BOOK REVIEWS

Fred Calabretta. Guide to the Oral History egorization of the materials, and indices Collections at Mystic Seaport Museum. Mys• should be as comprehensive as possible. tic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1992. v + Clear, concise, descriptive entries to fully 74 pp., indices. US $12, paper; ISBN 0- identify the materials are essential. Fred 913372-63-3. Calabretta's guide meets all these criteria. Actually, one wonders how much longer During the past several decades a number of publications of this type will appear. As institutions, including some museums, have personal computers proliferate and printing built significant oral history collections. In the costs continue to escalate, we can expect case of certain museums, these oral recollec• guides such as this to be marketed in com• tions have been employed to good advantage puter disk form — preferably with random to complement and enhance their artifact access. Nevertheless, the Mystic guide is an holdings. While some historians have found excellent access key to an impressive collec• the information contained in tape form useful tion and certainly helps to publicize these as primary source material, many oral history holdings to researchers well beyond Connecti• recordings remain under-utilized partially due cut and New England. to a scarcity of published catalogues. Fred Calabretta's Guide to the Oral Robert S. Elliot History Collections at Mystic Seaport Museum Saint John, New Brunswick seeks to publicize the specialized maritime history recordings housed in the Museum's Le Roy Barnett (comp.). Shipping Literature G.W. Blunt White Library. The guide is sub• of the Great Lakes: A Catalogue of Company divided into sections which cover Mystic Publications, 1852-1990. East Lansing: Michi• Seaport's three major oral history collections gan State University Press, 1992. ix + 165 (general collections, the yachting collection pp., figures, tables, bibliography, index. US and the Munson Institute lectures). The three $24.95, cloth; ISBN 0-87013-317-9. sections are further divided into individual recording entries which are complemented by In the era of the Internet, of information such useful indices as a subject index for the superhighways, of globally accessible library general and the yachting collections. In fact, catalogues, the gentle art of bibliography for those unfamiliar with the oral history seems almost passe. But how many of us, resources at Mystic Seaport Museum, these whether plugged into the network or not, have subject indices are among the most helpful not found something useful which otherwise tools in the publication. might have gone unread in the "Canadian To be a truly useful tool, a guide or key Maritime Bibliography?" If keeping up with to a particular collection must follow a few the output of the varied interests of the mem• rules. First, and perhaps most importantly, the bers of the CNRS seems daunting, pity the guide should have a logical organization. Very poor retrospective bibliographer with aspira• careful consideration must be given to the cat• tions to completeness and authority, and rarely

65 66 The Northern Mariner a second edition to "tie up the loose ends." quite candid about the fuzziness of some of Barnett has taken on a particularly diffi• the dating; he is equally frank that some of cult class of publication: that produced by the companies are hard to pin down. If he's shipping companies on the great lakes. From not exactly right (and there are occasions the perspective of the collecting institution when he isn't) he is at least in the ball park. much of this is labelled "ephemera:" "sailing Information on place and date of publication schedules, tourist promotional pieces, annual are supplied in most cases, though frequently reports and so forth." (p. ix) Barnett has with square brackets and question marks. included employee publications like newslet• Locational references are supplied in the form ters, legal documents, labour contracts, group of the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) institutional insurance, auction catalogues. Locked away codes, so that NAC becomes CaOOA (the inside these publications are some valuable logic is thus: Canada, Ontario, Ottawa, cartography and ship's plans. Many of them Archives); even better, there's a reference are single folded sheets; often no "author," table. Just don't expect to ILL these items! "title," "publisher," "date" - nothing that com• Added extras include a brief essay on the fortably fits the great databases of the Inter• history of shipping company publications, a net. Easy to slip into a folder with similar chart, five maps locating Great Lakes ports, pieces — or keep undistinguished in a mass of and thirteen pages of statistics from various similar material acquired from a single collec• government sources regarding passenger tor. The Merrilees Collection at the National volumes out of various ports, and on various Archives offers riches to those in the know; lines. The statistics add relatively little to the the label means nothing others. Here Barnett bibliography, but they are a handy source. seeks out, organizes, indexes the material. The This is a remarkably affordable reference inventory, he hopes, "will...alert public institu• tool, one that many — especially those with tions to the need for additional collecting in collections of this kind of material - will this area..." And hopefully some of the major want to acquire. Institutions would do well to private collections of these materials will find survey their collections a second time - their way into public collections where the especially archival collections for things they broad community of researchers can benefit may have overlooked. As a researcher what from consulting them. would I want to see added? I suspect Barnett Barnett has identified 3042 different has barely scratched the surface of printed items, for only one half of which can more documents produced by shipping companies than a single location be cited. He estimates relating to specific litigation. To do so would that he has captured in this bibliography only require a commitment on the part of the bib• about eighty per cent of the literature that was liographer to dig deeply in various govern• issued. Would that he had included an appen• ment files. For the larger collections, and the dix citing titles which were identified but National Archives of Canada is as good an could not be located. Moreover, some of the example as any, we need more explicit direc• most prominent private collections might well tions to material than simply the front door. If have been surveyed for titles that still exist, if this bibliography cites only the items explicit• not in institutional hands. ly entered in various institutional catalogues The organization of the material is exact• then the eighty per cent figure Barnett offers ly what might have been desired: sub-divided is likely to be a gross underestimate. To the by company, and listed by date. My great pet marine researcher the publications of the peeve among bibliographies is the provincial marine insurance industry, at least in the nine• bibliography with an eighty-page section on teenth century, are certainly as valuable as local histories, listed alphabetically by author! many of the company publications. Perhaps Barnett makes no such gaffes. The compiler is this could be addressed in an ancillary publi- Book Reviews 67

cation. It would also help to include the ways it sets a high standard which his suc• works of major reproduction efforts in the cessors, always depending on what source bibliography. Many academic libraries have a material they may have available for their massive collection of nineteenth-century cana- national studies, may find hard to match. diana in the microfiche files of the Canadian Readers acquainted with Kaukiainen's earlier Institute of Historical Microreproductions. work, especially his Sailing into Twilight: Many of its 50,000-plus titles are pamphlets Finnish Shipping in an Age of Transport and broadsheets. Finally, the focus on ship• Revolution (Jyvaskyla, 1991) will see here the ping companies ignores the fact that many epitome of his macro-economic methodology firms were one and two ship outfits, not signi• and technique: the reconstruction (or calcula• ficantly different in scope and scale from tion) of, on the one hand, the demand for early nineteenth-century operations. There are shipping space arising out of Finland's import a modest number of printed items promoting and export trades and, on the other, the pro• specific ships in the 1820s to the 1840s which ductive capacity of the Finnish merchant fleet. it would have been well to document. This interactive explanatory framework is AH of this is to return to the question of of eminent value in the understanding of the updating and process. I, for one, would development and performance of the national strongly support the mounting of this as an fleets of any single country — a task which, as online bibliography — perhaps at Michigan I have remarked often before, is one of the State. Let us use the Internet to query it, and most difficult ones in an industry that is to add to it as new information surfaces. This essentially international in nature. Kaukiainen is a truly ambitious project and one for which leads the reader with a very certain hand and the compiler is to be congratulated for under• deft touch through the various stages of taking. Finland's gradual integration into the Swedish, North European and finally Atlantic Walter Lewis and global economies. Tar and timber, paper Acton, Ontario and pulp were for a long time the corks on which Finland's exports rested; in due course, Yrj6 Kaukiainen. A History of Finnish Ship• passengers, industrial products and, last but ping. London & New York: Routledge, 1993. not least, crude oil became important com• xvi + 231 pp., maps, tables, figures, appendix, modities on Finland's sea routes. At several notes, bibliography, index. £40, US $72.50, stages, however, most notably in the second cloth; ISBN 0-415-00158-7. half of the nineteenth century, Finnish ships were also active in cross-trading on the many As the first volume in a series of histories of tramp routes of the world. national merchant fleets, this book constitutes There are many excellent passages in the a jump into the deep on the part of its ambi• book, such as those dealing with the geogra• tious editor. Although it would be unwise and phy and political circumstances of Finnish premature to judge a series of ten or even overseas trade and shipowning, the contrasts more individual studies by the quality of the between urban and peasant shipping, the first one to appear, the impression created by quantitative and qualitative fluctuations in that first volume will nevertheless be an Finland's trade and shipping, the evolution of important pointer towards the standard of the the network of the country's ferry services, series as a whole. and the periodic shifts in the balance between Kaukiainen's book on the growth and employment in the national and cross trades. development of the Finnish merchant fleet Of particular interest to me were the many throughout the centuries (his account closes in varieties of the use of flags of convenience, 1991) is a high-quality analysis. In many ranging from Dutch in-flagging in the 1730s 68 The Northern Mariner

to the many forms of present-day out-flag• importance of discussing as well the purer ging. "business" aspects of the industry he analyzes, Yet, there is a certain imbalance in the this does not take away from the strength, book as from the late eighteenth century the cohesiveness and efficacy of his argument. Finnish shipping industry appears to operate Finland's case has much to say to maritime too much in isolation from the happenings in historians all over the world, including world shipping in general; at the same time Canada. The new series of national shipping the perspective of the individual owner — the histories has been kicked off with a winner. micro-economic perspective — has not always been explored in the same detail and with the Frank Broeze same incisiveness as the macro-economic Nedlands, Western Australia issues. How did Finnish sailing-ship owners operate on the sailing-ship tramp market? Did Poul Holm and John Edwards (eds.). North they have a preference for certain forms of Sea Ports and Harbours — Adaptations to employment based on specialist knowledge Change. Esbjerg: Fiskeri- og Sofartsmuseet, and a network of overseas connections or did 1992. 264 pp., tables, figures, maps, photo• they operate through brokers on the charter graphs. 150 DKK, paper; ISBN 87-87453-64- markets of Hamburg and London? Who were 9. the Finns who invested in steamship com• panies? How did they deal with foreign It is an interesting assignment for an academic competition? How did Finnish owners react to in a business faculty to review a publication the container and roll-on and roll-off revol• from a history conference for a nautical utions? Or the development of a European research society. North Sea Ports and Har• shipping policy? Is there a national Finnish bours—Adaptations to Change is a collection shipowners organization? Politics and techno• of papers presented at the Second North Sea logical change are taken up as important History Conference, held at Esbjerg, Denmark themes in early chapters, so why not also later in 1991. Ports are of interest to people with on? It would also have been interesting to very varied backgrounds because of their read more about the remarkable rise of Fin• complex and diverse interactions with the nish shipbuilding after 1945 — with companies economic, political and social fabric of the such as Wartsila - and the impact of these local and regional communities of which the innovative industries on the merchant fleet, ports are a part. As a result, there is much to and vice versa. And as a consumer of Arabia be learned by examining ports from the crockery and Marimekko textiles I have perspective of other disciplines. always been interested in finding out how As the title of the book indicates, the Finland was (and is) articulated to the major conference focused on the adaption of ports to intercontinental shipping routes, but that changing conditions. To achieve this, the connection is not made. conference organizers asked for "problem Finland for a long time was a country on oriented papers." While the role of problems the periphery of Europe. Its export trades and or challenges is not consistently evident in the shipping industry ultimately integrated it into papers, as a collection, the papers reflect well the world economy. It is the great virtue of on diverse aspects of change in ports. In this book to explain the major dynamics of particular, the papers provide a useful this process. Kaukiainen's assessments, based reminder that adaption to change differs on a formidable range of material, are a among ports in keeping with the varied insti• model of judiciousness. He is the expert of tutional structures that have evolved in ports the macro-economic approach. If his method• over time. ology causes him occasionally to underrate the The book includes ten papers from the Book Reviews 69

