not infiltrated their own go directly to anybody in the service for defence establishment, and whether that is information without going through the chain wholly appropriate. On the other hand, this of command. The resultant "Navy Plan," book leads one to suspect that in Canada drawn up with the aid of a professional the role of corporate elites in shaping team that included every social science defence policy, and the need to recruit good discipline and the so-called hard sciences, as intellectual talent from all quarters to link well as investment bankers, intelligence and policy with doctrine, has not always received aviation experts, persuaded Truman to the attention it should from our defence compromise on certain issues in order to planners. For either or both reasons, I ensure Navy support for the National Secur• recommend this book. It is good political ity Act of 1947. history, it reads well enough, and it offers The central characters in the story useful points of reference for anyone in the began their partnership as undergraduates at national security business. Princeton when Woodrow Wilson, who regarded the university as preparation for Alec Douglas service to the nation, was president. Eber• Ottawa, Ontario stadt was the son of "a mean-tempered New York import-export merchant" (who had Glenn C. Cowart. Miracle in Korea: The emigrated from Germany after attending Evacuation of X Corps from the Hungnam university at Heidelberg) and a Venezuelan Beachhead. Columbia, SC: University of mother. Forrestal's parents were an Irish South Carolina Press, 1992. xxxvii + 136 pp., immigrant construction contractor (a Demo• maps, tables, photographs, appendices, cratic party boss) and a Catholic school bibliography, index. US $29.95, cloth; ISBN teacher. During World War I Forrestal 0-87249-829-8. served in the navy and Eberstadt in the army, and after the war the men developed Following the massive Chinese intervention a confidential client-lawyer relationship in in the Korean War in November 1950, a which they worked out major business large, overextended American force (X strategies, including the great Chrysler- Corps) found itself cut off and surrounded Dodge merger. in northeast Korea. The epic story of 1st Eberstadt became a Republican, cam• Marine Division's fighting withdrawal in paigning for Dewey in 1940; Forrestal re• punishing weather conditions from the Cho- mained a Democrat and went to Washing• sin Reservoir to the coast at Hungnam and ton as one of sue presidential assistants to eventual evacuation by the US Navy is well FDR. And when Forrestal asked Eberstadt known and documented. What may be over- Book Reviews 107

looked in this dramatic series of events is present he ever had! Many of the archival the part played by the US Army's inexperi• photos included in the book detail the mari• enced 3rd Infantry Division in keeping open time aspects of the evacuation. a forty-three-mile escape route of layered What immediately strikes the reviewer perimeter defences leading to Hungnam is that despite its very short length (the through which the Marines could safely pass. word count per page is also extremely low) With this volume, Cowart attempts to the book seems full of superfluous detail as rectify the situation. However, since he well as of tables and charts which will only admits that "an unkind fate decreed that I interest the specialist in US Army unit orga• live through most of this story," (p. xviii) his nization. The text is also acronym-laden, "history" can hardly be regarded as an objec• frequently out of context, and replete with tive one. Attempting to live up to the title of Cold War phraseology. There are also num• his work, Cowart portrays 3rd Division's erous unflattering remarks concerning Kore• actions in the manner of a minor ans. Cowart should have limited his efforts "Dunkirk"~though he admits that the Chi• to an article. nese had virtually no artillery or motorized transport and no air support. Lacking any Serge Marc Durflinger first-account narratives, the work is a dis• Verdun, Québec passionate collection of dates, times, ab• breviations, unit organizations and the John R.P. Lansdown. With the Carriers in sequence and dispositions of troop move• Korea, 1950-1953: The Fleet Air Arm Story. ments along the shrinking perimeter. This is Sansome Place, Worcester: Square One a narrowly-focused and not very illuminating Publications, 1992. xii + 485 pp., photo• effort. graphs, appendices, figures, tables, index, In a retrospective at the end of the f 18.50, cloth; ISBN 1-872017-46-0. book, Cowart indulges in wild speculation by claiming that were it not for 3rd Division, X The air conflict during the Korean War can Corps would have been destroyed or cap• be broadly grouped into three main cat• tured, which in turn might have prompted egories. The first, that of US Air Force the United States to pull out of the war and activities during that period, has been heav• "abandon South Korea to its fate." (p. 104) ily covered, especially with regard to the Readers of The Northern Mariner would MiG-15/F-86 Sabre contest. The second be disappointed with Cowart's treatment of category, that of US Navy and Marine Corps the naval evacuation from Hungnam (though air operations, has been less well covered, it adequately has been treated elsewhere). though it was chronicled in James Mitchen- Without a single naval source cited in the er's novel, The Bridges at Toko-Ri. The third bibliography, this is to be expected. The category, that of the Fleet Air Arm of the book is about the US retreat, not the naval Royal Navy, is perhaps least familiar to withdrawal. Nevertheless, we do learn that North American readers. John Lansdown's with USS Missouri and the 8-inch cruisers book, With the Carriers in Korea, fills the Rochester and St. Paul on station to cover need for an account. But, a word of caution: the two-week evacuation, 87,000 American this is not easy reading. troops, 93,000 Korean civilians and 17300 Lansdown sets forth in chronological vehicles and thousands of tons of stores order a thorough recounting of FAA opera• were embarked by 24 December, 1950. tions in North Korean waters from the first President Truman is said to have exclaimed sorties flown off HMS Triumph in June 1950 that the successful extraction of the to the last sorties flown off HMS Unicom in beleaguered force was the best Christmas 1953. All British and Commonwealth car- 108 The Northern Mariner riers that served in Korea, including HMAS Charles W. Koburger, Jr. The French Navy Sydney, have at least one chapter devoted to in Indochina: Riverine and Coastal Forces, their air operations. Lansdown also includes 1945-54. Westport, CN: Praeger Publishers, other Commonwealth naval units that served 1991. xxvi + 133 pp., maps, tables, photo• in that war. It is all here: almost every FAA graphs, appendices, bibliography, index. US combat mission flown in Korea is related, $39.95, cloth; ISBN 0-275-93833-6. many analyzed in depth. Lansdown frequent• ly reprints many of the official communiqués Richard L. Schreadley. From the Rivers to sent or received by the RN carriers. Their the Sea: The United States Navy in Vietnam. aircraft are also dealt with, leaving the Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992. reader with the unequivocal conclusion that xxii + 418 pp., maps, drawings, photographs, the