conference, eight of which focus on ports as containerization. Why have some ports been places of trade and shipping. One paper is more successful than others in developing about female employment in the fishing intermodal capability and why do they have industry in Stavanger; another is not about different structural features? port activity. The papers are sequenced chro• nologically, ranging from the sixteenth cen• Trevor D. Heaver tury to the present day. There is a conference Vancouver, British Columbia summary by David Williams which integrates the diverse topics of the volume effectively. Morten Hahn-Pedersen (ed.). Esbjerg Havn It may not be surprising that my interest 1868-1993, Esbjerg: Fiskeri- og Sofartsmu- is stimulated most by those papers which seet, Saltvandsakvariet, 1993. 168 pp., figures, provide insights relevant to the roles and tables, illustrations, photographs, English effectiveness of ports today. Yet most of the summary. DKK98, cloth; ISBN 87-87453-68- papers have some lessons. The exposure of 1. ports to changes in the politics of their hinter• lands is as relevant now as it was four cen• After Denmark lost its westward-facing har• turies ago. Andersen's comparative paper on bours in Schleswig during the Second Schles- dockers' culture is a useful reminder of the wig War of 1864, there was a great need for complex influences on labour productivity and a new port on the west coast. As a result, in labour relations in ports. The paper naturally April 1868, the Danish King ratified an Act leads to questions about the response to establishing a port at Esbjerg. To mark the change in other ports, including the ports of 125th anniversary of this occasion, the Fishery Bremenhaven and Bremen, described by and Maritime Museum has published this Scholl. A response in these ports was the book, edited by the museum director, Morten establishment of a Port Training Institute. Hahn-Pedersen. Though several works on The different policies of modern ports in Esbjerg and its harbour appeared in 1937, responding to opportunities and challenges are 1943 and 1968, such attention is understand• described in papers on Bremen, London and able. Esbjerg has been the gateway for Danish Rotterdam. It is evident that there are risks in exports since it was opened in 1874 (though having quays available for ships and risks in the construction work was not completed waiting for the needs of shipowners to materi• before 1878). In particular, Danish agricul• alize. Rotterdam has benefited from its policy ture, with its large market in Great Britain has of anticipating demand. depended on Esbjerg. As Williams notes in his summary, the This latest book was written by seven conference papers deal with the infrastructure, authors and is organized into eight chapters superstructure and labour that make up the which view the city and its port from differ• ports and with the relationship between ports ent angles and perspectives. The first chapter with their hinterlands. The historical perspec• — one of the longest in the book — covers the tive may suggest different approaches to period before 1868. It illuminates, among current problems for many readers. It provides other aspects, why other locations on the west an opportunity for those interested in the coast were not chosen as the place to build a problems of ports to see the challenges of new port. However, in a book which, accord• today in the light of previous experience in a ing to the title, begins in 1868, it is confusing number of cultural environments. It is an to have a chapter which actually occupies opportunity to leam from the past. twenty percent of the pages on the previous The book leads me to suggest that a years. On the other hand, the next three useful series of papers might be produced on chapters provide a good insight into the the development of intermodal systems under history and life of the port from the beginning 70 The Northern Mariner to the present. Both its importance to agricul• Walter Bolk. Stettin und sein Hafen: Bilder ture and the fishery are very well told and des Meisterphotographen Max Dreblow. illustrated. Chapter four brings this opening Hamburg: Ernst Kabel Verlag for the Deut- section to an end by outlining some signifi• sches Schiffahrtsmuseum, 1992. 119 pp., cant changes after 1950, supported by valu• photographs, illustrations. DM 78, cloth; able statistics and good photographic cover• ISBN 3-8225-0191-3. age. The impact of increased industrial fishing after World War II is described in chapter While arranging an exhibition at the Marin- five. The growth in this industry and the museum in Karlskrona in 1989, I received a increase of ship size contributed to an expan• very dramatic photograph from the well- sion of the harbour and its facilities; it also known German marine ethnologist Dr. Wolf• made necessary new methods of discharging gang Rudolph. The exhibit was about the and storing the catch. Chapter six, based dramatic events of 11 October, 1915 when mainly on interviews, has a quite different five German cargo steamers were sunk by the approach: it deals with the transition from British submarine HMS E 19. The photo manual cargo-loading to modern containenza- depicted an abandoned cargo steamer which tion as seen through the eyes of those who had drifted ashore under the chalk cliff known witnessed and experienced this evolution. This as "Stubbenkammer" on Rllgen. Who was the chapter also reveals the social aspects of artist? The answer to this question can be harbour life after 1950. Not surprisingly, the found in this excellent book, edited by Dr. author concludes that life was better in the Uwe Schnall and published for the Deutsches 1950s because of a higher degree of solidar• Schiffahrtsmuseum in Bremerhaven. In it, ity. Chapter seven on "Oil, Gas and Harbour" Walter Bttlk presents and analyzes eighty looks briefly into how offshore activity in the photographs of the Baltic port-city of Stettin North Sea has affected Esbjerg. A concluding by the master photographer Max Dreblow. chapter sums up the experience and tries to Among the pictures is one showing the Svino- forecast Esbjerg's role in the future. nia following an attack by the E 19 at the All in all, Esbjerg Havn 1868-1993 gives very beginning of the submarine war in the a good overview of the development of Es• Baltic. The caption indicated that the photo• bjerg and its port. As an economic historian, grapher had taken several photos of the scene I found chapters two, three and four most from different angles. interesting, with their emphasis on the port's Max Dreblow was a grocer in Stettin for role in the Danish economy and its focus on whom photography was only a Sunday hobby economic variables. I think it is fair to say until in 1897 he became ship photographer, that these chapters comprise the core of the "pier nock artist." He lived on the quay in the book. Nevertheless, because it is also very centre of the harbour and, among other things, descriptive, quite readable, and reasonably took photographs from his windows, which priced, it should find a large audience among gave him a bird's-eye view of the harbour. the general reader. Although the book is Many of his photos were taken on the eastern published in Danish, English-speaking readers pier, 1,500 metres long, at the estuary of the will not be completely lost. Every chapter has Oder. Ships under sail or steam, naval or civ• a short and precise summary in English. This ilian, were dramatically caught and pictured as makes the book both accessible and interest• they might appear on the open sea. Dreblow ing to readers who do not have command of showed in detail what was foreground and Scandinavian languages. background, carefully placing people into the picture as measuring-rods. Sometimes it is Anders Martin Fon apparent that people had been asked to take Bergen, Norway part in the scenery in order to add a narrative Book Reviews 71 to the picture. In a photo of a shipbroker's starboard floor timbers to the castle roofing to office the clerks were hierarchically arranged the ship's toilet, is followed by a short Eng• in a natural way. Looking at the picture you lish summary of what has been learned during would feel confidence at the prospect of being the now twenty-year process of reconstruction served by so many helpful experts. You can about each aspect of the ship. The seventy- be certain that this was the purpose of whom• eight pages of tables with extensive notes give ever ordered the picture made. In another precise measures of the principal dimensions photo, taken in a dockyard, we can see a of planking, futtocks and floor timbers exca• newly built ship. Before the launching a vated in the 1960s from the mud of Bremen dockyard worker has been ordered to climb harbour. The thirty-seven drawings, accom• out to the big screw propeller to accentuate panied by a fifteen-page booklet in German the power and the speed of the new ship. and English describing those drawings, offer Dreblow's photos have been scattered extremely detailed representations of the over many countries and continents, as greet• reconstructed vessels and many of the prin• ings and as keepsakes. I hope that this good cipal parts in scales of 1:20 and 1:10. Those book may promote a love of photos as objects precise and informative large draughts alone of art and encourage people to value the make this publication valuable. importance of this art in historical documenta• The cog had long been recognized as an tion. I also hope we will be able to find and important tool in the development of com• enjoy more of Dreblow's sepia photographic merce in northern Europe in the high Middle postcards, which he created using a technique Ages and in the development of that alliance that he took with him into his grave. The of trading towns, the Hanseatic League. The whole of his archives, which was inherited by discovery of this example in 1962 in good his successor, was destroyed in the flames of condition created an unprecedented opportun• World War II. ity to study the ship type in detail, even though the Bremen cog was neither finished Peter von Busch nor among the largest of vessels of its type. Karlskrona, Sweden The Bremen cog, about 23 metres long, about 7.6 metres wide and somewhat over 3 metres Werner Lahn. Die Kogge von Bremen, Band deep in the hold, was under construction in I: Bauteile und Bauablauf [The Hanse Cog of 1380 when it somehow broke free and sank. Bremen, Volume I: Structural Members and The investigation and then preservation of this Construction Process]; with abbreviated cog has led to an extensive programme for the English translation by Judith Rosenthal. study of cogs and vessels like them through• Schriften des Deutschen Schiffahrtsmuseums, out the Middle Ages. That work has made Band 30; Hamburg: Ernst Kabel Verlag for possible the identification of the principal Deutsches Schiffahrstmuseum, Bremerhaven, features of the type, down to the characteristic 1993. 250 pp., photographs, tables, bibliogra• nails which were bent over and then bent phy, 37 drawings. DM 378, paper and loose again at the tip. That work has also contrib• plans in cloth, boxed container; ISBN 3-8225- uted to the establishment of the Deutsches 0186-7. Schiffahrtsmuseum in Bremerhaven and the research programmes of that Museum. In The physical appearance of this extremely addition two replicas of the cog have now valuable publication is almost as impressive as been built for experiments on the handling of the scholarship contained in it. The text of such a vessel. If only because of the role of 170 pages is punctuated with an almost equal this find in promoting and developing nautical number of photographs. Each German section archaeology and the study of maritime history on specific topics, ranging from port and over the last thirty years, it deserves attention. 72 The Northern Mariner

Werner Lahn is the boatbuilder who was about 686 kilograms. The two were operated put in charge of the reconstruction of the cog, in much the same way but the immediate putting back together all the pieces found at question is why two such devices might be the bottom of the river. He and his staff took needed. Presumably they were used to raise more than seven years to figure out exactly the anchor and the yard and even the sail but where each scrap of wood went. It is that whether the second was there to supplement process, now completed, that is documented those tasks or to control the mast is never in great detail in this volume. The drawings discussed. have proven extremely helpful not only in the One of the disappointments is that such reconstruction but also, by the perspective issues of function or use are rarely if ever gained in preparing the draughts, helpful in addressed. The book is a description of the establishing precise dimensions of planks and cog's construction. Though understandable, of the portions of the ship. Though the recon• the decision to limit the publication to that struction is complete the preservation of the goal also limits value. To find out about the vessel is not. It continues to sit in a preserv• use of the cog, about handling such ships, ing bath in a tank surrounded by windows so about their importance or even to find out visitors to the Museum at Bremerhaven can about the task of excavation readers will have see the wreck that has inspired so much work. to look elsewhere, perhaps to the next volume In describing the different pieces of the that is already planned. The bibliography at ship, Lahn tries to follow the process of con• the beginning of the book, after the informa• struction, beginning with the laying of the tive but short introduction by the directory of keel, the erecting of the posts and the placing the Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum, Detlev of the hull planking. The form of scarphing Ellmers, offers a number of options for find• and the overlapping of planking is described ing out more about the background of the in meticulous detail, often supplemented with investigation and of its impact on scholarship. photographs, accompanied by captions in two This work is a highly detailed description of languages, of the relevant parts of the find. the ship and its building. The task of investi• Where the technique of construction is not gating a shipfind thoroughly is a massive one certain Lahn tries to approximate based on and Werner Lahn has, in this volume and the what would have been possible. Establishing accompanying draughts, given a chronicle of the identity of each piece of wood, of each exactly how it should be done. Though per• treenail or nail required patience and skill. In haps not a book to be read for knowledge of the process the author and his team were able the cog in the Middle Ages in general, it is a to find out exactly what shipbuilders did, book which will serve as an example and a down to the way they bevelled the upper goal for which others will strive. edges of the keel to make as waterproof as possible the transition from the unrabbeted to Richard W. Unger the rabbeted portion of that large timber. In Vancouver, British Columbia some cases, though, finding out the function of pieces of wood has proved elusive, as with Roger C. Smith. Vanguard of Empire: Ships a violin-shaped thick piece of oak which was of Exploration in the Age of Columbus. attached to the inner stempost and extended Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. xii + above it. The presence of both a capstan and 316 pp., figures, appendices, notes, bibliogra• a windlass caused some confusion. The latter phy, indices. Cdn $49, cloth; ISBN 0-19- was of a sophisticated construction, balanced 507357-7. and fitted so that sailors could lubricate it easily. The capstan probably came, Lahn Roger Smith's latest book endeavours to shed thinks, from the same workshop and weighed new light on the development and characteris- Book Reviews 73 tics of the Iberian ships of exploration of the The remaining floors and futtocks show no fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, principally fore-aft fastenings indicating that they were naos and caravels. In this attempt the author not true frames. They were installed using a has not only drawn upon the relevant docu• system of ribbands running from the midship mentary sources but has also incorporated new frames to the bow and stern. This type of sources of information from archaeological construction is evidence of a transitional shipwreck sites dating to the period. This is method between shell-first and full frame-first the first serious book to marry the documen• building techniques. It is mistakes such as tary and archaeological information bearing these which detract from the book as a whole. on these important vessels and, as such, it Other errors and omissions are found as represents a notable contribution. Unfortunate• well, albeit not as serious. To illustrate, ly, some of the information, particularly in the hanging knees were not the only method of area of construction details, is somewhat tying the deck beams to the frames. On the dated. A great deal of recent material that is Red Bay vessel, for example, standard knees now available has not been included and this were used for this purpose. Further, garboard mars what might have otherwise been a strakes were not always rebated into the keel. landmark publication. Again on the Red Bay vessel, the garboards The book is divided into nine chapters. It were incorporated into an elaborately carved opens with an historical overview of the keel timber. Also, the hawse holes were not Iberian states emphasizing the political and simply cut through the planking, but rather economic developments that gave rise to the were fabricated from large timbers that were voyages of exploration and to the ships that integral with the hull structure. Smith's con• made these discovery voyages possible. This tention that floors were sometimes notched chapter provides valuable insight into why over the keel, as seen in the Mataro model, certain ship types developed when and where has not been demonstrated on any of the they did. Chapter two continues with a dis• relevant archaeological sites. As a final cussion of the evolution, characteristics and example, it may be that the rudders of these the place of naos and caravels in voyages of vessels were more securely attached than exploration and discovery. This chapter is Smith states. A detailed study of the rudder essentially an introduction to the next several from the Red Bay vessel revealed that it was chapters where specific construction details firmly fastened to the stempost and was and outfitting of these vessels are dealt with. incapable of being unshipped. The following five chapters discuss The other chapters detailing the rest of respectively the building, the rigging, the the construction, outfitting and manning of outfitting, the manning and provisioning, and exploration vessels are treated in the same the arming of exploration vessels. The chapter depth as the chapter on building but they too on building covers all of the steps in con• contain errors of the type already outlined structing the hull of a vessel from determining above. The chapter on rigging could only the dimensions, through wood selection, have benefited from a more in-depth treat• framing, planking to the completion of the ment of blocks. An ample collection of these upper works. Although detailed and thorough, items now exists from archaeological sites and errors do appear. As a serious example, Smith these could have been used to illustrate the contends that by the period under study and discussion. Chapter eight presents a literature indeed, prior to this, the frame-first method of review of primary and secondary sources, hull construction was fully developed. This is other reference material as well as short clearly not the case. A number of sixteenth- descriptions of the relevant archaeological century vessel finds demonstrate that true sites. This is a useful inclusion which will frames were only erected in the midship area. direct persons interested in the topic to the 74 The Northern Mariner most worthwhile documentation. The section Anonymous. The Shipbuilder's Repository; or, on archaeological sites should have included A Treatise on Marine Architecture. 1788; the important wrecks at Villefranche and facsimile reprint, Rotherfield, England: Jean Studland Bay. The final chapter consists of a Boudriot Publications, 1992. xiv + 472 pp., short summary of the entire book. fourteen plates. £85, cloth, limited to 700 A third of the book is taken up by a copies; ISBN 0-948864-13-3. £125, deluxe series of appendices, notes, a bibliography and edition, quarter leather, limited to 50 copies; two indexes. Readers will likely find these of ISBN 0-948864-12-5. varying utility. The first three appendices present glossaries of nautical terms in English, For this fourth volume in its series of reprints Spanish and Portuguese that are used in the of eighteenth-century English works on ship• main text. The English terms are given short building, Jean Boudriot Publications has descriptions while simple translations are chosen the rarest, and perhaps the most infor• found for the Spanish and Portuguese terms. mative, of contemporary textbooks. When Researchers working in Spanish and Portu• first published, it offered its readers three guese may be better served by consulting rather distinct contributions. First, it provided more complete dictionaries available in these a summary of what was then known of ship languages. The fourth appendix offers the design theory, drawn largely from the works inventories of two of Columbus' caravels, the of French authors. Amongst this, the treatment Nina and Santa Cruz. Competently undertaken of hydrodynamics seems hopelessly naive, in by Denise C. Lakey, the presentation is com• common with most writings on the subject plete with facsimile reproduction of the orig• before Froude's. It does, however, include a inal documents, transcription, translation and description of towing tank experiments which editorial comments. This is a valuable addi• the anonymous author claimed to have con• tion to the book. The rest of the book consists ducted, probably the first such attempted in of notes to the text, an adequate bibliography, England. His explanation of displacement cal• an index of persons and places along with a culations would, perhaps, have been more use• general index. ful to contemporary shipwrights, though the Overall, the book is well written and claimed method for the calculation of the provides a wealth of useful documentary and centre of gravity of the ship actually finds her archaeological data on these important vessels centre of buoyancy. in a single source. It is satisfying finally to The book's second, and major, offering see an amalgamation of printed historical was a full account of draughting, lofting and material and current archaeological informa• mould-making methods (the last being prob• tion. However, knowledgeable students of the ably unique for this era in English). These subject will likely find little new information instructions, which are often hard to follow, here and may be annoyed by the number of were based around a design for an 80-gun inaccuracies and omissions. This book will ship, with her lines being drawn by the then- serve well as an overview or general introduc• new centres of floor sweeps method. (This tion to the subject but it fails in the area of design was purely a textbook exercise. Indeed, specific details. The definitive work on naos its author rejected it, on the grounds that the and caravels has yet to be written but Smith's displacements before and abaft the deadflat book, as a first attempt, is a study to build on were not equal, though he did not re-draw it.) towards that goal. Where earlier writers had based their analog• ous accounts of ship design on rules of pro• R. James Ringer portions for determining the radii of arcs of Ottawa, Ontario circles, and where Stalkartt, in his contempor• ary Naval Architecture, wrote of drawing Book Reviews 75

curves "at pleasure," the Repository's author pages but the small scale at which they are provided extensive tables of offsets. This, reproduced (about 1:150 for some) and the along with a general naivety of approach, combination of photo-reproduction of faint suggests that he may not have known the originals with the antique-laid paper used for rules, nor been able to judge the curves, but the facsimile text make them poor substitutes was sufficiently trained only to take offsets for the author's intended copper plates at from a draught and lay them down in the 1:48. They do at least show the wealth of in• mould loft. formation that still lies, awaiting study and The Repository's final original offering publication, in the draught room at Green• was a very extensive (over 200 pages) and wich. thorough set of tables of dimensions, offsets This book is an essential source for those and scantlings for every size of warship from model builders who are dissatisfied with a First Rate to a cutter, along with some data reproducing the same tired errors, as indeed it on merchantmen. Unlike that on the 80-gun is for anyone interested in the technical details ship, the information on other classes related of Nelson's ships. Much has been drawn from to specific (usually named) vessels. Combin• it by later authors, from Steel to Goodwin, ing these data with the instructions for but serious researchers should have access to draughting, contemporary readers could have the primary source, which this new edition designed all types of warships. Modern users makes possible. Book collectors would be will find the tables of greater value as a mine well advised to opt for the deluxe binding. of information on late eighteenth-century shipbuilding practices. They will also find the Trevor Kenchington glossary a fertile source of ideas. Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia The text's only direct reference to a plate relates to one showing the exterior draught of Simon Ville (ed.). Shipbuilding in the United the 80-gun ship, evidently published separate• Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century: A ly in 1789. Surprisingly, the reprint does not Regional Approach. St. John's: International include a reproduction of it other than in Maritime Economic History Association, defaced form on the dust jacket. Readers 1993; Research in Maritime History No. 4. xii might therefore wish to obtain a copy of the + 195 pp., figures, tables, photographs. US$15 publisher's advertising flier for this volume, to non-members, paper; ISBN 0-9695885-3-4. which does include a small but clear version of this draught. The book also mentions the This book comprises six papers presented at need for a separate draught showing the the First International Congress of Maritime internal features of this ship though, if one History held at the Merseyside Maritime was planned by the author, it appears never to Museum in August, 1992. During the nine• have been completed. However, a 1791 bibli• teenth century British shipbuilding was inter• ography claims that the Repository was nationally pre-eminent. As the editor records intended to be published with draughts of all in his Introduction, in the twenty years before of the ships covered by the tables and that the the outbreak of World War I British ship• author was discharged from the dockyards builders accounted for sixty to eighty per cent when he was caught copying the relevant ori• of world tonnage, of which twenty-five to ginals. As a substitute for these missing thirty per cent was built for ship owners out• plates, the modem publisher has where poss• side Britain. Only Germany, and only towards ible reproduced the original builder's draughts the end of the century, was a second producer from the Admiralty collection, although that of any significance. The development of the makes this book something more than a true shipbuilding industry continued at a time facsimile. These draughts are given fold-out when British industry generally had begun to 76 The Northern Mariner be in relative decline. building industry in iron and steel without Previous studies tended to look at the in• local raw materials. His explanation rests in dustry in the national context. The papers the entrepreneurial and technical skills of published here look much more closely at in• Edward Harland and his associates and in the dividual regions of the British Isles where proximity of the Mersey and the Clyde. One shipbuilding was established. In so doing they may, perhaps, differ from the author's assess• examine the geographical shifts which took ment of the uniqueness of the sail assist of the place during the century and the complex early Harland & Wolf steamers. Highly soph• causes of the decline and rise of the industry isticated sail assist was a characteristic of in different areas. The papers cover respect• steam vessels from their earliest days. ively Scotland, northeast England, northwest Anthony Slaven's account of the industry England, southeast England and Northern Ire• in nineteenth-century Scotland is comprehen• land. Wales is conspicuously missing from the sive and perhaps particularly interesting to study. some for his statistics of the last burst of steel There is, as the editor points out, another sailing vessel construction on the Clyde in the important omission. Of necessity from the early 1890s. In 1892 forty-eight per cent of available source material the papers deal with the river's output was of this class of tonnage. the building of new vessels. Some yards were Frank Neal's account attributes the much involved with repair work, indeed, some Liverpool industry's decline to the fact that survived on it. But the very difficult subject shipbuilding was simply not necessary for the of British ship repairing is still to be compre• prosperity of the port whose waterfront prop• hensively studied. erty could be put to more immediately profit• In the very broadest terms the geographi• able uses. In a very broad-base study of the cal shift was from the south to the north as industry in the south-east Sarah Palmer attri• the wooden sailing vessel gave way after the butes the collapse of shipbuilding on the mid-1860s to iron and later steel construction Thames once again to the transition towards for both sailing and steam-propelled tonnage. iron, steel and steam, concluding that "failure, The building of iron and steel vessels was a like success, is a complex phenomenon." part of the metal fabrication industry of This is a very valuable publication for all Britain and tended to be most developed in those whose work is concerned with the his• areas where there were the materials and the tory of shipping in the nineteenth century. skilled labour force for this kind of industrial activity to develop. Basil Greenhill This publication is notable for the con• Bohetherick, Cornwall sistently high standard of the papers it con• tains and they bring out the story very clearly. C.F. Spencer. Spencer on Ships: Modern David Starkey's excellent study of the ship• Commercial Merchant Vessels and Operation• building of South-West England shows an al Techniques. Worcester: Square One Publi• understanding of this essentially rural region cations, 1992. 346 pp., photographs, figures, in which shipbuilding never really moved index, cloth; ISBN 1-872017-53-3. from the era of carpenter and blacksmith technology. His explanation is in part the high The author, a member of the Society of Mar• local costs of raw materials for iron and steel ine Engineers and Ship Surveyors, is well- fabrication, which had to be transported from qualified "to fill a gap in the marine library distant sources, coupled with the absence of for a reference manual that can provide a local export products. broad brush introduction to a variety of Nevertheless, as Michael Moss shows, vessels" (p.9) with particular emphasis on Northern Ireland developed a large-scale ship• their features, problems, operations and Book Reviews 77

cargoes. The book is carefully organized and weakest or most threatening links are often easy to follow. It is divided into five parts: human. Many experts now see the often out• Merchant vessels — commercial; Merchant rageous settlements of American courts as the vessels — oil industry specials — Glossary; largest single barrier to technological innova• Civil Engineering — Marine Operations; Oper• tion in the United States. Spencer's wisdom ational Techniques; and Surveys, Notes. The and experience comes out in his statement that index is good but could be better. For "Fire detection systems are no substitute for example, a good, well-illustrated treatment of fire fighting systems and the main safety VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) and ULCC feature must remain a fully trained pro• (Ultra Large Crude Carrier) vessels wisely fessional crew who have a full understanding introduces and explains sspecialized terms of their own vessel. Mixed nationality crews such as stripping and inert gas system. How• are not necessarily a huge advantage except in ever, there is no index entry for stripping, economic terms." (p. 15) Why are we unable "the act of draining the last of the liquids to act effectively on observations such as using a smaller pump than a main cargo these? We seem to lack the will to match pump." (p. 70) There is an entry for "inert" technology and society properly. but not for inert gas system. Yet the entry In the reviewer's office, Spencer On under "inert" leads the persistent reader to a Ships sits alongside Alastair Couper's The very fine summary with a schematic of the Shipping Revolution (to be reviewed in the operation, advantages and disadvantages of next issue of The Northern Mariner/Le Marin inert gas systems, (pp. 236-237) du Nord). They are different but comple• Cover-to-cover readers will gain an mentary. Both will be used frequently. The enriched operational understanding of modern reviewer hopes that in the next edition of shipping ranging from basic description, Spencer On Ships he will add engineered ice special features, terminology, basic design, islands to "Man made islands" in Part 4, Civil strengths, weaknesses and potential problems Engineering. The engineered ice islands due to carelessness or design. Excellent photo• represent an ingenious and effective part of graphs and diagrams supplement text admirab• the Arctic's maritime heritage. ly. See for example figures 42-44 on jetfoils. Reference readers seeking information in Norman R. Ball a hurry will also find Spencer On Ships Waterloo, Ontario rewarding. It would be invaluable to journal• ists reporting on maritime incidents or to A.A. Hoehling. Ships That Changed History. those involved in public discussion of technol• Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1992. xvi + ogies such as marine transport of LNG (liqui• 182 pp., photographs, maps, bibliography. US fied natural gas). The "inspection of cargo $19.95, cloth; ISBN 0-8191-8072-6. tanks for breakdown of insulation, or 'cold spotting' as it is known in the trade, is an The author, a former editor of the U.S. Army awful job involving crawling round inspecting Times, has chosen one type of ship, four all parts of the tank externals." (p.58) One individual vessels, and an event to support his might reasonably ask what is being done to theme of historical turning points. Unfortu• ensure adequate inspection in a world where nately, he never makes his criteria clear, and awful jobs sometimes go undone. seems to assume instead that his choices are Spencer's droll observation that "passen• self-evident. They are not. gers have been described as hazardous cargo Hoehling's first choice is the fast sailing particularly those of United States origin due ship, or clipper, first built by the Canadian- to the claims that can be levied on Owners for born constructor, Donald MacKay, in Boston negligence" (p. 19) is a reminder that the beginning in 1845. In contrasting his interest- 78 The Northern Mariner

ing narrative on the great American vessels much more was to follow, including unres• and life on board, he excludes reference to the tricted U-boat warfare, before America could Canadian-built Marco Polo's record passages be brought into World War I. to and from Australia in the 1850s, while the Hoehling's book includes a description of British Cutty Sark is mentioned once and the 1940 evacuation of Dunkirk. He maintains Thermopylae, Taeping, Ariel, and other par• that "The Nazis swept into Norway with little ticipants in the 1866 tea race not at all. He or no resistance;" in fact resistance in Norway forgets that the opening of the Suez Canal lasted over two months; in contrast, France made the clipper ships' long voyages unprofit• was defeated in six weeks. Hoehling also fails able, and maintains instead that the American to mention that forty-eight Dutch Schuyts Civil War ended the clipper era. Hoehling's rescued 22,698 men from the beaches at sources do not include such authorities as Dunkirk. His source list omits that authori• Jobe's The Great Age of Sail (1967) and tative work, Roskill's The War At Sea. Knight's The Clipper Ship (1973). Indeed, one is left wishing for further par• In relating the story of the construction ticulars about his "vast research." and career of the Great Eastern in his second The final chapter comprises eye witness chapter, Hoehling fails to explain how that stories of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the ship changed history. Brunei died before the destruction of USS Arizona. Surely it was the vessel's first voyage, while Sir Daniel Gooch attack that changed history, not the destruction of Great Western Railway fame never owned of one battleship! Great Eastern, he only chartered it to lay By now, it should be clear that the book transatlantic cables. A better choice for shap• is not history but a series of journalistic ing the world history of the development of articles, the result of limited research, and the ship would have been Brunei's Great with an irritating style that includes jargon Britain, the first iron steamship to enter the such as "happenetize." The criteria used to Atlantic trade. Perhaps Hoehling should have select the ships that "changed history" is not relied on Rolfs 1978 biography of Brunei, defined or self-evident. Curiously, though he rather than one published in 1938. is the author of The Fighting Liberty Ships: A Hoehling's most convincing choice of a Memoir (Kent State University Press, 1990), ship that "changed history" is USS Monitor. Hoehling has virtually ignored the vital con• That vessel, designed by John Ericcson, with tributions made by the "Liberty" and "Vic• its steam-driven revolving turrets and 11-inch tory" ships to the outcome of World War II. guns, marked a revolution in naval construc• tion. Hoehling includes a lively account of the Dan G. Harris action with CSS Virginia. However, he is in• Nepean, Ontario correct in stating that the first British ocean• going turret ship was HMS Devastation of Robert Parsons. The Wake of the Schooners: 1873. That ship had been preceded by Mon• From Placentia to Port aux Basques. St. arch in 1869 and Captain of 1870. And there John's: Creative Publishers, 1993. xii + 272 are other inaccuracies. For example, HMS pp., photographs, maps, appendices, sources. Inflexible was not sunk at Jutland. $14.95, paper; ISBN 1-895387-24-8. Hoehling's fourth choice of a history- changing ship, RMS Lusitania, is marred by When Robert Parsons chose the title for this a journalistic account of that tragedy. This book, he was, perhaps, not unaware of the chapter might have been improved had he fact that a wake may be either the track left been familiar with P. Beesly's excellent 1982 behind by a passing ship or a vigil beside a analysis, Room 40. The ruthless act brought corpse that has been prepared for burial. the United States closer to the Allied side, but Whichever definition he had in mind, the Book Reviews 79 word is appropriate for the book does pre• spinning of yarns was an enormously import• serve the track, in the sense of the memory, ant form of social intercourse that provided, of ships that have passed, but it is also a book not only entertainment, but as well the rein• about death: the death of proud vessels that forcement of community values. For though have come to tragic ends on the storm-bat• many elements of the traditional yarn are here tered coasts of Newfoundland or in whatever present, one seeks in vain for the sense of other great waters thy may have exercised immediacy, the breathless hanging upon every their business. word, the adrenalin rush of response to the In short, we have here a catalogue of challenge of mighty elemental forces, the cold disasters: a sort of annotated list of some one shadow of fear, the triumph of heroism over hundred or so wrecks culled from among the danger, the despair of the lost, the icy clutch ten thousand or more that are part of the of horror that grips the helpless standers-by. Newfoundland story. Culling implies some It is true that in the tale of the Monasco, for degree of commonality and, apart from the example, elements of the standard folk tale single theme of disaster, the chosen cases are are to be glimpsed: the wicked captain, the all linked by association with the South Coast bejewelled lady, dark deeds of murder and - Placentia to Port aux Basques, as the title robbery, a subsequent life of ease in the says. Apart from this, the author does make United States. But in general the stories are some approach to a thematic treatment, divid• well sterilized, not only of the high emotion ing his material into chapters with headings that tales of heroism, of great feats of sea• like "An Added Danger - German U-Boats manship, of hardihood and of daring-do, 1915-18," "Cut Down by Transatlantic would have evoked, but, equally, of the slyly Steamers 1936-38," and "Prohibition and the suggested plans to defraud the insurance Great Depression 1930-32," among others. companies, of hinted incompetence, of poor Nevertheless, the treatment is essentially seamen consigned to doom by greedy owners chronological, commencing with the wreck of and toady captains, and, most surprisingly, the Monasco in 1857 and concluding with the perhaps, of the supernatural. In brief, Parsons' disappearance of the Cape Royal in 1977. telling is a dispassionate recounting of the Within that 120-year span, virtually every facts as he has been able to establish them. conceivable type of marine tragedy is can• While this, to one suffering from nostal• vassed: vessels that succumb to the fury of the gia for a vanished past, is disappointing, the elements; vessels that run upon fog book does have its uses. It brings together in enshrouded shores; vessels blown from the a single source the easily establishable facts seas by the shells and torpedoes of an enemy; about the fate of a hundred or so New• vessels cut in half by great steam ships that foundland vessels. In so doing, it records the barely notice the collisions; vessels that burn; testimony of many eyewitnesses whose know• vessels that spring a leak and sink; vessels ledge would otherwise have died with them. that founder under the too-great weight of Additionally, it provides a small mine of cargo; vessels that die from pure misadven• information about the daily round and com• ture; vessels that perish because of poor mon tasks of fishing, coastal trade and foreign seamanship or inadequate navigation; and, going vessels engaged in the Newfoundland vessels that simply disappear without trace. trade and thus becomes a significant source Though there is inevitably a hint of for those who would study our social or morbidity in such a collection, the overall economic history. The additional titbits of effect is curiously clinical. Nor does the information about specific vessels and owners author recreate successfully the atmosphere of provided in the appendices are interesting and a time when news of significant community useful; the photographs with which the book value was orally transmitted and when the is profusely illustrated are generally excellent 80 The Northern Mariner and one could only wish for better reproduc• sources and official records the author has tions on better quality paper. told the story in gripping detail. Alan Easton is a master mariner who knows the sea and Leslie Harris the language of the sea and the official St. John's, Newfoundland accounts have been retold with great skill, understanding and imagination. Alan Easton. Terror on the Coast: The Wreck The illustrations by Ivan Murphy are of the Schooner Codseeker. Halifax: Nimbus extremely well done and capture the mood of Publishing and the Nova Scotia Museum, the story. The sail plan of a schooner, show• 1992. iii + 41 pp., illustrations, map, sail plan, ing the standing rigging and running rigging, glossary. $6.95, paper; ISBN 1-55109-025-2. and the glossary of terms found at the end of the book are both excellent. It is very difficult for us today to realize the This is a must for anyone interested in importance of shipping to the economy of the the sea and in the history of the age of sail. Maritime Provinces, especially during the late My only complaint is that there are no refer• nineteenth century, and the very large number ences and no bibliography. These sources are of vessels which were sailing at that time. In readily available today and their inclusion 1878, the year after this story took place, here would be extremely valuable to anyone Canada had a merchant marine of 7,467 ves• researching similar stories for a book on sels totalling 1,333,015 tons and stood fifth in shipwrecks or tales of heroic rescues. If there the shipowning countries of the world. Of this were more books like this one on the market, number, 4,467 vessels totalling 943,583 tons especially for the use of schools, then perhaps were registered in the Maritime Provinces. A we would have a better understanding and very large proportion of these vessels were appreciation of our seafaring history. small fishing schooners like the Codseeker. With only sail for power, and before the age Charles A. Armour of radio communications, these vessels and Halifax, Nova Scotia their crews were often totally at the mercy of the elements when disaster struck and the Gregory P. Pritchard. Collision at Sea: The chances of survival and rescue by another Little-Known Marine Tragedy Felt on Both vessel were very slim indeed. The sea took a Sides of the Atlantic. Hantsport, NS: Lancelot heavy toll, and dismastings, strandings on Press, 1993. 178 pp., maps, photographs, shore and total losses were common. Many appendices. $10.95, paper; ISBN 0-88999- vessels disappeared without a trace. 538-9. This is the story of the Codseeker, a fishing schooner from Barrington, Nova Gregory Pritchard sailed in convoys during Scotia which capsized in a gale on her maiden World War II and continued to serve at sea voyage in the spring of 1877 with the loss of until 1962. He then was ordained an Anglican four of her twelve-member crew. The author priest and appointed to Blue Rocks, Lunen• describes, in vivid detail, the capsizing of the burg County, Nova Scotia. He soon became vessel, the exhausting and dangerous journey aware of an inordinate number of widows and to shore by Captain Brown with two of the fatherless children in his community. Many crew, the courageous and heroic rescue of were dependents of fishermen who had lost four of the seamen from the capsized hull by their lives in 1943 in the sinking of the schoo• the schooner Matchless and later the miracu• ner Flora Alberta. She had been fishing lous rescue by the American schooner Ohio of southwest of Sable Island when, in thick fog, the two men who had been trapped inside the she and a merchant ship Fanad Head, sailing hull for four days. Using contemporary in convoy and bound for the United Kingdom, Book Reviews 81