FAA was fortunate in replacing the notes, bibliography, index. Cdn $40.50, US Seafire FR Mk. 47 with the Hawker Sea $29.95, cloth; ISBN 0-87021-772-0. Canadian Fury FB Mk. 11 during this time. In fact, distributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. Cathar• the relative inferiority of most FAA equip• ines, Ontario. ment (Sea Fury aside) when compared with USN aircraft is subtly but clearly shown. Whether or not we chose to recognize it at Curiously, the "high point" of FAA oper• the time, the Vietnam War of 1945-1954 was ations in Korea, that of Lieutenant Peter a real war. When a shaky peace was finally CarmichaePs victory in a propeller-driven concluded in 1954, 45,000 Frenchmen had Sea Fury over a MiG-15 jet fighter receives died trying to re-establish a French empire only one paragraph consisting largely of a in Indochina. In a replay running from 1959 partial transcript of his combat report. to 1973, something over 58,000 Americans In all, this book is a most impressively paid the ultimate price for their leaders' detailed effort. But, therein lies its greatest confusion between nationalism and commu• weakness. Because the operations are dealt nism. The number of Vietnamese, service or with carrier by carrier in chronological civilian, who died in this conflict is measured order, there is an uneven quality to the in the millions. South Vietnam, the country narrative that gives a somewhat disjointed that Americans had come to save, was the impression to the reader. Additionally, the most heavily bombed place on earth. amount of detail is staggering, and can bog The Marine Nationale from 1945 to 1954 the reader down. It is questionable, for and the US Navy throughout the war and example, whether it was necessary, even in after played major parts as might be expec• an appendix, to include schematic drawings ted in a country with an extended coast line of the catapult mechanism used on FAA and two major river estuaries. Koburger, a aircraft carriers. retired Captain USCG, has written a short Lansdown's work fills a gap long-needed but highly-concentrated book covering a to be filled. The sobriquet "definitive" could general history of Indochina from World be applied to this account of British and War II to the return of the French and the Commonwealth naval air warfare in Korea. development of the "dinassauts" (the divi• Given the mass of detail within, as well as sions d'infantrie navale d'assaut), the French the sometimes disjointed narrative, this book response to Viet Minh insurgency in the is for students of carrier operations or deltas. A typical dinassaut consisted of students of the Korean War, not a more twelve to eighteen specialized ships, mostly general readership. converted World War II landing craft, and a commando force of reinforced company Robert L. Shoop size. These units were, in a sense, "pro• Colorado Springs, Colorado jected" into the shore, into the rivers and Book Reviews 109 canals where their enemy was thought to be Both books provide an excellent back• lurking. ground to the naval war in and around Viet• Commander Schreadley, a retired naval nam. Photographs in both books help ident• officer and subsequently a newspaper editor, ify the alphabet soup of specialized ships takes up where Koburger leaves off. He too, and river craft. To that end, absolute necess• emphasizes the naval role of the riverine ities are the lists of abbreviations and acro• forces operated by the USN and the South nyms found in both books. Schreadley's list Vietnamese navy, in respectful imitation of of acronyms covers six pages—everything the French dinassauts. It is a sobering story from ACTOV (an "Accelerated Turnover to of naval warfare where death lurks constant• the Vietnamese"—of more that 1,300 ships ly, 365 days a year, around each bend of the and craft as it turned out) to YTB (a "Har• river. The Americans, as is their style, devel• bour Tug, Large"). oped purpose-built ships and craft for Any reader wishing to understand the riverine warfare. Support services, virtual naval war in Vietnam, especially the river floating cities, provided the logistic backup. war in the Mekong and Red River Deltas, It is a fascinating, if futile, narrative and one should read these books. which naval authorities should not neglect. Aside from riverine warfare, Schreadley David Fry deals with the entire USN effort in Vietnam, Toronto, Ontario the attempted blockade of the Vietnamese coast, the air warfare and its frustrating John "Sandy" Woodward, with Patrick restrictions, the useless attempt to turn the Robinson. One Hundred Days: The Memoirs war over to the very uninterested Vietnam• of the Falklands Battle Group Commander. ese. Schreadley knows of what he speaks. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992. He served in Vietnam and he was especially xxiii + 360 pp., photographs, maps, index. chosen to prepare a special history project Cdn $33.95, US $24.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750- for COMNAVFORV (Commander Naval 651-5. Canadian distributor, Vanwell Pub• Forces Vietnam) on the war up to 1969, a lishing, St. Catharines, Ontario. report that did not see the light of day. He commanded a DE in the Gulf of Tonkin Rear Admiral John Woodward was the and personally experienced the Tonkin Gulf commander of the Royal Navy task force "ghosts"-strange radar distortions that sent to the South Atlantic to recover the served President Johnson so well. Schreadley Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982. He is especially enlightening on the political was also the senior British military com• aspects of the naval war, the politics of mander in the theatre of operations, being Saigon and the politics of Washington. The senior to Major General Jeremy Moore. confusion and muddle accompanying vir• Woodward's strategic predicament in the tually every American decision made about Falklands campaign was similar to that of the war is honestly set out. The cupidity of Admiral Jellicoe's seventy years earlier in the South Vietnamese military leadership is World War I. Jellicoe was the only man on possibly unparalleled in the history of war• either side of the Great War who could have fare. CDR Schreadley is a loyal naval officer lost the war in an afternoon. Woodward and he does believe that victory might have could have lost the Falkland's campaign in attended the US efforts if only civilians ten minutes. Indeed, the time between the wouldn't try to run wars. But he has spent launch of an Exocet missile and its impact enough years as a newspaperman to tell an on either of the Royal Navy's two aircraft honest story as best he sees it. It is not a carriers would have been less than ten very glorious story. minutes. But neither of the carriers were hit 110 The Northern Mariner and the Royal Navy mounted the most exception to this flag waving was an exercise remarkable amphibious operation since in November 1981 with the American carrier World War II. battle group built around the USS Coral Sea These memoirs begin with the Exocet in the Indian Ocean. During this exercise attack on HMS Sheffield and Woodward's Woodward's flagship the destroyer Glamor• reaction to this sobering event. This first gan was able to attack the American aircraft chapter is overly dramatic and does not fit carrier successfully with Exocet missiles. with the strict chronology of what follows. Apparently this "lesson" was not lost on The next chapter reverts to Woodward's Woodward. days as a midshipman in the immediate Five months later Woodward found post-World War II Royal Navy. Though he himself in command of a carrier task force spent most of his career as a submariner, on its way to liberate the Falkland Islands. there were two stints as a planner in The Royal Navy was sending a career sub• Whitehall. Significantly in 1974 as Assistant mariner who had never commanded more Director (Warfare) in the Directorate of than a handful of surface vessels and who Plans he helped prepare a paper on the had never spent more than a week on an defence of the Falkland Islands in case of an aircraft carrier 10,000 miles from home to Argentinean attack. The answer was that command its largest operation since World "defence" of the islands was impossible. As War II. In the end we know that despite Woodward notes, no one bothered to ask some tight spots he did very well. Wood• the follow-up question: could the Falklands ward comes across as an intelligent cautious be retaken after a successful Argentinean commander. Beyond the incalculable risk of invasion? operating at the end of a supply line that Woodward's second posting to White• stretched half way around the earth Wood• hall was as Director of Naval Plans. This ward took few risks. For the most part he time he faced more than a hypothetical kept his carrier out of range of the paper war. For the senior service he helped Argentinean Navy's Exocet-armed Super fight and lose the battle of the 1981 Defence Entendard aircraft. This led to problems in Review against Margaret Thatcher's new providing air cover with the short ranged Defence Minister, the "cold-hearted" career Sea Harriers. However, Woodward made banker John Nott. Under Nott's plan the the right decision because the loss of either Royal Navy would have been reduced to a of his carriers would have meant the end of glorified anti-submarine squadron for the the operation. Woodward's side of the eastern Atlantic with the Trident nuclear sinking of the General Belgrano is told in powered ballistic missile submarines thrown full. After his experience with the Glamor• in as a sop to Thatcher's ideological visions gan he had no compunctions about having as a Cold Warrior. As Woodward notes, the the ancient cruiser sunk and frankly Wood• only non-Soviet admirals who would have ward was furious that the Argentinean approved were Jorge Anaya and his aircraft carrier the Veintecinco de Mayo got Argentinean colleagues. away. He did not want to take any more In the summer of 1981 Woodward was chances than he could help. promoted to Rear-AFalklands War. sile systems could not deal with the clutter caused by hills on the islands. The parsi• M. Stephen Salmon monious British treasury is blamed for most Orleans, Ontario of these defects. While such condemnations can be expected from front line commanders Michael A. Palmer. Guardians of the Gulf: the Royal Navy itself should also take some A History of America's Expanding Role in the of the responsibility for the performance of Persian Gulf, 1883-1992. New York: Free its equipment. Surely the radar clutter prob• Press, 1992. viii + 328 pp., tables, maps, lems must have been known before hand or notes, bibliography, index. US $24.95, cloth; had the Royal Navy never exercised amphi• ISBN 0-02-923843-9. bious operations in the Norwegian fjords? Woodward's attitudes towards men af• Most Westerners would be surprised to fected by stress is enlightening. He did not learn that the Persian Gulf states have not consider officers and men who could not by habit considered the United States an handle the stress of combat as cowards but imperialist power, let alone the "Great rather as victims in need of psychological Satan." Or that US policy towards the region assistance. If such a perspective is typical, has consistently been to avoid diplomatic then there has been a revolutionary change and military entanglements, greater involve• in the senior service. Nor does he condemn ment generally being at the encouragement anti-war naval officers such as David Tinker of the Iranians (in past guise as Persians). whose campaign letters were published Whereas most Americans only discovered posthumously as A Message from the the Gulf during the 1973 Arab oil embargo, Falklands. Tinker was not a traitor but Washington could look back upon a century rather had "a valid point of view." Jacky of good relations with shahs and sheiks. Fisher and Sandy Woodward are farther When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, apart than mere dreadnoughts and nuclear the stability of the region had been recog• powered submarines. nized as critical to Western security for four Some things are left unsaid. There is no decades. mention of SAS operations in Patagonia, nor In this survey spanning nearly two are the officers directly responsible for the centuries, Michael Palmer expands and Port Pleasant debacle named. Why were the updates his earlier book, On Course to destroyers acting as radar pickets, including Desert Storm (reviewed in the January 1993 HMS Sheffield, allowed to transmit by satel• issue of The Northern Mariner), to give the lite during periods of possible Exocet attack Second Gulf War a valuable historical con• when it was known that the satellite trans• text. He ably resolves many seeming contra• mission system interfered with the ships' dictions into a consistent theme of escalating radar detection equipment? Perhaps these American involvement, for reasons more questions cannot yet be discussed publicly. complex than mere thirst for oil. As Ameri• As for the reasons why a career sub• can commercial interests sought to exploit mariner was given command of a carrier the local advantages presented by the alter• task force to recapture the Falklands, these nate waxing and waning of Russian and 112 The Northern Mariner

British power, regional states attempted to pointed to see no mention of the many UN draw in America as a counter to the other peacekeeping missions to the region, nor powers. Despite ongoing resistance to mili• discussion of the Coalition which imple• tary obligations, Palmer chronicles how the mented the naval blockade of Iraq, examin• United States reluctantly but inexorably ation of which issues could have added to assumed the mantle of active guardianship, the discussion at several points. whose logical culmination was the recent Still, these slights detract only marginal• war with Iraq. Even with such obvious ly from a compelling history of American setbacks as the "loss" of Iran in 1979 and the involvement in a volatile region. This should unleashing of Saddam in the summer of remain the most balanced and thorough 1990, Palmer argues that "Americans have account of the subject for some time. fared rather well...[and] U.S. policy in the gulf must be considered a success." (p. 245) Richard H. Gimblett The author succeeds in arguing such a Ottawa, Ontario controversial thesis. He has produced a scholarly work which will appeal to the Robert Stephens Staley II. The Wave of the general reader, bringing together a variety of Future: The United Nations and Naval Middle Eastern themes, while keeping the Peacekeeping. London & Boulder, CO: Persian Gulf in the context of American Lynne Rienner, 1992. 