collided. The schooner quickly sank with the sinking schooner, rescue attempts, landing loss of twenty-one lives. seven survivors in Halifax and joining another In the early days of the war Pritchard had convoy for home. served in a sister ship to Fanad Head. Her In September 1944, an action for dam• captain and some of the crew came from ages against the owners of Fanad Head was Islandmagee in Northern Ireland, a rugged filed in Halifax by Flora Alberta's insurers. place similar in many ways to Blue Rocks. To The case was heard in Halifax five times, this tenuous link he attributes his concern, that twice in London and in Ottawa once, over a so many in the community had so little know• period 1945 to 1949. The conclusion was that, ledge about the collision which had affected rightly or wrongly, Head Line paid $60,000 their lives so dramatically. He became deter• less costs to the schooner's insurers. Relevant mined to learn the facts, but it was not until parts of each hearing are reported verbatim. 1987 when he retired that he was free to Collision at Sea is a gripping study by an devote his time to the necessary research. experienced and knowledgeable mariner of a With his long experience in the Merchant collision and its consequences. It was intense• Service in war and peace, now living in a ly interesting to the reviewer, who is humbly community of fishermen and their families, thankful to have been spared such a tragic Archdeacon Pritchard was admirably suited experience. for gathering together all the elements of the collision and investigations in a comprehen• L.B. Jenson sible form. He begins by recalling the morn• Queensland, Nova Scotia ing in April, 1943, when the Anglican minis• ter at Blue Rocks visited a number of homes James P. Delgado. The Beaver: First Steam• in the village with the terrible news that Flora ship on the West Coast. Victoria: Horsdal & Alberta had been lost and that there were few Schubart, 1993. vii + 54 pp., maps, photo• survivors. graphs, figures, notes, bibliography, index. As the tale unfolds, Pritchard reveals the $10.95, paper; ISBN 0-920663-20-6. life and nature of the people and their way of life. Schooner fishing of that time is The story of the Beaver, the first sidewheel described: the financing, the share system, the paddle steamer in the North Pacific, is a construction, launching, fitting out, manning familiar and romantic one. Launched in and fishing routines as developed over a England on 2 May, 1835, she made the long century. In 1943 the Battle of the Atlantic voyage to the northwest coast under sail, only was raging, but fishing on the banks con• shipping her paddle wheels after her safe tinued as usual despite the numerous convoys arrival at Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia and probable enemy submarines. There are River, on 10 April, 1836, 225 days out of brief sketches of some of the crew and their Gravesend. She never returned to the Colum• families. These are especially poignant, bia but spent the rest of her long life as a fur because all the names are still common on the trading vessel for the Hudson's Bay Com• South Shore of Nova Scotia. pany, operating between Puget Sound and This is followed by a description of the Sitka, as a passenger ship during the Fraser Head Line and Fanad Head with her crew of Gold rush, as a survey ship for the Royal Ulstermen. They sailed in ballast from Belfast Navy in British Columbia waters, and then as for Saint John where they loaded grain and a humble towboat. started back for the United Kingdom. A vivid The Beaver ended her career on the night picture is painted of convoys and the day-to• of 25 July, 1888, when she ran ashore at day activities in merchantmen. Then comes Prospect Point, near the First Narrows of the sudden shock of collision in fog, the Burrard Inlet, while outward bound from the 82 The Northern Mariner infant city of Vancouver. Legend has it that ing a map of the Beaver's remains. Their the crew had been celebrating at the Sunny- object is not to gather further relics, but to side Saloon in Gastown before setting out. At learn about the past. It is a continuing project. any rate, they made little effort to save the Every piece of wreckage, from large iron vessel and walked back through the dense castings to scattered timbers and brass spikes, woods of Stanley Park to continue their party has been plotted. at the Sunnyside. Delgado's book tells the entire fascinating She lay wedged on the rocks, well above story, from the Beaver's construction to the sea level at low tide, and quickly became the revival of interest in its shattered remains. In prey of souvenir hunters, who stripped away addition to a brief but scholarly history of the her fittings, equipment and timber. Practically Beaver's active career, the book gives us a every household in Vancouver soon had a survey map of the wreck site, prepared by the souvenir of the ancient vessel, which Underwater Archaeological Society, showing remained accessible until she slipped off the the many artifacts still remaining on the sea rocks into deep water, the result of a heavy bottom. The map is already becoming out of wave from the passing steamer Yosemite. date as more discoveries are made. The staunch little Beaver passed into the A notable feature of the book are detailed history books, but it was not the end of the drawings of the original boiler, paddle wheels story. With the advent of modern deepsea and firebox, fortunately preserved at the diving techniques, the site of her wreck is Birmingham Public Library in England. There now available to marine archaeologists, one of are also a rigging profile of the Beaver, deck whom is James P. Delgado, director of the and interior plans, prepared by the Vancouver Vancouver Maritime Museum, and the author Maritime Museum. The old steamer may be of this fascinating new book about the dead for more than a century, but she still steamer. The Museum's interest in the Beaver fascinates marine historians and diving enthu• is strong, for it has many of her relics on siasts, such as the author of the book. permanent display, including the last of the five boilers which the Beaver had during her Norman Hacking lifetime. North Vancouver, British Columbia The remains of the wreck were discov• ered off Prospect Point by amateur diver Fred Richard E. Wells. The Vancouver Voyages of Rogers and three of his friends in September the Barque Pamir. Victoria: Sono Nis Press, 1960. They emerged with a treasure trove, 1992. 137 pp., maps, figures, photographs, including pieces of the machinery, brass appendices. $12.95, paper; ISBN 1-55039- valves and sections of steam pipe, most of 029-5. which they gave to the Vancouver Maritime Museum; in those early days of diving on the This must be one of the very last books coast, no thought was given to leaving the devoted to the end of commercial sail written artifacts from the steamer on the bottom or to by one who was in some ways connected to an archaeological study. In April 1964, that period. As Leonard McCann, Curator of Rogers returned to the wreck and recovered the Vancouver Maritime Museum, writes in brass and copper fittings, and an anchor found his very understanding foreword, "This is not at a depth of forty feet. The wreck then lay the complete history of the Pamir — that has undisturbed until 1986, when divers from the been undertaken elsewhere in an exemplary Underwater Archaeological Society of British record. Rather, this is a detailed look at the Columbia and the Vancouver Maritime life of a working sailing ship, largely within Museum began to survey the remains. Funded British Columbia waters, presented in a man• by the provincial government, they are mak• ner that is most uncommon. The conjunction Book Reviews 83 of the records of a sailing ship and of the like Passat, were being converted to cargo powered vessels with which she was inevitab• carrying training ships... ly associated provide a unique approach to the But enough of memories. What makes documenting of maritime history..." this book so unique is that Wells, a tug-boat In his introduction the author gives a man, describes from his own experience what brief account of Pamir's life under German it meant to get a large square-rigger in and and Finnish ownership, her take-over by the out of port. From the 1870s on, large square- New Zealand government as a prize of war in riggers were entirely dependant on tugs to get 1941, and her first five voyages under New them into and out of harbours. His chapters Zealand flag to the West Coast of the United on the difficult tug-boat service on the West States. He then records her last trans-Pacific Coast are illuminating to say the least. Who voyages to Vancouver and her only voyage to of the deep-sea seamen ever gave a thought to the United Kingdom under New Zealand flag the service provided by tugs — unless they in great detail, covering sailing conditions, were in danger of running aground? Wells' freights, profits earned and losses taken and thorough coverage of the tugs involved with maintenance and crewing problems. He gives Pamir, their work and their histories, add a clear picture of what it meant to keep a tremendously to this volume. Where else has commercial sailing vessel going in the 1940s. the work of such tugs been described? It is a picture that dreamers, intent on reju• The book is profusely illustrated with venating commercial sail as this "blessed" nearly one hundred photographs, ship plans, century draws to a close, would be well maps and splendid drawings by the author. advised to look at closely. Best of all are the photographs taken of Pamir Having served aboard Passat, Pamir's leaving British Columbia in gale force condi• contemporary as it were, Wells' book touched tions. I have never seen the likes of them. a responsive chord or two in me and evoked To maritime historians, to maritime memories galore. As a boy I went aboard her museums, to ship lovers and anyone interested in Hamburg just before she was sold to Erik- in the very last period of commercial sail, I son. In 1949 I met her again at Port Victoria recommend this book highly; it is well-pro• in South Africa, just after her return to her duced and a pleasure to behold, and all for a Finnish owners by the New Zealand govern• very reasonable price. My thanks go to the ment but still with her New Zealand crew author who brought it all together and to the with the exception of her former Finnish publishers who produced such a fine volume. master. To us aboard Passat, Pamir was grossly over-manned, and her crew grossly Niels W. Jannasch overpaid with their Union steamer wages Tantallon, Nova Scotia which included overtime for any "all hands on deck" manoeuvres, something which was Geoff Robinson and Dorothy Robinson. Duty- unheard of by us aboard Passat. No wonder Free: A Prohibition Special. Summerside, relations between the two crews were not all PEI: Geoff and Dorothy Robinson, 1992 that friendly! My slightly out-of-whack nose [order from the authors, Tyne Valley, Prince still bears witness to that fact. And no wonder Edward Island, COB 2C0]. 122 pp., map, pho• that Erikson lost money on her in a big way tographs. $14.95, paper ($18 if ordered direct• on her last commercial voyage with bagged ly from the authors); ISBN 0-9691943-7-4. barley from Port Victoria to the U.K. During the winter of 1949/1950 I looked after Passat This is the most recent of three books pub• and Pamir at Penarth Dock and during the lished by the Robinsons on rum running and discharging of their cargo at Barry Docks. allied occupations in the Maritime provinces Two years later I met Pamir again when she, and St. Pierre and Miquelon during the years 84 The Northern Mariner

of Canadian and American "Prohibition." In is no bibliography. And while other books on the broadest sense it is concerned with the rum running are mentioned in two of the few maritime history of eastern North America footnotes to the text, most of those footnotes from Newfoundland to the Caribbean during refer to chapters in their earlier books. the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, but because it was written for a general audience, it has many of David J. McDougall the characteristics of "local histories." Lachine, Quebec The book is based on oral testimony provided by old-time rum runners and boot• Norman Hacking. Captain William Moore, leggers as well as research in archives from B.C. 's Amazing Frontiersman. Surrey, BC: Newfoundland to Ottawa and even Guyana Heritage House Publishing, 1993 [Box 1228, (ex-British Guiana). Much of the text consists Station A, Surrey, British Columbia V3S of stories of Canadian rum-running vessels, 2B3]. 62 pp., maps, illustrations, photographs. how they got their supplies and landed their $5.95, paper; ISBN 1-895811-02-3. cargoes, seizures, court cases and government investigations. Six chapters describe the Norman Hacking has been deeply involved careers of rum runners and bootleggers, most with the marine history of British Columbia of them residents of Prince Edward Island, most of his life. For decades, he was marine while one chapter is on hijackings of Cana• editor for the newspaper, the Vancouver Daily dian and French rum running vessels on the Province, writing a column called "Ship & American East coast. Some chapters include Shore." While I have not read his graduating new material to their earlier publications; the thesis for the University of British Columbia, chapter on two large rum running vessels about historic stemwheels plying the treacher• supplements the history of Captain Teddy ous rivers and inland lakes of this western Kirk in their second book // Came by the province, those who have, have suggested he Boat Load (1983), while another is a short should publish it. Hacking did write a series version of part of their history of The Nellie of articles regarding the history of stem- J. Banks (1980). Two others concern the iden• wheelers for B.C. Outdoors in the late 1970s, tification of pictures of that schooner and a so it comes as no surprise that he should write commemorative St. Pierre and Miquelon pos• this little book about Captain William Moore, tage stamp issued on the fiftieth anniversary whose photo graces an inset on the cover, of her final seizure as a rum runner. along with a full colour photo of the govern• The book is well written and except for ment stemwheel steamboat Samson V on the mis-naming two government vessels and Fraser River. attributing a photograph of another to the As this book points out, Captain Moore wrong source, no errors have been noted. The was bom for adventures that very few men amoral disregard for Customs and prohibition would undertake, and he did not let his later laws by the rum runners is so constant a years of life slow him down. He was a true theme that the words "illegal" and "illegally" pioneer river man and explorer, never hesi• only appear seven times in the whole text — tating to dash into the British Columbia twice in reference to illegal seizures by gov• wilderness when he heard that gold was ernment patrol vessels! As a result of the discovered in unbelievably remote areas of same partisan approach there are some mis• this country. leading statements about the kinds of law Hacking has dug deeply into Captain enforcement and the duration of prohibition in Moore's life. He first came to British Col• Canada. Moreover, while the authors usually umbia in 1852, when gold was discovered in give the names of their informants and the the Queen Charlotte Islands. At that time it archives where information was found, there was no place for anyone easily intimidated by Book Reviews 85 hostile aboriginal people. Moore also joined the Fraser, crowding rival steamers into shoals the gold stampedes on the Fraser River in to gain headway. He does tell how the lives 1858, the Stikine River, the Cariboo, the big of the crews and passengers were placed at bend of the Columbia River, the Omineca and risk with excessively high boiler pressures, Cassiar country, the Klondike and finally, but he leaves out most of the disasters when when he was age 78, Nome, Alaska. river steamboats did explode their boilers. During these events, Captain Moore often These stories, however, can be found in worked together with his sons in the gold another book, The Princess Story: A Century camps. He took contracts building trails into and a Half of West Coast Shipping, which the wildest country to provide access to the Hacking co-authored with W. Kaye Lamb. gold fields, and often came out a rich man. But he gambled his fortunes building steam A.C. (Fred) Rogers boats and competing with his rivals, Captain Qualicum Beach, British Columbia William Irving and his impetuous young son, Captain John Irving. At times, he was forced Eric Sager. Ships and Memories: Merchant off the Fraser River by ruinous rates; he then Seafarers in Canada's Age of Steam. would take his sternwheel steamers to the Vancouver: UBC Press, 1993. x + 179 pp., Skeena and Stikine Rivers where he accumu• photographs, notes, glossary, sources, index. lated considerable wealth. His love of doing $29.95, cloth; ISBN 0-7748-0443-2. things in a grand way, frequently led to some bad investments. Thus, in 1863, he had the Here is a book that provides a fascinating, sternwheel steamer Alexandra built, the detailed and authoritative account of Canada's biggest ship to navigate the Fraser River. His merchant marine, coupled with memorable timing was wrong, and the vessel too large yarns told by seafarers who served in these and costly to operate. Nor could it negotiate ships during the three decades from 1920 to the shallow river in fall and winter; in con• 1950 when the Age of Steam witnessed the trast, his competitor's smaller ships kept final demise of sail and the advent of diesel- earning money. Consequently, he went bank• driven merchant ships. In preparing the inter• rupt and lost his fortune. Surprisingly, he esting material contained in this book, Eric made the same mistake in later years, losing Sager personally interviewed numerous retired other fortunes. He was a rich man several times and a poor man at least three times. merchantship personnel through the ranks of masters, licensed officers and unlicensed Moore's life is neatly summed up by seafarers on both Canada's east and west Hacking, who says that "As a sailor and river coasts, from whom he has drawn a beneficial steamboatman he had few equals, while his cross-section of knowledge and experience. endurance as an old man on wilderness trails The author takes the reader through a was incredible." As an example, Hacking series of historical shipping events, commenc• mentions how, in 1896, Moore contracted ing with the CGMM, a crown-owned com• with the Canadian government to deliver pany which consisted of sixty-three dry-cargo winter mail by dog team six hundred wilder• ships in the early 1920s and which, until its ness miles, from Skagway to Forty Mile on close in 1936, employed more than 2,300 the Yukon River. He completed his contract mostly Canadian seafarers and plied interna• successfully, though on his last trip tempera• tional waters. By the onset of World War II tures dropped to -50° F. Moore was then 73 in September 1939, Canada possessed only years of age. He died in Victoria in 1909. thirty-eight ocean-going ships. It was during Unfortunately, most readers will not get the war that Canada's shipbuilding industry the full story about the rivalry on the rivers; reached peak performance, when almost four about how ships often raced neck and neck up hundred merchant ships were built. Of these, 86 The Northern Mariner