63 pp., table, notes. global policy. By taking the long view he US $6.95, paper; ISBN 1-55587-379-0. brings a fresh perspective to accepted truths. For example, he shows to be significant that Naval forces were considered of great im• Harry Truman's "line in the sand" to Joseph portance in enforcement operations when Stalin was in Iran in 1946, not later in the United Nations Military Staff Committee Berlin. Looking at Desert Shield, he pro• engaged in serious negotiation in 1947-48. vides a credible answer to his question, Eric Grove, of the Montbatten Centre for "Through their actions, or inactions, did International Studies, University of South• American policymakers give a 'green light' ampton, suggests in his Foreword that, the to Saddam?" That the Navy had but a sup• world having moved back to the multipolar, porting role in the liberation of Kuwait is fluid and unstable state that was envisaged misleading; naval influence is a recurring in 1945, we need new thinking on the sub• theme, most often as a means to maintain ject of maritime security. We are now, he visible presence without the encumbrance of says, in a position to put into effect the permanent bases desired by neither Ameri• intentions of the UN's founding fathers. In cans nor Muslims. the "aftermath of one of the most impressive Usually not hesitant to address issues examples of international naval action of all squarely, Palmer occasionally pulls his time," it is timely to address it. punches. Desert Shield is viewed as the ine• The author thoroughly examines factors vitable consequence of American policy, but affecting the case for some sort of maritime the four day delay after the invasion before resources under United Nations control. He committing forces is passed over without argues that it is time for the United Nations explanation. Other commentators have once again to consider a UN Maritime argued convincingly the influential prompt• Agency. One nation, or a coalition outside ing by Prime Minister Thatcher at this United Nations control, involved in any of juncture; having demonstrated how the these scenarios, might not serve the interests United States supplanted the British in the of the larger community of nations, whereas gulf, this would have been an ironic twist forces under UN control would. He also worth exploring. Canadians will be disap• concludes that peacekeeping forces would Book Reviews 113

not be enough. United Nations maritime Joseph Gerard Brennan. Foundations of forces should be unequivocally armed naval Moral Obligation: The Stockdale Course. forces, because if the United Nations decide Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, they have to dictate non-violence, they may 1992. xxv + 269 pp., appendix, notes, bibli• have to engage in violence to achieve it. ography, index. US $10 (+ $2.50 shipping & The best move, he says, would be handling), paper. towards "a powerful United Nations agency responsible for overseeing all United Foundations of Moral Obligation: The Nations maritime concerns....responsible for Stockdale Course contains the transcribed developing...agreements around which and edited lectures for a popular course in United Nations maritime forces could be moral philosophy taught by Joseph G. Bren• constituted...based on... needs from grave nan at the Naval War College in Newport, and explosive international conflicts to Rhode Island. Conceived by Vice Admiral longer-running environmental con• James B. Stockdale in 1978, the course cerns...[called] the United Nations Maritime developed out of Stockdale's conviction that Agency." human intellect and will derive benefit from Although he recognizes the nature of the study of philosophy. Stockdale engaged some of the difficulties in operating interna• Brennan, professor emeritus of philosophy, tional naval forces, the author does not Barnard College of Columbia University, to seem to grasp their magnitude. It is much develop, with him, a graduate course for more difficult to operate an international military officers. naval force, than it is to operate a multi• Atypical of contemporary moral "issues" national land force. Soldiers operate in courses, this course is devoted to the ideas geographical territories, so that each nation's and the lives of great thinkers. The subject contingent can be given a geographical area matter of each lecture, and hence each of responsibility, and close interaction is not chapter, provides new opportunities for required. Naval operations, however, are Brennan to demonstrate the breadth of his fluid and fast moving, so that each unit has knowledge and recount the many stories to be capable of operating at an intimate which captured and held the attention of his level with every other, the whole as a prov• military audience and likewise affect the erbial "band of brothers." I am certain that reader. Spinning an intricate network of it was forty years of NATO naval cooper• ideas originating in philosophy, literature, ation, including twenty-five years of the religion, and science, and connecting these training given to navies by operating in the ideas with lived experience, he overlooks no Standing Naval Force Atlantic, that made major figure in the history of philosophy. possible the extraordinarily successful naval Beginning with an examination of Stock- cooperation in the Gulf War. dale's prisoner of war experience followed The Wave of the Future is a difficult and by a chapter on the suffering of Job, Bren• frustrating book. I see no chance that the nan discusses love, then treats in the same author's recommendations could be imple• eclectic manner aspects of the moral the• mented. However, it does give a disciplined ories of Aristotle, Kant, John Stuart Mill framework and a rich menu of factors affec• and Sartre. The closing chapters consider ting the subject, and thus considerably Lenin, a Soviet philosopher disinterested in advances the study of the subject of naval ethics, the effect of science on ethics, and peacekeeping. the life and ideas of Wittgenstein, a philos• opher intentionally silent on ethical matters. Dan Mainguy In these various contexts Brennan depicts Ottawa, Ontario the creative power of human intellect as well 114 The Northern Mariner as the freedom and fortitude of human will. are more frequent than is typical in surveys Although not among the philosophers of moral philosophy, and the duties to obey highlighted in chapter headings, Socrates is orders and be silent in the face of orders the book's predominant philosophical pres• are spared the challenges likely to be ence. The two longest paragraphs in the levelled elsewhere, there is nothing in either Index are given to Socrates and Plato. the book's moral questions or Brennan's Socrates may be Brennan's favourite mouth• methodology that would associate it with piece, but he approaches moral philosophy maritime studies generally, or the training of in a very un-Socratic manner. While both naval officers in particular. The Stockdale locate moral questions in lived experience, Course worked at the Naval War College, in Socrates, unlike Brennan, believed that there part, because it bore the authority of the are answers. There are moral truths to be respected naval officer who implemented it, discovered. Hence, Socrates relentlessly em• and in part, because by responding to the ployed his method of dialectic in the pursuit lectures as they responded to Joseph Bren• of moral truth. Brennan, however, denies nan's wisdom and integrity, students gave to that moral philosophy contains answers or the lectures their power to provide a foun• demonstrable conclusions. This perspective dation of moral obligation. makes intelligible the basically unstructured nature of each chapter and lack of thesis for Sandra Tomsons the book taken as a whole. One searches in Corner Brook, Newfoundland vain for critical analysis of alternative views, arguments supporting particular moral Philip P. Boucher. Cannibal Encounters: assessments, or the careful working out of European and Island Caribs, 1492-1763. the basis for moral obligations. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Univer• So why the course and a book entitled sity Press, 1992. xii + 217 pp., illustrations, Foundations of Moral Knowledge"! Simply maps, notes, bibliography, index. US $32.95, because in these "sermons," as they were cloth; ISBN 0-8018-4365-0. ironically but perceptively called, one is invited to contemplate, in combination, Philip Boucher tries to overcome five hun• humanity's greatest insights and the amazing dred years of stereotyping of the Island strength of will of real human beings in Carib people as fierce man-eaters. He suc• terrible circumstances. In such awareness is ceeds because he has a command of the lit• the possibility to acquire the moral founda• erature, especially English and French, since tion which enables human flourishing in 1492. That he has not explored the Spanish hard times. Moral knowledge may be impos• archives probably has not diminished his ef• sible, moral goodness is not. fort, since the Spaniards regarded the Wind• The reading list for the Stockdale ward and Leeward Islands, home of the Course in the appendix indicates that stu• Caribs, as way stations on the voyage to dents moved beyond the book's superficial their main colonies. This did not prevent the exposition of the ideas of philosophers. This Spaniards from continuing to echo Christo• is essential if one genuinely seeks under• pher Columbus' view that the Carib enemies standing of either the foundations of moral of his Taino Arawak contacts were canni• obligation, or the individual moral theories bals. English and French writers were happy of philosophers. While the book barely to perpetuate this view, although the French scrapes the surface of the myriad of ideas it were more willing to challenge it. Indeed introduces, like the course, it could provide that is a main theme of this work, because a catalyst which prompts the closer look. the author, well versed in studies of the Although examples of military courage French-Amerindian experience in North Book Reviews 115

America, wanted to see how the French the ironic growth of an Afro-Carib commun• experience with the Caribs fit into their ity, descendants of captured Africans, that relations with those on the mainland. was Carib in custom but which significantly The French went to Brazil well before outnumbered the Caribs by 1763. Boucher Cartier landed in the St. Lawrence region. concludes with a fascinating assessment of They sought dyewood. It was their Brazilian how Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and contact with the Tupinambas, a people who others, relying on their prejudiced prede• ate human flesh for religious reasons rather cessors, may have led us all astray. than culinary ones, that made the French Cannibal Encounters is a relatively short tend to be more sympathetic to the Island study, but it is packed with insight on Euro• Caribs. Although the French, like the Eng• pean attitudes toward an American people. lish, would wage war against the Caribs for It makes clear that once a stereotype is control of the islands, they preferred to established it may never be erased. Bou• evangelize and trade. cher's commendable effort shows that the The Caribs had been feared raiders Caribs deserve better. before the Europeans arrived. In their dugout canoes they covered the whole of the J.C.M. Ogelsby Greater and Lesser Antilles, an experience London, Ontario which sailors can appreciate, but will have to imagine in this study. They remained feared Rodrigue Lévesque (comp. & éd.). History raiders after the English, Dutch and French of Micronesia, A Collection of Source Docu• arrived in the early seventeenth century. At ments, Vol. I: European Discovery 1521-1560. least they did until their wars, their exposure Gatineau, Québec: Les Éditions Lévesque, to European diseases, and their migration to 1992 [RR 3, Gatineau, Québec, Canada J8P the South American mainland had virtually 7G7]. 702 pp., maps, illustrations, appen• eliminated them from the islands. dices, bibliography, index. $60, cloth; ISBN Boucher first introduces us to the fif• 0-920201-01-6. teenth century polemics on the Caribs. He then moves to a detailed narrative recount• It is sometimes from the desks of historians ing of the Anglo-French-Carib relationship with no major links to established publishing spanning the years from Thomas Warner's houses, and hence no limitations imposed by 1623 colonization of St. Christopher (where the editors and designers of such houses, he had to share that tiny island with French that the most remarkable publications settlers) to the Treaty of Paris, 1763. By appear. In the case of this weighty first then, all but some three hundred Caribs volume of source documents on the history remained, too few to rate mention in the of Micronesia, Rodrigue Lévesque has final settlement. demonstrated to a degree the pitfalls of The narrative discusses such figures as personal publishing, but to a larger degree "Indian" Warner, Thomas Warner's son by a its extraordinary charm and startling possi• Carib, who becomes a romantic warrior on bilities in the desktop age. the Carib side. It looks at some of the Spanish vessels wandered through the interesting ways the Caribs waged war. One island groups of Micronesia early in the way was to burn hot peppers whose smoke sixteenth century. Having visited that same drove English settlers away, but chemical far-flung realm of islands to the north of warfare proved of little avail. The English Melanesia in the Pacific in 1981, Lévesque kept pressing. And, if the European enemy came away with a profound sympathy for was not enough, the Caribs weakened them• the islanders, and a determination to pro• selves from within, as the narrative reveals duce a thorough historical record of their 116 The Northern Mariner past, so that, as Lévesque quoted the 1493, establishing the Line of Demarcation Hawaiian head of the Pacific Science Board, for Portuguese and Spanish exploration and "the people of the islands can know, appreci• ownership of the world, to the letter sent ate, and be proud of their past, and be from Viceroy Mendoza to the Council of the better prepared to cope with problems of Indies concerning the Villalobos expedition the future." What he has produced is an of 1542-46. Supporting the documents are astonishingly diverse first volume of refer• several hundred appealing illustrations and ence material on Micronesia that mixes a host of secondary references such as a primary and secondary as well as tertiary "List of Ships Through Micronesia for the source excerpts with delightful illustrations Period 1521-65," while throughout