about 176, named for Canadian Parks, were Joan Druett (ed.). "She Was a Sister Sailor": operated by the crown-owned Park Steamship Mary Brewster's Whaling Journals, 1845- Company Limited. By 1950, the year which 1851. Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum, marked the end of Canada's Age of Steam, 1992. xx + 449 pp., maps, illustrations, app• most of the Park ships had been sold to endices, bibliography, index. US $39.95, foreign-flag interests. cloth; ISBN 0-913372-60-9. Since history, as an academic discipline, is usually a written compilation of unbiased Joan Druett, a New Zealand teacher, journalist prose by an academic and perhaps read pre• and novelist, was intrigued by the discovery dominantly by historians themselves, the in 1984 of a gravestone on a beach of Raro- author has done a remarkably good job in tonga, one of the Cook Islands in the South locating and interviewing seafaring personnel Pacific. It marked the grave of the young wife and recording their past experiences from of the captain of an American whale ship who memory, thus lending the content meaning died in 1850. Unaware that women had ac• and substance and presenting a work that the companied their whaler husbands on three-to- average reader should find interesting and five year voyages out of New England in the enjoyable. Sager has used oral history to nineteenth century, Druett began enquiring. enhance his book with appeal and power and The result is this absorbing volume of the has combined the authority of an academic edited journals of Mary Brewster, who made with the anecdotes of working people in two voyages after sperm and right whales on creating their own history, thus bridging the the ship Tiger out of Stonington, Connecticut gap between professional historians and with her husband William and a ship's com• retired seafarers. plement of thirty men. Druett has counted and Throughout the book, the gender-neutral listed in the appendix 443 women who went word "seafarer" is used in lieu of the word whaling. She also provides an annotated list "seaman," in order to dispose of the fanciful of the logs, journals, letters, and reminis• concept that seafaring is a male-dominated cences of the whaling sisters which are in occupation. Sager is careful to acknowledge public hands. Mary Brewster's journals, she the women who also served in Canada's found, are the earliest American female merchant fleet, particularly in the victualling whaling journals on that list. and catering service in passenger ships. Chap• With little to do aboard a whaling ship, ter two includes an interesting interview with Mary wrote faithfully each day on the first of Miss Molly Kool, who attended nautical her two voyages; each day, that is, after the schools in Saint John and Yarmouth and who, first month when she was too seasick to get in 1939, became Canada's first certified out of bed. She recorded wind, weather, sail woman master mariner. handling, the ship's position, other ships The high-point of Sager's work, in my spoken, whales sighted, whales made fast, opinion, is the collection of stories told by the boats stove, men killed or injured, whales cut participants: tales of good and bad times at in, blubber boiled, oil stowed, and her accom• sea, struggle, hardship, loneliness, escapades plishments in sewing. Her descriptions of the in seaports around the world and, of course Tiger riding out a number of vicious storms, the generous and spontaneous comradeship of sails shredded, decks swept by green water, seafarers and the sea. These make the book a are real enough. And her comment reveals a worthy and genuine documentation of the oral firm resolve to weather it all, no matter how history of a bygone era. terrifying. She seems to have had a fine mastery of positive thinking. R.F. Latimer One sees a gradual progression in Mary Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Brewster's sense of place in a whaling ship, a Book Reviews 87 growing confidence. As the years wear on, dence of sperm and right whales in the oceans she gains an insight into the demanding role sailed by whalemen. of the captain and participates vicariously in Joan Druett's research is impressive, her his moments of crisis. While certain of her commentary and notes enlightening. She has husband's competence, her anxiety is apparent prepared a volume useful to anyone with an when the Tiger enters the Arctic Ocean on interest in whaling history, Pacific Island their second voyage, and fog, ice, treacherous history, and women's issues. Mary Brewster, currents and uncharted rocks present endless who most certainly did not expect us to be emergencies. Not only was Tiger one of the reading her journals, will no doubt be admired first whalers to enter the Western Arctic, for her candid and wry commentary on life on Captain Roys having ventured through Bering the rolling wave. Too bad the book is too Strait only the previous season, Mary Brew• heavy to read in bed! It's entertaining. ster was the first "civilized female," in her own words, to go there. Joan Goddard Her observations of whalemen at sea Victoria, British Columbia without their wives, of missionaries, of hap• pily naked Polynesians, her ruminations about David Proctor. Music of the Sea. London: Her the safety of her soul and the wickedness of Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO) in asso• whaling on Sundays, her abhorrence of mis• ciation with the National Maritime Museum, cegenation, are no surprise in a well-bred Greenwich, 1992. x + 150 pp., illustrations, New England woman of the period. Yet one references, select bibliography, index. £12.95, sees a maturing of her judgment as she paper; ISBN 0-11-20-520-X. Distributed in becomes seasoned to life on a whaling ship. the United States by UNIPUB, Lanham, MD. The Tiger's first voyage to the Pacific and back by way of Cape Horn is treated in I suppose I am not the right person to review five sections. The second voyage, during David Proctor's Music of the Sea, since I am which Mary made only intermittent entries, is American (his is a very British book) as well treated in one section. It entailed a circum• as one of the "mad museum people and pres• navigation going eastward and included whal• ervationists" whom the author disparages in ing in the Arctic Ocean. The editor has pref• the concluding paragraphs of his chapter on aced each section with an essay to provide sea shanties (p. 104). But I read into his context. These and extensive footnotes supply remarks a condescendingly agreeable tilt of supporting excerpts from other whaling wives' the eyebrows toward a noble cause, for with• journals. One has, as a result, not just Mary out such "mad" people the world would no Brewster's experience, but the collective longer have Balclutha, Euterpe, or Cutty Sarkr, experiences of the whaling sisterhood. nor the great Victory, Warrior and Mary Rose While researchers may appreciate the which so proudly represent the might of footnotes, checking every whale ship men• British ascendancy on the high seas. tioned with entries from the New Bedford Many large maritime museums in search Whalemen's' Shipping List and Merchants' of a diversified "multicultural" audience Transcript, the Boston Shipping List, and a increasingly abandon the intellectual "high number of newspapers, this reviewer found road" that drew us there in the first place. them distracting. One might wish, too, that Exhibitions have become less intellectual in the charts upon which the Tiger's route was pursuit of the "blockbuster" and the "attrac• marked, had been explained. They are inter• tion." Publications have grown into slick esting in themselves, being sections of a "coffee-table" books with reduced space for Whale Chart prepared in 1851 by Lieut. M.F. text and proportionally less scholarly exposi• Maury, US Navy, showing the seasonal inci• tion. In this effort, too, Proctor's considerable 88 The Northern Mariner

research seems compromised by a top-floor Gloucestermen were natural competitors for decision to offer to a broader but more shal• the Grand Banks codfish catch. The Glouces• low museum public a book which will not termen hailed from the small seaports around intimidate. He writes — or perhaps has been Cape Ann to the north of Boston, Massachu• edited — as if his most important reader will setts, while the Bluenose men sailed from be the first-time museum visitor, probably one ports in neighbouring Nova Scotia, Canada! with only a schoolroom education. Lazy errors abound: thus the author refers One example will suffice. Writing about to the master mariner W.B. Whall (an import• the status of black slaves in America, Proctor ant source for songs of the sea) as KB. Whall reports: "Theirs was a life of great hardships, (p. 72); to the Alabama cotton port of Mobile which only eased sometime after the end of as "Mobil" (p. 73); and to the well-known the Civil War and the abolition of slavery." five-masted barque Copenhagen, without ex• (p. 100) This simplistic fact is well-known but planation, as the Kobenhavn (p. 75). Of actually supports a convenient stereotype. In course, Proctor is not expected to know ship truth, the lives of many slaves worsened after histories as well as music, but a quick vetting they were freed, for want of steady jobs and of the typescript by a Greenwich maritime accommodation formerly provided, at what• historian with an interest in sail presumably ever meagre level, by the plantation owners. would have isolated such anomalies. The complexity of the slavery system, the role It is in the chapter on sea shanties where of free black seamen and the relationship of omissions and generalizations seem most jar• African music to sea shanties can not be ring, but this may seem so because the handily compartmentalized. reviewer knows more about the working A much worse complaint is that the work songs of the sea than about Royal Marines contains errors in its exposition of basic bands or the music of bygone civilizations. In maritime history. From an American perspec• this matter I cannot imagine that Proctor has tive these errors are both unfortunate and truly overlooked Stan Hugill's Shanties from often amusing. Thus, Proctor implies that the the Seven Seas, which has been issued in at "Negro" shanties were picked up by American least four editions since its initial publication whalemen in the ports of the Deep South, by Routledge and Regan Paul in 1961. In that when in fact whaling ships seldom if ever book and another entitled Shanties and Sail• called into Gulf of Mexico ports such as ors ' Songs, Hugill rather thoroughly covered Galveston, New Orleans or Mobile, (pp. 94-5) much of the ground regarding the origin of He also notes that American whaling persisted working sea-songs and the shipboard use of "well into the nineteenth century," when it in shanties. Instead, Proctor directs readers only fact persisted — and that is the correct word — to Hugill's relatively minor work Songs of the until 1925. At the same point in the text Sea, which its author disdained as a publish• Proctor refers to the American "Down East- er's coffee-table adaptation of his lifetime ers" as "great east coast trading schooners, study of the days of sail. such as were built at Bath." Any American Even some of the musical history is open maritime historian ought to have been able to to misinterpretation. His remarks about the explain that the "Down Easters" were not concertina and accordion may illuminate the schooners. They were ships and barques — the point: according to the American "free-reed" ultimate expression of square-rigged merchant historian John Townley, as well as Walter sail from American shipyards. There also are Maurer, author of Accordion: Handbuch eines mentioned "the famous Blue Nose fishing Instruments, seiner historischen Entwicklung schooners out of Gloucester," which remark und seiner Literatur (Wien: Edition surely will extract a chuckle from any taciturn Harmonia, 1983), prototypical harmonicas Yankee, since the Bluenose schooners and the (mouth organs) and accordions were devel- Book Reviews 89 oped about 1830. The concertina, then called you don't hear just sailor songs..." (p. 70) the "symphonium," was introduced in an 1829 Proctor faced the conundrum posed by patent issued to Sir Charles Wheatstone. written discussion of music: whether to Anything prior to that, if called a "concer• include the relevant musical notation and tina," must necessarily have been a different thereby slow the reader who does not want to instrument. Yet Proctor refers without or cannot read it, or else leave the music out explication to "hexagonal wooden end-pieces and mystify readers who do not know the of a concertina ornamented in silver" found tune in question. He omitted it, though in a among the artifacts from the Trinidad Valen- few cases a couple of lines of melody and a cera, wrecked off the Irish coast after the verse of lyrics could have added considerable defeat of the Armada in 1588. illumination. Elsewhere (p. 63) he notes instruments Music of the Sea deserves a place in the belonging to drowned Dutch sailors of the marine library, together with previous works eighteenth century. Among them, he notes, "a on the same subject by Stan Hugill, W.B. lieutenant owned a flute and...others had Whall, William Main Doerflinger, Roy Pal• accordions..." One must go to the endnotes to mer's compilation for The Oxford Book of Sea discover that the instrument list is drawn from Songs and others. It is not the sea-music book an eighteenth-century ledger, while the note I would have written, but at least it derives about the accordions — which by inference from emotional sources close to the belongs also to the 1700s — was taken from a wellspring of life, the same sources from record which continues through to 1900. whence comes music itself. The book is divided loosely among six chapters, beginning with the earliest notations Robert Lloyd Webb of instruments taken to sea; the development Phippsburg, Maine of the formal marine band; the use of musi• cians and instruments on the main deck; sea Ian Jackson. Sailor of Fortune. Durham: songs and shanties; a chapter on music as a Pentland Press, 1993. xvi + 290 pp., maps, reliever of stress in the confines of the ship; photographs, tables. £15.95, cloth; ISBN 1- and finally notes on orchestral music inspired 85821-022-4. by the sea. To their credit, the National Mari• time Museum archivists have provided a It is not unreasonable to assume that anyone wonderful assortment of photographs — of who has spent forty years at sea and risen Royal Marines bands, informal ships' orches• from apprentice to master, has sufficient tras, individual players of folk instruments, material for a book. If that person has kept and other depictions of shipboard musical life. detailed records and written voluminous The small size of the photographs makes it descriptive letters that have been preserved, so difficult to get "inside" the images to study much the better. Such is the case with the the instruments or the men who are perform• central figure in this book, Captain Jack ing with such British hurrah. Amot. It fell to an idolizing nephew, Ian Perhaps best of all are the wonderful Jackson, to organize the "pistache" of quotations the author has extracted from a material, as he himself describes it. In so variety of sources which speak to the impact doing it is quite obvious that kinship has of music at sea, for in that place off the land influenced the selection for there is nothing is where music fills the heart of the profes• that does not show the central figure in any• sional sailor long from home, and the lands• thing but the best light. man's on his first voyage: "This evening there This is an interesting book and quite is life in the foc'sle....if you are lucky to have enjoyable to read, but not gripping as one some voices on board there is great joy, and might expect from the title. The early chapters 90 The Northern Mariner chronicle the experiences of Jack Arnot whilst tramping days, Arnot's tanker career was serving his time on merchant ships. This is notable only for its boredom. followed by a lengthy section (sixteen chap• The yachting interlude that followed was ters) in which the author describes, in ponder• equally lacking in drama. The 14,285-mile ous detail, how his uncle discovered and voyage from England to New Zealand via the purchased a sixty-four foot yacht which, with Panama Canal presented few problems for the one other person, he sailed to New Zealand. veteran navigator. If anything is deserving of The remaining ten chapters are devoted to comment it is the fact that two unlike men Arnot's service as master, first on small succeeded in sharing the small craft without island-hopping cargo ships in the South friction. At least, so we are led to believe. Pacific, then rounding out his career in the The remainder of Arnot's career, spent in same waters in command of two vessels the South Pacific, is equally devoid of any owned by the London Missionary Society. worthwhile reportable incidents. Taking all of The author's stated purpose is to contrast this into consideration, it is not unreasonable the life of a seafarer in pre-war days to what to conclude that the kindly disposed author it is at the present time. (p. xv) In doing this selected his material with compassionate care. he draws heavily upon his own experiences. The book has an attractive dust cover, is He too made the tortuous transition from well presented and has an excellent selection apprentice to master. He too knew the rigid of ship photographs, even if some, like the method of examining masters and mates and Highland Monarch, (p. 77) are only remotely finds it a far cry from the relaxed format of connected with the central character. One can today. He comments too on the lengthy only hope that the author can recover his costs periods the seafarer of the Thirties spent away of having this book published. At the stated from home and family in comparison with price, I very much doubt it. today's practice of generous leave and fly home vacations. Gregory P. Pritchard Such hardships were the lot of Jack Arnot Lunenburg, Nova Scotia who, except for one delivery job, served from 1923 until 1950 in two companies, eleven of G.S. Ritchie. No Day Too Long - An Hydro- these years on various Ellerman tramps in grapher's Tale. Durham: Pent land Press, which he visited no less than 112 ports 1992. xiv + 250 pp., figures, photographs, throughout the world. The balance of his index. £15.50, cloth; ISBN 1-872795-63-3. merchant ship career was spent exclusively trading in the Indian Ocean on tankers owned This book describes the remarkable forty-year by the Burmah Oil Company. Here the tours career of a hydrographer surveyor, from of duty were of three years' duration before junior officer to the most senior post in the being eligible for leave. Out of this service, hydrographic service, the post of Hydro• which included the war years, the reader is grapher of the Royal Navy, first established in treated to only one dramatic incident. In 1795; from 1966 to 1971, Admiral Ritchie January 1931, whilst Arnot was serving as was the nineteenth officer to hold that post. one of the Third Mates on the City of Delhi, The book is written with great enthusiasm, his ship was diverted in the North Atlantic to both as regards the work of a sea surveyor tow another company vessel which had lost and about life. The title is most apt; as an ex- her propeller. The eight day tow from the surveyor myself, I know how long the days at Grand Banks to Halifax has all the drama one sea could be, particularly in the sounding might expect to encounter under the circum• boats. Yet, as the author notes here, there is stances. What part Third-Officer Arnot played also great personal satisfaction in the work, in it is not revealed. In comparison with his for there would be a permanent record in the Book Reviews 91 chart as a result of each surveyor's efforts. tions in addition to hydrography. During his time, the Royal Navy charted In 1965 Ritchie brought Vidal into the world. Ritchie's efforts took him to un• Chatham for the last time and rang off the charted waters in remote areas from Jamaica main engines. He had commanded survey to Malaya to New Zealand and elsewhere. In ships for eight years and was reluctant to World War II his major work was in the leave — he was a sea surveyor, not a desk Mediterranean, following up the armies in man. Nevertheless, in 1966, he was appointed port clearance in a three-ton truck with a Hydrographer of the Royal Navy. He immedi• three-man crew and a sounding boat, and in ately turned his attention to shore-side prob• the sounding of Arromanches, Normandy lems and requirements. These included devel• during the invasion for the establishment of oping automated data collection of hydrogra- the Mulberry harbours. These were years of phic information, which was in some diffi• high adventure and the book sparkles with culty, particularly at sea in a survey ship in anecdotes and descriptions of many hilarious bad weather, and teething problems in com• occasions. His Serene Highness, Prince puter-assisted charting procedures at the Rainier of Monaco, wrote in his foreword that Hydrographic office. These were productive Steve Ritchie had great charisma, and I can years for Ritchie, despite his dislike for the certainly vouch for that and his sense of desk. Thus, through the efforts of Ritchie and humour. He had the ability always to get the the French and Belgian authorities, agreement best out of his officers and men. He com• was reached on finalizing a vessel separation manded four survey ships, including HMS scheme in the congested English Channel, Challenger and HMS Vidal, and they were where some seven hundred ships passed daily. happy ships despite being engaged in strenu• This achievement alone has prevented many ous voyages and arduous duties for years on collisions. Ritchie also spent time during these end. His longest voyage in Challenger was years on visits to Commonwealth and foreign eighteen months on a scientific and hydrogra- hydrographic offices promoting and encourag• phic expedition world-wide. In the course of ing new ideas and offering surveying courses this, the ship achieved the deep sounding of at the RN Hydrographic School in England. 10,900 metres in the Marianas Trench in the Nevertheless, the chapter devoted to his tenure western Pacific, still referred on the charts as Hydrographer is a slim one. He was a sea today as Challenger Deep. surveyor by profession, not a Whitehall In 1964 HMS Vidal went to Leningrad to bureaucrat. establish liaison with the Russian hydrogra- After his retirement Ritchie became phic Service, and with the redoubtable Director of the International Hydrographic Hydrographer of the Royal Navy, then Rear Bureau (MB) in Monaco. The IHB was the Admiral Sir E.G.G. Irving RN on board and brain-child of the Princes of Monaco in the with Ritchie in command, it was a highly late 1800s, and Prince Rainier maintains a successful visit. The ship's company brought keen interest in the organization. The work of Vidal home and alongside in Chatham — all the IHB is of a technical nature, standardizing wearing fur hats. worldwide charting in cooperation with inter• During Ritchie's post-war career survey• national agencies. Ritchie spent ten years as ing methods and equipment saw rapid its director before finally retiring in Scotland. advances. Electronic positioning (DECCA), Hydrographer, explorer, scientist, captain deeper echo sounders and air guns for seismic of ships and seamen, and a most entertaining profiling came into use. The book provides writer, I wish Steve and his family well. excellent and clear explanations on the new techniques and the heavy involvement of the Tom Irvine surveying service in major scientific expedi• Nepean, Ontario 92 The Northern Mariner