are woven culled from many locations. Throughout the Lévesque's folksy but astonishingly detailed volume, whether reading an excerpt from a observations which add a naive charm to the letter, an official voyage account, or a list of whole. To the historian wondering where to ordnance, powder, and gunnery incidentals turn for more detailed information after carried in Magellan's vessels (listed down to reading about Pacific exploration in the the last arroba, or eleven-kilogram unit), the hushed halls of Beaglehole and others, reader benefits from Lévesque's own chatty Lévesque's first volume is a charming footnotes, which create a feeling of being delight to browse through, and a useful and with him up in his attic, rummaging through enlightening one. To the lay reader who a trunk of treasures while swigging coffee. believes that European reaction to the Lévesque has concentrated on providing handsome islanders of the Pacific began with Wallis, Cook, Bougainville and the the key documents, or portions thereof, Polynesia of the 1700s, there may be some which give actual accounts of discoveries and surprise in finding that astonished European voyages in the islands. His research in Spain, seamen were stumbling upon beautiful atolls Portugal and elsewhere was extraordinarily and their inhabitants thousands of miles to detailed, fired with the passion of an ama• the north hundreds of years earlier. teur in the best sense of the word. Whether reading the letter of 18 July, 1519 from Portuguese Factor Sebastien Alvarez to the Victor Suthren King of Portugal the account of Magellan's Ottawa, Ontario and Espinosa's activities written by Antonio Brito, the Portuguese governor of the Mol• Miller Graf. Arctic Journeys: A History of uccas at the time, or a detailed chart-sup• Exploration for the Northwest Passage. Bern ported reasoning on the possible fate of the & New York: Peter Lang, 1992; American lost galleon San Lesmes, the reader is cons• University Studies, Series LX, Vol. 121. viii tantly presented with conversational asides + 377 pp., appendix, bibliography. US or illustrations which, to a more formal $56.95, library binding; ISBN 0-8204-1745-9. historian, would be inappropriate but which Lévesque has provided in order to add Miller Graf is a retired USAF officer who colour to the story. If there is fault to his was stationed for part of his career at Son- approach, it may be his unquestioning quo• destrom Air Base in Greenland. As Squad• tation from secondary sources in the manner ron Commander there in 1968 Graf was in• of a good undergraduate history paper, but strumental in locating the "Greater Rock- even there his selection has a ring of value ford," a Stinson monoplane which had and appropriateness. crashed forty years earlier on an attempted The key contents are seventy documen• flight from Rockford, Illinois to Stockholm. tary excerpts from original sources ranging The plane was returned to Rockford for dis• from the text of the Papal Bull of 4 May, play in the local museum. Grafs approach Book Reviews 117

to the history of Arctic exploration is thus cover, something had to give. But, having grounded in the reality of having lived and said that I admire what Graf has set out to worked in the Arctic. do and like the thorough and sane way he Why this effort to honour a failure? has done it, I must admit to some reserva• Well Graf sees the history of Arctic explo• tions about the book, particularly as the ration, "one of the small streams of human publishers, by presenting it as part of their experience," (p. 3) as a still unfolding story "American History Series," seem to claim in the course of which each individual and some kind of academic authority for it. If so, expedition adds something to our knowledge they might have done better by their author. of the Arctic. To view this history as a series The book has no maps, which is inexcusable. of almost nothing but failures is to miss the It also has no illustrations although, con• point. Grafs appreciation of what men have sidering its price, this may be just as well. achieved in the Arctic "is...a constant and There is, to be fair, a handy chronology. enjoyable feature" of this "introduction to There are too many typographical errors, the fascinating history of the north." (p. vii) the names drawn from several nations in The most striking virtues of Arctic particular presenting a challenge to which Journeys are its comprehensiveness and fair- the printers failed to rise ("Stoker Stokers- mindedness. It begins with Pytheas and ends son" [sic], Stefansson's companion, is, how• with the projected (in 1991) attempt to sail ever, a welcome addition to the gallery of to the pole. The contributions of all nations Arctic characters [p.304]). Editing seems to are given their due and dotty theories (if have been incompetent or non-existent. Sen• one may call them that) and controversies tences can either flow awkwardly or be just are treated in an admirably balanced fash• plain ungrammatical. The transitions from ion. The handling of the "Peary or Cook or one chapter to the next are frequently un• nobody?" question is especially notable in graceful, with the result that we can read this regard. three times in three successive paragraphs Graf employs a narrative and chrono• about the discovery of McClure's message in logical approach, the most engaging way of 1853 (pp. 140, 143) or receive the impres• presenting such a wealth of material to sion that Zachariah Gillam died twice (pp. readers not familiar with the subject. Yet, 59, 64). Nor, viewing Arctic Journeys as an given that the text occupies not much more academic book, am I happy with its sources. than three hundred pages, one has no sense It would be foolish to fault Graf for not of a breathless rush through the centuries. having read everything, on the one hand, or Many of the people who appear are pres• for his choice of sources on the other. Yet ented as individuals, not as mere names. in a book with academic pretensions, the Americans do not seem to get more ink sources for the Hudson's Bay Company and than those of other nationalities and, if Graf the North-West Passage should be E.E. stretches himself a bit when it comes to Rich and Glyndwr Williams, not Thomas Adolphus Greeley, this is surely allowable to Costain and Farley Mowat. one who spent his boyhood in Greeley's Such pretensions and failings, however, home town of Newburyport. can probably be laid at the door of the Graf does not neglect to mention the publishers. Miller Graf should be pleased at changes in motive for Arctic exploration in having proved that "this tale (is) worth the theories of and knowledge about the Arctic, retelling" (p. viii)—and his ambition was no and in the technologies used for travelling more (and no less) than that. and living in the Arctic. Some readers might prefer more from Graf on these topics, yet Anne Morton he perhaps felt that with so vast an area to Winnipeg, Manitoba 118 The Northern Mariner

Nancy Fogelson. Arctic Exploration & Inter• aircraft were able to fly non-stop across the national Relations 1900-1932. Fairbanks: Arctic, controversies over expansion into the University of Alaska Press, 1992. xiv + 220 north polar regions subsided, relations pp., maps, photos, appendices, bibliography, between the countries improved, and oppor• index. US $15, paper; ISBN 0-912006-61-7. tunities were developed to open up the north for defence and to exploit oil and The author's purpose was to describe the minerals. impact of the efforts of various explorers to No expedition or clash of national open the Arctic, especially in the western interests has been examined in any depth in hemisphere, on international relations in this smallish book. Fortunately, though, the general and on American-Canadian relations political and economic implications (unre• in particular. While the book surveys the solved to this day) of the Alaskan Boundary period from 1840 to 1990, its main emphasis Dispute, which was arbitrated by Great Brit• is on examining the effects of arctic explora• ain and the USA against Canada's interests tion from 1900 to 1932. In this period expe• in 1903, have been noted, as has Canada's ditions were mounted by Americans, Danes unofficial postulation of its "sector"~60° to and Norwegians to challenge Canada's in• 141° west longitude—in the so-called "sector choate claims to sovereignty over the arctic principle" espoused in 1907 by Senator islands, claims that were finally secured in Paschal Poirier in the Canadian Senate. 1930 with a Canada-Norway agreement. Fogelson, who teaches American and Early expeditions into the Arctic sought European history in Cincinnati, Ohio, is to discover the fate of Frariklin's 1845 expe• clearly no jingoist. She has nicely balanced dition to find the Northwest Passage. After documentary source materials from Ameri• 1900 the goal of most expeditions was to get can sources with those from the National to the North Pole and back, and to map and Archives of Canada and works by Canadian explore the arctic islands claimed by Canada historians such as Gordon Smith and RAJ. since 1882, when Great Britain transferred (Bob) Phillips. The resulting work is one of ownership of all islands in British North a very few studies of modern arctic explora• America except Bermuda. tion that have sought to incorporate either The book can be divided in half: a the Arctic region or the achievements of marine period up to 1920-21 and an aviation arctic explorers into the general history of period after 1921. The earlier period is international relations. Both American and better detailed and of greater interest from Canadian readers will find Fogelson's book the points of view of maritime history and well worthwhile. political science, but the later period is not lacking in details of interest. Allen D. Taylor There were many disputes, none of Cantley, Quebec them major, in this period of expanding national interests as nations sponsored arctic Steve Short and Rosemary Neering. In the expeditions with the intention of establishing Path of the Explorers: Tracing the Expeditions an official presence on the islands of Cana• of Vancouver, Cook, Mackenzie, Fraser and da's Arctic archipelago. Canada met the Thompson. Vancouver: Whitecap Books, challenge by opening RCMP posts through• 1992. xii + 124 pp., map, colour photo• out the region and by issuing explorers' graphs, bibliography, index. $29.95, paper; permits. Also, especially in the period from ISBN 1-55110-018-5. 1894 to 1921, Canada mounted some explor• atory expeditions of its own. But then, in the Rosemary Neering and Steve Short, of 1920s, as aviation technology improved and Beautiful B.C. magazine, have teamed up Book Reviews 119

together to create a delightful little coffee- the book designer, but Carolyn Deby has table paperback that would make an ideal done an especially fine job of layout and gift for any visitor to Canada's western typography, and her cover is an open invita• province. It tells the story of the first Eng• tion to all to dig deeper and look inside. All lish-speaking explorers of British Columbia- together, this is a delightful little book. Cook, Vancouver, Mackenzie, Simon Fraser and Thompson, but ignores the Spaniards. John Crosse Neering has done an excellent job with the Vancouver, British Columbia script, and Short's photography ties in well with the text. The book is written for the Robin Fisher. Vancouver's Voyage: Charting general reader, and one should not there• the Northwest Coast, 1791-1795. Vancouver fore be too critical of the few errors Neering & Toronto: Douglas & Mclntyre, 1992. xi + makes. On Cook she covers only his visit to 131 pp., maps, illustrations, colour plates, Nootka, but poor old George Vancouver notes, bibliography, index. $35, cloth; ISBN comes in for the usual panning in a chapter 1-55054-023-8. entitled "A Man Haughty and Proud." This is a poor summation of a naval officer who, This is a celebratory work to mark the though sick himself, showed every consider• occasion of the bicentenary of Captain ation for the welfare of his men and for the George Vancouver's survey of the northwest natives with whom he came in contact. But coast of North America. Based almost the writer reflects our traditional tendency wholly on historical materials in print, this to overlook the harsh realities of life at sea work is a general survey of the subject. It and the perfidious treatment meted out by relies heavily on Vancouver's own voyage Pitt and Chatham on Vancouver's return. prepared in a scholarly edition by W. Kaye The authors handle the overland Lamb for the Hakluyt Society in 1984. The explorers well. Neering's treatment of expedition itself was a great success for Thompson is especially well written, bringing hydrographical science, undertaken to one of out the unique inner qualities of the man, the world's most complex coastlines. Van• while Short's beautiful photographs well couver's work, taken up by Belcher, Kellett, illustrate the magnificent country through Richards, Pender and others, was a great which the overland explorers passed. His credit to the Royal Navy, but in many picture of Rainbow Mountain, on Alexander respects, as recent scholarship has stated, Mackenzie's route, is particularly impressive. the Spanish, who left an equally valuable But one rather regrets that all the illustra• legacy for nautical science, were not techni• tions were taken in perfect weather condi• cally inferior in hydrographie research. The tions instead of the driving rain and swirling book is well illustrated, with views from the mist, storm and tempest, blistering heat and treasures of the Hydrographie Department, mosquito-ridden swamps that are all too Ministry of Defence (Navy), Taunton, and often the explorers' lot. One cannot help but with photographs of the coastline from the feel that the overlanders had it far more trusty camera of Gary Fiegehan, a distin• tough. Not for them the creature comforts, guished photographer. the camaraderie, the easy routine of ship• This reviewer has always felt sorry for board life. Mackenzie, Fraser and George Vancouver: he went on a mission Thompson were a different breed of cat, that he knew might be a fool's errand, and self-motivated, fired with an unquenchable he knew it was to be a protracted voyage pursuit of the unknown, impervious to typical of this great and classic era of late- hardship. eighteenth century discovery. He did not like It is not usual in a review to compliment the grey-green forested landscape he saw all 120 The Northern Mariner around him and, like Capability Brown, do not say that. He did not seem "to have a would have preferred to see European short fuse" in his dealings with native