John Hannigan, Jan Drent and Oleg Shakov. innovative trades linking the Mackenzie and Commercializing the Northern Sea Route: the Russian Arctic. Implications for Future Development of This booklet covers ground not covered Shipping Along the Mackenzie River. Occa• elsewhere, and it comes out at a moment in sional Paper No. 2; Ottawa: Research Centre history when the chances of some positive for Canada and the Soviet Successor States, action being taken are perhaps better than Carleton University, 1992. 49 pp., maps, they have ever been. Norway and Japan, tables, references, appendices. $7.50, paper. represented respectively by the Fridtjof Nan- sen Institute and the Ship and Ocean Founda• The Russians have, for over half a century, tion, have funded a major research effort been able to use the ice-bound waters of the called the International Northern Sea Route Northeast Passage for economic purposes. Project (INSROP), which is directed at deter• Should Canadians now be thinking of harnes• mining whether commercializing the Northern sing the Northwest Passage in the same sort Sea Route is workable and desirable. Some of of way? That is the question this clearly the material which emerged from the meetings argued paper seeks to answer. The first thing of the INSROP group has been utilised to to establish is the degree of success the Rus• good effect in the publication under review, sians have achieved, but that is just the point which may therefore be regarded as a helpful at which the Russian sources fail the reader. adjunct to that effort. Although a good deal has been written on the subject (mostly in Russian), it is not easy to Terence Armstrong piece together a coherent picture. Cambridge, England The writers of the paper, however, are as well informed as outsiders can be, and by John Geiger and Owen Beattie. Dead Silence: careful reading of what is available have The Greatest Mystery in Arctic Discovery. presented a picture which, though lacking in Toronto: Viking, 1993. xx + 219 pp., maps, detail, must be reasonably close to the truth. photographs, illustrations, appendices, notes, The cause of the difficulty is evidently mili• sources, index. $29.99, cloth; ISBN 0-670- tary security: the whole northern littoral of the 84318-0. Soviet Union was a prohibited area — a fact not published in the country itself, but known Readers who appreciate restraint in the titles from the few westerners who were able to of historical works may raise their eyebrows penetrate it. The object of the paper is to at the subtitle of this book. Its publishers, relate the Soviet activities to what goes on, or however, felt that the name of James Knight what might go on, in the Canadian Arctic, and was not likely to attract buyers; few people especially on the Mackenzie River. This is can be expected to take an interest in the fate where the argument becomes very interesting. of a man of whom they have never heard. There is a superficial similarity between the (The title of the German edition is Toten two Passages, but the differences, though less stille: Das tragische Schicksal der Kniqht- obvious, are often more significant. The parts Expedition von 1719, suggesting the discon• played by the Mackenzie and the Lena might certing possibility that the Germans know be a case in point. Our authors are of course more about our national history than we do.) well aware of this and are sober in their James Knight entered the service of the judgements. They conclude that there is a Hudson's Bay Company as a carpenter and strong case for urging Canadian shipping shipwright in 1676, when he was around 30. interests to look at a number of specific A capable, energetic man, he rose to positions factors concerned with, for instance, port of importance both on the Bayside posts and facilities, use of particular types of ship, and in London; he was one of a handful of over- Book Reviews 93 seas administrators ever to gain a seat on the written the preface. It also considers the Company's Board. He is a figure well known explanations previously advanced as to what only to fur trade historians, yet it is safe to happened to Knight and his men and the say that he makes an indelible impression on reasons underlying these explanations. It was anyone who encounters him. This is owing to assumed that the expedition was shipwrecked three things: his peppery, self-confident on Marble Island (more precisely, Quartzite character, his relationship with the Chipewyan Island, one of the Marble Island group in woman, Thanadelthur (his admiration for her, Hudson Bay). There the men were either which transcended the differences of race, sex killed by Eskimos or perished, miserably but and age, has made him something of a hero to bravely, of starvation and exposure. And feminist historians) and, perhaps above all, the finally, it recounts Owen Beattie's four sea• manner of his death. In June 1719, when he sons of land and underwater archaeological was in his 70s, he sailed from Gravesend as investigations on Marble Island, which began the leader of an expedition consisting of two in 1989, and fits them into the story. ships, the Albany and the Discovery, and forty Since the book is billed as a mystery, it men. Hoping to find the North-West passage, would be a critical solecism to reveal the and the wealth of copper and gold of which conclusions reached by Beattie and Geiger. Thanadelthur had told Knight, they were But perhaps it would be in order to indicate never seen again. that they, like searchers in previous centuries, Perhaps the 1990s are to be James found a good deal — from the Albany and Knight's decade. Knight figures as a major Discovery themselves to the hut built by the and oddly endearing character in Running members of the expedition to the sad personal West, an enthralling novel by James Houston, relics such as shoes and a pair of brass divid• published in 1989, about William Stewart and ers. They also found graves — whaler's Thanadelthur. This book, together with a graves, Inuit graves, Thule graves — but, when documentary film which is being planned, came to seafaring subjects of King George, should do much more to raise Canadian not enough human remains were found to awareness of Knight. make up a small ship's boy. The book is handsomely produced, with Perhaps the greatest achievement of the seventeen colour photographs of the archae• book is that it helps us to understand why ological site and some of the findings, and Knight is such a compelling figure. He is numerous black and white illustrations of an presented as one of those individuals who historical nature (these last, unfortunately, are stood for more than himself — as a symbol of not credited). A brilliant touch is the whimsi• his own time and place, when Britain reached cal dragon which embellishes the title page out with both hands to take what the world and floats at the end of each chapter. This is had to offer, and as one of the first of the taken from the two dragons which adorn the great Canadian crazies. We see Knight not as title page of the York Factory post journal for the forerunner of officers and gentlemen like 1714-1715; perhaps the clerk who drew them Franklin but of men like Strathcona and Sir had been bedazzled by Governor Knight's Harry Oakes, dreaming in the bush of Eldora• tales of the riches of the Orient. do. If the title had not already been used by a Dead Silence operates on several levels, recent novel on eighteenth-century British and it is a lively and entertaining read on all commercial enterprise, this book could have of them. It is a thoroughly researched account been called Sacred Hunger. of what is known of Knight's life from pri• mary and secondary sources, and there can be Anne Morton no better testimony to its merits on this score Winnipeg, Manitoba than the fact that Glyndwr Williams has 94 The Northern Mariner

Emile Frederic de Bray; William Barr (trans. is not a volume of stirring narrative or evoca• & ed.). A Frenchman In Search of Franklin: tive phrasing, but that does not mean it is De Bray's Arctic Journal 1852-1854. Toronto: uninteresting. It is the every-day descriptions University of Toronto Press, 1992. xxii + 339 — from the theatrical performances to the pp., photographs, illustrations, maps, appen• manner of dealing with extreme cold — that dices, notes, bibliography, index. $35, cloth; give de Bray's accounts both a less than ISBN 0-8020-2813-6. heroic cast and a greater than normal degree of authenticity. Emile Frederic de Bray is hardly a household William Barr's work is familiar to most name; even in the annals of Arctic explora• northern scholars, for he has published exten• tion, the French enseigne-de-vaisseau is but a sively in this field. Many readers will not, shadowy figure. Yet important writings need therefore, be surprised to learn that this vol• not always flow from the pens of famous ume is a fine example of the editor's craft. people, as A Frenchman in Search of Franklin The introduction and postscript provide the illustrates. De Bray came to the Arctic by narrative and personal details necessary for petitioning the British government to join in the reader to make proper sense of the jour• the search for the lost Franklin expedition. He nal; there is enough information on the Frank• ventured north aboard Resolute in 1852, part lin episode to provide necessary context, and of Edward Belcher's searching expedition. considerable detail on de Bray's career. More• At one level, it would seem that there is over, the careful annotations, reflecting Barr's little more to be said about the massive search deep familiarity with the details of the Frank• for the Franklin expedition. There have been lin searching expeditions, provide invaluable countless books written about this well-known additions to the text. The editor has, as well, episode in Arctic exploration, and most of the included a variety of de Bray's sketches and diaries and journals documenting the search hand-drawn maps, as well as several general have appeared in print. There appears to be an maps of the central Arctic — essential inexhaustible demand for ever more books on elements for the understanding of explorers' the topic. In this limited context, then, the movements and descriptions. arrival of the never before published journal De Bray's account, although not the best of de Bray is an important event. of the numerous descriptions of Arctic explo• The significance of A Frenchman in ration, deserves a wide readership. A French• Search of Franklin rests elsewhere than in the man in Search of Franklin provides a fine, contribution to the well-covered field of first-person account of Arctic navigation in Franklin studies. (Part of me, I must admit, the 1850s. That de Bray himself was, until the would just as soon not ever again read an appearance of this book, virtually invisible on account of the search for Franklin.) The fact the historical landscape also provides further that de Bray was French gives the book a confirmation of the fundamental importance different twist — one noted by one of his of publication as a means of establishing a shipmates, Lieutenant George Nares, who place in history. Many lesser men, and lesser observed "The Frenchman does not seem an writers, have had a long-standing place in our Englishman, but I suppose he will improve on understanding of the past, primarily by virtue acquaintance." (pp. ix) One should not expect, of the public release of their journal, diary or however, that de Bray's account is filled with memoirs. The long-forgotten Frenchman will analysis of the English; rather, it is a fairly now, thanks to the efforts of William Barr, standard description of the sights and experi• take his place among those nineteenth century ences of the Canadian Arctic. It is the adventurers who sought — in the interests of humble, matter-of-fact tone of the descriptions science, out of concern for fellow mariners, that gives the book its particular utility. This and a desire for personal challenge - to Book Reviews 95 unlock the mysteries of the Arctic. This is the gap filled by To the Chukchi Peninsula and to the Tlingit Indians 1881/ Ken Coates 1882: Journals and Letters by Aurel and Prince George, British Columbia Arthur Krause, a translation by Aurel Krause's granddaughter of an unpublished, Aurel and Arthur Krause; trans. Margot revised edition of Zur Tschuktschen-Halbinsel Krause McCaffrey. To the Chukchi Peninsula und zu den Tlinkit-lndianern 1881/1882. and to the Tlingit Indians 1881/1882. Jour• This book recounts the brothers' travels nals and Letters by Aurel and Arthur Krause. from Germany to New York, then by train Rasmuson Library Historical Translation across North America; their voyage from San Series, Vol. VIII; Fairbanks: University of Francisco to the Chukchi Peninsula and back; Alaska, 1993. xiii + 230 pp., photographs, the trip to Alaska and the winter stay at illustrations, maps, appendix, endnotes. US Chilkoot; and their separation in the spring of $17.50, paper; ISBN 0-912006-66-8. 1882 and return home. Aurel's journal forms the core of the account; gaps are filled by In 1881, the Geographical Society of Bremen personal and professional letters and reports. appointed Aurel and Arthur Krause, teachers Skilful compilation and editing enhance the of the natural sciences in Berlin, to carry out "story" contained in the documents. The only its third research project — a scientific ethno• technical defect is the lack of an index. logical expedition to the Bering coasts of the The logistical difficulties in exploring Chukchi Peninsula and to the southeastern remote and hostile regions have been enor• coasts of Alaska. For more than a year the mous. For the Krauses, danger and physical brothers collected geographical, geological, hardship were frequent companions whose botanical and zoological data in these largely presence they calmly accepted. The circum• unknown areas. More important, they com• stances that disturbed them were far more piled invaluable information about the indi• prosaic: snarls in travel plans, bad weather, genous inhabitants, their forms of social and lost or damaged equipment or specimens. On economic organization, and their cultures. the whole, however, they met the challenges The results of the expedition became and mishaps of their adventure with aplomb widely known through lectures and extensive and good humour, as Arthur's description of publications. Although the Krauses were not walking in snowshoes will confirm. anthropologists, their ethnological data was The documents used here were only very highly regarded. As Ema Gunther has peripherally related to the Krauses' later observed, many accounts of indigenous socie• scientific and ethnographic work, but the ties focused on the unusual and the exotic. connection is clear. The descriptions of north• The Krauses' work was so valuable because it ern landscapes and their plant and animal did not. Their scientific training had made the inhabitants are striking and sometimes poetic. brothers keen observers who collected and The fit between native crafts and implements, compiled information systematically; this was survival in an unforgiving environment, and their hallmark. Among their published indigenous beliefs and cultural traditions is a materials, the best known is Aurel's Die recurring theme, as is the relationship between Tlinkit-Indianer (Jena, 1885), still a seminal subsistence and maritime resources that cir• study, unsurpassed in its scope. cumscribed past economic organization and Missing from these accounts, however, is would govern future economic development. the personal dimension of the expedition - The Krauses observed the consequences the events of discovery, exploration and for indigenous groups of the northern Pacific observation, both routine and unexpected, rim — not only Chukchi and Tlingit — of from which the brothers extracted their data. increasing contact with the modern world, the 96 The Northern Mariner particular economic and social problems of history, and then the transformation of the key alcohol, and the differing administrative journals of the voyages. He also provides strategies employed by Russian and American material from later return voyages of Von agencies in the region. They noted similar Kotzebue and others, and photographs of perceptions of unseen reality held by the ethnological specimens collected by the Rus• indigenous peoples of both Asia and America, sians which Barratt tracked down in their as well as the successes and failures of Chris• modern locations. Detailed tables summarize tianity in penetrating and changing permanent• the activities of Russian vessels in Polynesian ly indigenous cultures. waters from 1816 to 1840, and enhance This volume does not compare with the Barratt's clear and concise presentation of the Krauses' formal scientific and ethnographic surprising Russian record of achievement in work, nor should it — for its contribution is the South Pacific, surprising only because we very different. It recalls the patient and pain• tend to see Pacific exploration as the accom• staking work upon which the search for plishment of the Dutch, Spanish, French, and knowledge has been built. above all, British. Very quickly we realize that the Russian voyages were well-planned, Judith Bruce methodically carried out, and professional in Berkeley, California manner. The effect is to suggest a navy far more competent at its work than the seeming• Glynn Barratt. Russia and the South Pacific, ly inept one battered into defeat by the Japan• 1696-1840, Volume IV: The Tuamotu Islands ese early in the next century. The officers and and Tahiti. Vancouver: University of British expedition leaders were civilized and humane Columbia Press, 1992. xvii + 298 pp., maps, men whose observations are of value to any• tables, illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliogra• one on the track of historical or ethnological phy, indices. $75, cloth; ISBN 0-7748-0409-2. material on Tahiti and Polynesia. The Tahiti visited by the Russians was not that known to The author is a Professor of Russian at Carle- Cook or Bligh, a sailors' paradise of dissipa• ton University in Ottawa, and if the quality of tion "beyond anything that can be conceived." his footnoting and general knowledge of the Rather, it was in the apparently iron grip of sea is anything to go by, he is as much a the London Missionary Society, whose profit• well-informed naval historian as he is a able and pervasive imposition of a humourless scholar in the Russian language. This book is and repressive Christianity and hard-fisted the fourth in a series which present, through plantation capitalism on the gentle Tahitians translated documents, the extraordinary record caused Von Kotzebue, for one, to become of Russian exploration in the South Pacific - angry at what he thought he saw: or rather, the Russian investigation of island groups or watery wastes others had "dis• The religion taught by the mission• covered." It focuses on the expeditions to aries is not true Christianity, though Tahiti and the Tuamotu Archipelago to the it may possibly comprehend some of northeastward, beginning with those of Von its doctrines, but half understood Kotzebue, who visited Polynesia in the ship even by the teachers themselves. Riurik in 1816, and Bellinghausen, in com• That it was established by force, is pany with Lazarev in the ships Vostok and of itself evidence against its Chris• Mirnyi in 1820. tian principle. A religion which con• Barratt's approach is to provide a detailed sists in the eternal repetition of pre• historical summary of the voyages, astonish• scribed prayers, which forbids every ing for their scholarly detail and evident innocent pleasure, and cramps or mastery of the overall picture of Pacific annihilates every mental power, is a Book Reviews 97