people manicuring of the wilderness and European (p. 22) but was, rather, cautious and self- industry and development making a new controlled. Vancouver, contrary to what empire out of the wilderness. Vancouver Fisher says, (p. 29) was a circumspect, possessed inadequate instructions, and he sympathetic and perceptive observer of laboured largely in the dark in relation to native cultures on the coast, as Kaye Lamb his Spanish counterpart Bodega y Quadra in and Erna Gunter concluded. Vancouver was working out, as best they could, the com• fully aware of demographic factors, and the plexities of the Nootka Convention. At least deleterious role of smallpox and outside they had the sense, as gentlemen, to agree cultures on the Indians. Vancouver's caution to disagree and leave it at that. Vancouver's in dealing with the natives was understand• health deteriorated in the third year of his able in view of what had happened to James expedition so that his concluding years were Cook in Hawaii, and Vancouver was under a sorry closing to so great an epic, although orders to be careful and circumspect in his his case was taken up vehemently by his dealings with indigenous peoples; but it is brother Charles, as B. Guild Gillespie's incorrect to classify this as "fear." Vancouver engaging and re-creative book on the tri• worried that the Northwest Coast natives umphs and torments of the celebrated had become so heavily armed that this fact navigator On Stormy Seas (1992) relates so endangered the safety of ships and men. It evocatively. The voyage was impossibly long, was the behaviour of American fur traders it seems, and by the time the ships reached rather than Europeans generally that Vancouver was most concerned about, and Shannon, Ireland, en route to English port, there is a necessary requirement here for Midshipman Barrie wrote wryly that Ireland historians to differentiate more specifically was "a very wild place almost as bad as the between and among "whites." Northwest Coast of America and I can't understand the Natives." He continued (in a letter that now resides in the Duke Univer• Barry Gough sity Library) by observing that "The Irish Waterloo, Ontario look at us with astonishment when they hear we have been 5 years from a European Barry Gough. The Northwest Coast: British port." Navigation, Trade, and Discoveries to 1812. This book joins an already large shelf of Vancouver: University of British Columbia works on navigation, trade and discovery Press, 1992. xiv + 265 pp., maps, plates, dealing with the Northwest Coast and there notes, bibliography, index. $39.95, cloth; is little of originality here either in concept ISBN 0-7748-0399-1. or documentation. George Vancouver was a herald of British imperialism and colonial Students of maritime and western Canadian development. Yet Professor Fisher avoids history will greet this book warmly. Barry dealing with the legacies of Vancouver's Gough is no stranger to either constituency voyage, at least in any detail, although he because of his numerous contributions to does say that "the native people of the coast our knowledge of European, Canadian and had, in the long run, little reason to cel• American activities on the Northwest Coast, ebrate Vancouver's coming." (p. 120) Per• particularly in the nineteenth century. This haps the same could be said of James Cook, latest offering, which he says is the result of Bodega y Quadra and others. He implies twenty-five years' work, casts a wider histori• that Vancouver was looking for "people to cal net back to Elizabethan times and, exploit," (p. 9) but Vancouver's instructions particularly in the later years of the eight- Book Reviews 121 ccnth century, puts all the area's interna• claims would be brushed aside if not tional rivalries as well as British imperial enforced by occupation. The resulting arrest visions into a true Pacific context. We are and detention at Nootka Sound of British given clear explanations of the conflicting ships belonging to Meares' group spurred goals of the British, Spanish, French and London into responding with a high hand in Russians, not to mention the East India 1790. A huge fleet was mobilized under the Company, American and Chinese mer• command of Admiral Howe, and while the chants. Lest this sound unbearably complex, Spanish responded in kind they eventually readers may rest assured of the author's backed down when it became apparent that talent for clear and lively prose which pro• their normal French ally, convulsed by the duces a brisk and interesting read. early stages of the Revolution, would offer The book opens with a discussion of no help. Elizabethan interest in the Pacific, revolving Criticisms of the book are quite minor. around Drake's circumnavigation. His for• Maps are a major disappointment: there are mal territorial claim to Nova Albion, tenu• two, neither noted in the table of contents. ous though it was, gave subsequent British That of the Pacific coast covers two pages, governments a pretext to assert their inter• of which two-thirds are blank ocean; they ests with something of a straight face. One lack a scale and lines of latitude (which is might be forgiven for suspecting Drake's particularly annoying as the text refers voyage was an isolated incident and not a frequently to latitude), and many names in harbinger of British Pacific expansion, the text do not appear on the maps. When because after these twenty-four opening venturing to the European side of things the pages we jump the seventeenth century author sometimes introduces confusion, as entirely, before plunging into the eighteenth when he seems to place Wellington's army century. in Spain in the late 1790s (p. 167) and dates This is the real meat of the book, and the Pax Britannica from 1763 (p. 25). On p. readers will be impressed with the thorough 141 there are several erroneous statements and readable descriptions of adventurous about British naval practices and building merchants, official explorers and statesman• methods. The bibliography is reasonably like imperial visions. Gough gives a good complete also, but in one of those ironic account of the voyages of eminent explorers twists it must be noted that this reviewer's like Cook and Vancouver: their strategic and article on "The Naval Aspects of the Nootka scientific objectives (such as the ever-elusive Sound Crisis" is referred to several times in Northwest Passage), their ships and equip• the relevant chapter but does not make it to ment, personalities, habits of command and the bibliography! fellow crew members, not to mention the Those quite minor problems aside, there actual voyages with analysis of the signifi• is no hesitation in recommending this book cance of each discovery. There is also a very most enthusiastically. It is the assured work clear description of the growth of commer• of a scholar who has mastered his subject cial links across the Pacific following Cook's after years of study, and a brief review 1778 voyage with its revelation of how lucra• cannot begin to do it justice. tive the Chinese market was for sea otter pelts. Numerous groups and individuals, of Paul Webb whom John Meares is just the best known, London, Ontario raised financial backing and set out to make their fortunes until the area seemed to be swarming with traders. This of course aroused Spanish fears that their extensive