libel on the divine Founder of Chris• tions, and extensive commentary included to tianity... (p. 122) make the letters instructive as well as infor• mative. Rehbock presents the letters with For Western readers accustomed to minimal editorial intrusion, in chronological assume a certain societal superiority over order, allowing the voyage narrative to devel• Russians, past and present, the sensitive op along with Matkin's articulate style. One liberality and sophistication of the Russian of the most remarkable features of the letters minds seen in these journals is a welcome was Matkin's position as a "middleman," lesson. For students of maritime history the belonging neither to wardroom nor forecastle. true value of this volume lies less with the His position required literacy, and gave Mat• indignant objections of the Russians to the kin access to writing materials and some real or imagined plight of Tahitians than in measure of privacy, distinctions which set him the record of careful navigation and observa• apart from the sailors he observed, rather than tion by the Russian vessels and their crews. befriended. Likewise, although he visited the The story of the "opening" of the Pacific is laboratories, and made efforts to understand not merely a Western European one, and the scientific purpose of the voyage, his place Barratt's superbly detailed scholarship goes was definitely below decks. far in making that clear. While Rehbock's restrained approach to the letters is justified by their coherent and Victor Suthren remarkably accurate content, there are places Ottawa, Ontario where additional or more comprehensive notes would have been helpful. For example, Mat• Philip F. Rehbock (ed.). At Sea with the kin often noted the healthy state of Challen• Scientifics: The Challenger Letters of Joseph ger's crew, telling us about regular issues of Matkin. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, lime juice to prevent scurvy and the consump• 1992. xiv + 415 pp., illustrations, photo• tion of fresh meat and vegetables in port. To graphs, appendices, notes, selected bibliogra• highlight the progress made in these matters phy, index. US $38, cloth; ISBN 0-8248- since the previous century, Matkin claimed — 1424-X. several times — that Captain Cook's crews had been decimated by scurvy. Such inaccuracy The voyage of HMS Challenger was the deserves comment; it is rare to find criticism largest and one of the most significant naval- of Cook in nineteenth-century naval writing, scientific expeditions of the nineteenth cen• especially in accounts of the long-range tury; data from its 1872-76 circumnavigation scientific expeditions which owed so much to helped found the science of oceanography. his example. Matkin's remarks are the more Until now, primary documentation of the surprising when we learn that he had access to Challenger expedition consisted entirely of Cook's published reports in Challenger's material written by its officers and civilian library; evidently his desire to praise nine• scientists; Professor Rehbock has had the teenth-century "progress" overruled his knowl• enviable task of editing a recently-discovered edge of Cook's successful battle against collection of manuscripts written "below shipboard disease. decks." For the first time, in the letters of Although Rehbock notes Matkin's rela• steward's assistant Joseph Matkin, we have a tively broad-minded view of "natives," the record of the experience and perceptions of letters actually contain something more sig• Challenger's crew. nificant: Matkin's opinion of Britain's over• Matkin wrote for members of his family seas role. His accounts of the British colonies in the style typical of Victorian travelogues, Challenger visited, and detailed descriptions with background information, poetry quota• of non-European peoples, invite analysis. 98 The Northern Mariner

Matkin, a steward's boy in the merchant eighty pages of informative, interesting marine, had lived for a year in Australia material, including five or six feature articles, before returning to England to join the Royal oral history interviews, technical reports, book Navy in 1870, and was delighted to visit reviews, naval museum display information Melbourne again during Challenger's cruise. and readers' letters and comments. The peri• His favourable, often patriotic accounts of odical is profusely illustrated with fascinating British colonial societies (which he contrasts and often unusual photographs and artwork with those of other European countries), (in full colour) as well as diagrams and maps. remind us that Challenger's voyage took place Clearly, however, Naval History is the on the cusp of British imperialism, between product of — and is directed at — members of the restrained approach of earlier years and the US Naval community and historians inter• the more aggressive policies of the late nine• ested in the US Navy. Indeed, the subscription teenth-century. coupon included in every issue states the When Matkin wrote about Challenger's magazine is "devoted to our nation's rich meeting with HMS Pearl in 1874, just after naval heritage." This is perhaps especially true the latter had supervised the annexation of of these particular issues, with their numerous Fiji, he stated that one of the Australian features celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of colonies would have claimed Fiji if Britain critical World War II naval actions in the had not. This was an astute assessment of Pacific such as the Battles of the Coral Sea, what is now called "sub-imperialism," an Midway and Guadalcanal. Many contributors acknowledgement that British colonies were are themselves former American naval offi• often active partners in the extension of cers. Nevertheless, a variety still exists in empire. Matkin's comments about this, joined terms of periodization, subject matter and with his confidence in Britain's scientific method of historical analysis. Readers of progress in the age of steam, give us new Volume 6 can find articles on such diverse insight into the relationship of science to topics as "Naval Discipline in the 1850's," empire. Challenger's track chart shows us "The Case for Captain Lord" (of the SS how much of the globe could already be Californian at the scene of the Titanic disas• covered by travel between British ports; her ter), "The Romance of the Subchasers," "The voyage was both a witness and an affirmation Quasi-War with France" and a study of the of Britain's growing imperial confidence. Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Cuban Missile Crisis, "How Well did the JCS Work?" The Jane Samson US Marine Corps and the US Civil War are London, England also frequently covered themes. All articles are well written and are not overlong. The Paul Stillwell (gen. ed.). Naval History, same is true for the book reviews, which Volume 6, Numbers 1-4, 1992. Annapolis: detail works concerned with all aspects of Naval Institute Press, 1993. 4x80 pp., photo• naval and maritime history. A useful compre• graphs, maps, figures, tables. Cdn $33.95, US hensive annual index covering the previous $24.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-606-X. year's content is published in the first issue (Spring) of every volume. Most readers of The Northern Mariner will Subscriptions to Naval History cost US already be familiar with the US Naval Insti• $20 for non-USNI members plus $4 for tute's excellent quarterly, Naval History. In shipping. It is a top-quality periodical well this volume, the four issues comprising Vol• worth the price. ume 6 (1992) have been conveniently and handsomely-bound. Serge Durflinger Each issue of Naval History contains Verdun, Queoec Book Reviews 99

John H. Pryor. Geography, Technology, and for voyages between ports, a tabulation would War: Studies in the Maritime History of the be easier to follow than several pages of Mediterranean 649-1571. New York: Cam• descriptive matter. Each chapter is well organ• bridge University Press, 1988, 1992. xxii + ized internally, and the sequence ties the 238 pp., maps, figures, bibliography, index. various themes together well. Special empha• US $16.95, paper; ISBN 0-521-42892-0. sis is placed on the development of well- defined "trunk" routes, along which most voy• This book consists of essays on the factors ages were made, on the influence of natural affecting the growth of trade and influence in forces in determining these routes, and on the the Mediterranean from the seventh to the six• limitations imposed by the capabilities of the teenth centuries A.D. The essays are con• various types of ship used. The importance of nected by common themes; the fluctuating secure advanced bases for both merchant ves• fortunes of the Christian and Muslim states in sels and war galleys is noted as a critical their attempts to dominate the sea; the effect requirement for success in both trade and war. of natural forces like winds, currents, weather The factors which allowed the Christian and topography; and the influence of changing powers to dominate the area at some periods, technology on ship design and construction, and the Muslims to dominate it at others are and on navigational techniques. Pryor dis• explored in detail. Well-documented argu• cusses these themes separately, but suggests ments are put forward against some traditional that there was no single causal agent for the explanations. final outcome. Instead, a whole range of inter• Overall this is an excellent book, and dependent factors contributed to the end essential to any scholar working in this period result. The narrative has continuity, but is in and area. It would also be of great interest to no sense a complete maritime history of the the layman and amateur historian who desires Mediterranean in this period. something more than just a general overview The first three chapters discuss the setting of the maritime history of the Mediterranean and background, the sea and weather patterns, in the Medieval period. the development of various types of merchant vessels and warships, the routes used by mar• R.J.O. Millar iners, and navigational difficulties. Later Vancouver, British Columbia chapters review the maritime activities in the Mediterranean in a chronological sequence, Eira Karppinen, (ed.). The War of King Gus- and consider particular problems, such as tavus III and Naval Battles of Ruotsinsalmi. guerre de course. Kotka, Finland: Provincial Museum of Ky- Pryor draws on a wide range of sources. menlaakso, 1993 [order from the museum, These include period manuscripts from Kotkankatu 13, FIN-48100, Kotka, Finland]. archives in Italy, Spain and France, the results 144 pp., figures, maps, photographs. FIM 50, from maritime archaeology of the past forty paper; ISBN 951-96183-5-X. years, and several hundred printed sources, many from the countries bordering the Medi• Stewart P. Oakley. War and Peace in the terranean. A scarcity of primary Muslim Baltic, 1560-1790. London and New York: sources is due to both the difficulty of gaining Routledge, 1992. xvii + 222 pp., maps, genea• access to the archives of the Muslim states logical tables, chronology of events, notes and and the problem of finding a scholar inter• references, bibliography, index. US $59.95, ested in the subject and able to read Arabic. cloth; ISBN 0-415-02472-2. The book is splendidly detailed and tho• rough, although in a number of places, for 1990 marked the bicentennial of the naval example in the summaries of the times taken battles of Ruotsinsalmi fought against the 100 The Northern Mariner

Russians near Kotka, Finland in 1789 and encountered in training both men and officers 1790. Though the first battle was indecisive, in a nation so devoid of maritime resource. the second was the greatest victory in the Helsinki historian Ansii Vuorenmaa annals of the Swedish navy. Nevertheless, and presents an overview of operations of the war. despite the terrible losses suffered by his He judges the struggle for Finland "a draw" enemies, King Gustavus III was not victorious because the Turkish war prevented Russia in the war. When the adversaries made peace from deploying a larger force, and Sweden's later that year, Ruotsinsalmi produced no "tactical victories" had no "larger signifi• change in the status quo in the eastern Baltic. cance" on the outcome of the war. Erik Wit- Now, the Kymenlaakso Museum has pub• hol describes the actual engagements at both lished a volume containing thirteen papers battles at Ruotsinsalmi; he questions the presented at the eighth International Baltic "greatness" of the last battle and the worthi• Seminar (1990). The papers have a cohesive- ness of the policy that led to such slaughter in ness seldom found in conference volumes. a cause so inconclusive. Estonian military Anyone interested in the eighteenth-century historian Mati Oun completes the operational Russian-Swedish struggle for supremacy in picture with a description of naval actions at the eastern Baltic will find much of value in Tallinn and other areas along the Estonian this volume. coast in 1788-1790. Ulla Riitta Kauppi of the In an essay on "The Foreign Policy of National Board of Antiquities in Helsinki Gustavus III and the Navy as an Instrument of finishes this section of the volume with a very that Policy," Stockholm University professor illuminating analysis of the consequences of Jan Glete provides a useful introduction which the war, featuring the massive construction of presents the Swedish monarch's plan to sur• fortifications by the Russians in southeastern prise Russia in a "quick and cheap victory." Finland, the better to defend themselves. His newly constructed fleet of modern design Four additional articles are not repre• but of inferior materials convinced the rash sented in the title. All are devoted to marine king to provoke war after the Turks attacked archaeology, which was the subject of the the Russians in 1787. Glete maintains that final session of the Baltic Seminar. These are Gustavus could not direct and coordinate land, hidden treasures for those wishing to sample amphibious, and naval operations sufficiently the study of ships wrecked in various parts of to surprise the preoccupied Empress Catherine the Baltic during the seventeenth and eight• II. Nonetheless, his failure as a commander eenth centuries. They include papers by "was suddenly turned into a success" in the Pryzemyslav Smolarek of the Polish Maritime glory of the second battle of Ruotsinsalmi. Museum on a wreck in the Bay of Gdansk, Contributions by Vladimir Samoilov and Velio Mass of the Estonian Maritime Museum Lars Otto Berg describe the development of on Russian and Swedish wrecks in Estonian the Russian and Swedish fleets prior to the waters, Britt-Marie Petersen of the University conflict. Particularly interesting is Berg's of Stockholm on the wreck of the ship Anna account describing the innovations that led to Maria, and Flemming Rieck of the Danish the Swedish construction of "archipelago Maritime Archaeology Institute on a ship• frigates," armed with swivel guns, and the wreck in Danish waters. "gun boat fleet," specifically designed for Readers wishing to improve their under• amphibious operations. Peter von Busch and standing of the larger context of war and Anatoli Belik, of the Karlskrona Maritime diplomacy in the Baltic should consult the Museum and the St. Petersburg Naval recent volume in Routledge's "War in Con• Museum, address the problems of recruitment text" series, War and Peace in the Baltic, and manning in the two fleets. Belik provides 1560-1790 by Stewart Oakley. He traces the a rare glimpse into the huge task Russia rise of Sweden to supremacy in the seven- Book Reviews 101

teenth century and its decline in the struggle exploration, and the responses of native with Russia, first under Peter I and finally societies. To match his ethnographical forays under Catherine II. Interestingly, Oakley ends into native customs, symbols, and religious his work in 1790 with the second battle of culture, in Act One Dening confronts and will Ruotsinsalmi. This is a much-needed synthesis surprise readers with parallel approaches to and readers familiar with the poor quality of unravel the complexities of British naval English-language works on this subject will discipline, customs, punishments, service, be grateful to Oakley for consigning Jill sacrifice, and language. In comparing cus• Lisk's The Struggle for Supremacy in Baltic toms, habits, and ceremonials with more 1600-1725 (New York, 1968) to the back exotic and sometimes shocking native rituals, shelf. For those who find the lack of docu• he compels his readers to view naval culture mentation in many of the articles in the Baltic in a new light. The barbaric incarceration, Seminar collection disturbing, Oakley's book court-martial, and selective executions of provides excellent footnote references and a Bounty mutineers — innocent and guilty alike very complete bibliography. — assume new meanings when compared with Tahitian rituals and their sacrifice of unfortu• Richard H. Warner nate human victims. Fredericksburg, Virginia Popular views about the Bounty mutiny focus upon Bligh's arbitrary behaviour, viol• Greg Dening. Mr. Bligh's Bad Language: ence, and the harsh discipline of the lash. In Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty. fact, Dening shows that compared with many Cambridge & NY: Cambridge University British and American captains of the period, Press, 1992. xii + 445 pp., figures, illustra• Bligh was quite moderate in his employment tions, bibliography, index. US $34.95, cloth; of corporal punishment. On his third voyage, ISBN 0-521-38370-6. James Cook flogged thirty-seven percent of his crew and the sedulous George Vancouver With all of the books and films about Captain received the dubious title as leading flogger of William Bligh, the mutiny aboard HMS early Pacific exploration, whipping forty-five Bounty, and the subsequent voyages to track percent of his men. In his own assessment of down Fletcher Christian's mutineers and to the Bounty mutiny, Bligh blamed Tahitian convey breadfruit trees to the West Indies, promiscuity that infected his crew with lust one might wonder why Greg Dening would during five months of sedentary unemploy• add yet another lengthy study on these topics. ment at Matavai Bay. Bligh's own origins However, after only a short time with Mr. from the ranks made him a perpetual outsider Bligh s Bad Language, readers will recognize within the navy and possibly lowered the that this is a truly major historical work that respect that seamen normally accorded to transcends Bligh and the Bounty voyage to officers considered to be gentlemen. As purser confront much broader historical questions aboard Bounty, Bligh was blamed for bad involving analysis, interpretation, and rations, miserly behaviour, and other defi• research. For those acquainted with Dening's ciencies. His curses and petty harassments earlier published work, this elegant, provoca• exacerbated what was a none too happy tive, lucid, and challenging study marks a new situation. Eventually, a complex brew of apogee in the career of a gifted historian of causative elements provoked what was an ill- the Pacific world. Organized around three acts conceived mutiny. as in a theatrical drama, "The Ship," "The In Act Two, Dening moves away from Beach," and "The Island," Dening expands the Bounty to consider the reputations of upon each theme to neat a whole range of Captains Samuel Wallis of HMS Dolphin who subjects concerning the mutiny, European commanded the first European expedition to 102 The Northern Mariner visit Tahiti and James Cook who left an indel• examining the Bounty plays and more recently ible mark upon all subsequent explorers in• the films about the mutiny appear a little cluding Bligh. Wallis arrived at Tahiti in June anticlimactic when compared with the power• 1767, possibly assuming the role of the ful ideas expressed earlier. But this is most Tahitian god Oro, but misunderstandings or probably a matter of taste depending upon the miscommunications produced gun fire that interests of different readers. Dening is an killed many natives. On the third voyage, absolute master at constructing and decon• Cook was exhausted, sick, and often at odds structing the kind of historical problem pro• with his men by the time they reached duced by an event such as a mutiny. This Hawaii. Receiving Cook as the god Lono, at study will exert significant impact not only first the Hawaiians gave the British everything upon future research on the Pacific Ocean they wanted. Unfortunately, the unscheduled explorers and their relations with native return of the British ships that did not fit into societies, but on historians and historical Hawaiian chronology, precipitated violence interpretation in general. and led to Cook's murder. Although the evidence on these first native responses to Christon I. Archer Europeans is sparse — mostly perceived Calgary, Alberta through the cloudy lenses and distorted images of European accounts — Dening offers Francois et Anglais en Mediterranee de la intriguing explanations. Both sides performed Revolution francaise a I'independence de la their mutually misunderstood rituals — the Grece (1789-1830). Hies Journdes franco- English with their possession taking, flag britanniques d'histoire de la marine, Toulon, raising and sacraments; the natives with their 14-16 novembre, 1990; Vincennes: Service own ceremonies, sacrifices, and offerings. historique de la Marine, 1992. 330 pp., maps, Gradually, the Tahitians incorporated symbols tables. 130 FF, paper. from the British such as flags and banners, and later they took advantage of the Bounty Although wars between France and Great mutineers to gain the upper hand in their own Britain often began over conflicts in the Low political struggles. Countries or the colonies, major naval cam• Those Bounty mutineers apprehended at paigns took place in the Mediterranean. The Tahiti suffered the horrors of incarceration, British Admiralty needed to contain the shipwreck, and a second epic small boat French fleet at Toulon, while France sought to voyage following that of Bligh's men before use this force to counter British superiority in the survivors faced naval justice in London. the Atlantic. This book examines the Mediter• Fletcher Christian pursued a lead from a copy ranean as a theatre of operations for both of John Hawksworth's published Voyages navies at the end of the age of sail. The about Captain Philip Carteret's 1767 dis• timeframe 1789-1830 includes the long covery of uninhabited Pitcaim Island. Nine struggle between Britain and Revolution• mutineers, six native men, twelve women and ary/Napoleonic France, as well as the suc• a baby girl made it to Pitcairn and an ugly ceeding period of realignment which saw the future that consumed many of their lives in former enemies participate as naval allies in murderous struggles over the women and the War of Greek Independence. limited land. Perhaps at times, Dening waxes This collection of essays, ten written in a little too eloquent in his conclusions that French and eleven in English, is the proceed• lack the basis of adequate evidence. Occa• ings of a colloquium held at Toulon in 1990, sionally, his rich narrative and convincing which brought together prominent French and arguments become slightly introverted, per• anglophone naval historians. Although it sonalized, and precocious. The latter sections restricted participants to papers dealing with Book Reviews 103

a single theatre during a specific period, the Tunstall's posthumous account of the tactics book covers a wide range of themes and at the Battle of the Nile, presented by topics. Two papers examine the British occu• Nicholas Tracy, the editor of Tunstall's mass• pation of Toulon in 1793, while two address ive study, are notable exceptions. Further• the Egyptian Campaign of 1798. The French more, the book reveals little archival study of navy's efforts to rescue Bonaparte's army the Royal Navy by French scholars or atten• from Egypt, and the British counter-measures, tion to the French navy by anglophone histor• are the subject of two essays. Two authors ians. Nevertheless, for bilingual readers, this question historical assumptions regarding collection illustrates the direction of recent grand strategy in the Mediterranean. Three scholarship and provides both French and papers deal with developments after 1815, the British perspectives on the naval history of most interesting being Michele Battesti's the Mediterranean during a critical period. discussion of the Battle of Navarino (1827). Although the collection concentrates on the William S. Cormack British and French navies, it also includes an Kingston, Ontario analysis of American prizes taken by French privateers and an examination of the origins Emanuel Raymond Lewis. Seacoast Fortifi• of the US Navy's Mediterranean squadron. cations of the United States: An Introductory Although several papers deal with naval History. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, operations in the broadest sense, perhaps the 1970, 1979, 1993. xiii + 145 pp., photo• book's most prominent theme is the critical graphs, illustrations, maps, select bibliogra• importance of logistics which has too often phy, appendix, index. Cdn $21.95, US $15.95, been neglected in traditional naval history. paper; ISBN 1-55750-502-0. Canadian dis• Jean Meyer surveys the conflict between the tributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, rival logistical systems in the Mediterranean Ont. during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, stressing the fragility of the French This is an extraordinarily interesting book. It navy and the logistical difficulties facing the is also a very important one, as Brigadier British far from home ports. These points are General James L. Collins, the US Army's echoed in other papers, notably Roger Mor- Chief of Military History, points out in his riss' study on maintaining the British fleet and Foreword. He claims that Seacoast Fortifica• Christian Buchet's essay on the preparations tions "revived interest in a long-forgotten for the Egyptian expedition. The development element of military preparedness which had of wartime naval bases, both dockyard facil• been very near the core of our national def• ities and fleet anchorages, is the subject of ense philosophy throughout most of our his• three authors. The collection's focus on logis• tory [and] strongly influenced historical pres• tics also includes a discussion of the British ervation activities in this country." (p. xiii) hunt for timber in the Adriatic and an exten• That the book reached a large readership sive list of Mediterranean-built prizes taken certainly cannot be doubted. First published into the Royal Navy. by the Smithsonian Institution Press in 1970, The essays within this collection vary in this is its seventh printing. The navy's coastal the quality and significance of their scholar• defence role was well documented prior to its ship. Some represent valuable contributions to publication, but that of the army had been Anglo-French naval historiography. Others, "almost totally neglected in both historical and such as Anthony Sainsbury's paper on Duck• technical literature, despite the fact that the worth and the capture of Minorca, are merely fortifying of harbors in this country was anecdotal. There are disappointingly few carried out almost continuously for a century comparative studies: Meyer's piece and Brian and a half and was an important and at times 104 The Northern Mariner a central element in American military pol• the definitive text on the subject. Those icy." (p. ix) Lewis believes that "to the extent interested in the related history of Canadian that this nation has an enduring heritage of coastal defensive fortifications will find much military architecture, it is to be found along of value here as well with respect to philos• the coasts, in the vicinity of some of our most ophy, design, and armament. populous and important cities." (p. x) This book does not examine the foreign Brian Douglas Tennyson or defence policies that led to the construction Sydney, Nova Scotia of the coastal fortifications. Rather, it briefly surveys their history, emphasizing the evol• David F. Long. "Mad Jack": The Biography ution of their architecture and armament. Bas• of Captain John Percival, USN, 1779-1862. ically, it deals with the characteristics of what Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. xxvi Lewis describes as "the several generations of + 261 pp., maps, illustrations, bibliographical defensive works," with the interrelationships essay, index. US $55, cloth; ISBN 0-313- of fortification design, and the nature of 28567-5. weapon technology at various periods. The construction of coastal defence Already an old hand at describing the history fortifications in the United States began in of the US Navy in its first century of exist• 1794 and continued until the end of World ence with biographies of David Porter, War II. This parallels the situation in the William Bainbridge and James Biddle to his British colonies to the north which later credit, David F. Long, now retired from the formed the Dominion of Canada. Their under• University of New Hampshire after 45 years lying principle was the superiority of guns of service, has produced a worth-while study ashore over guns afloat, a principle that of a naval figure of lesser importance but one remained essentially unchallenged until World whose career, like those of his more note• War II, when the appearance of radically new worthy fellows, illustrates the world of the forms of weaponry such as nuclear explosives Old Navy and the men who directed it. and guided missiles rendered coastal fortifica• "Mad Jack" Percival (the sobriquet earned tions largely obsolete. in his younger days from his fierce displays The system of coastal fortifications was of temper) is most noted for three episodes in also based on the idea of occasional local his long naval career: his forcing the native defence based on the militia. A battery of a rulers of Hawaii in 1826 to rescind their few guns could be manned by the local popu• clergy-inspired prohibition of their women lace in the event of danger from the sea and boarding sailing vessels for the sexual pleas• could be left idle and unmanned except for ure of the ships' crew members; his twenty- purposes of maintenance until needed. It was eight-month around-the-world cruise as cap• also economical in the sense that, once con• tain of the Constitution (the first and only structed and equipped, it required practically cruise of this type made by "Old Ironsides"); no personnel in peacetime and few in war• and, while on this assignment in 1845, his time. Needless to say, the need to respond to abortive attempt to convince the Vietnamese the technological advances of the later nine• authorities to release a French priest into his teenth and twentieth centuries changed this custody, the first instance of American armed situation, as the enormous, elaborate and intervention in that country. In between these expensive networks of forts built to protect stirring adventures, Percival, like all officers the major ports, including those at Halifax, in the peacetime Navy, spent his time angling clearly demonstrated. with both naval and political figures for Seacoast Fortifications remains, almost a assignments and advancement in rank. quarter century after its original publication, Long's biography of Percival is a text- Book Reviews 105

book illustration of exhaustive research meth• Wideman gives a concise synopsis of odology combined with a thorough knowledge Union and Confederate strategies for prose• of the period under examination. It is fair to cuting the war in the western theatre, which say that this studiously researched and well emphasized control of the Mississippi River written biography is as important for the light and its tributaries. As the war progressed the it sheds on the Old Navy as it is for detailing story becomes the familiar one of a beleagu• the life and adventures of one of its more ered Confederacy struggling to slow the colourful officers. industrialized Union war machine. An excel• It is, however, flawed in one minor res• lent example of northern superiority was their pect. Long occasionally inserts into his text ability to produce a riverine navy which his own comments on the difficulty of ferret• included seven heavily armed, armoured ing out certain bits of genealogical or histori• gunboats of the Cairo's design. Though the cal information or on the work of other ironclads were vulnerable to concentrated authors with which he agrees or disagrees. gunfire, particularly plunging shot, the Con• While such asides are worth recording for the federacy's lack of a comparable river fleet edification of the serious student of Percival doomed besieged southern strongholds to or the nineteenth-century Navy, they should evacuation or surrender. As the weight of the appear in the endnotes, not in the text where Union juggernaut bore down, the southern they serve only to distract the reader and high command explored every defensive alter• interrupt the flow of the narrative. native, including underwater and subterranean Still, "Mad Jack" represents a first-rate torpedoes. piece of scholarship and a valuable addition to Enter McDaniel, a native Virginian and our knowledge of the Old Navy. It will be a millwright, who joined the Confederate with• worthy addition to any university or maritime drawal through Kentucky and Tennessee in library. early 1862. Wideman gives a thorough account of McDaniel's experiments with James M. Morris torpedoes and his exchange of ideas with Newport News, Virginia other inventors including Matthew F. Maury and Gabriel J. Raines. In December 1862, John C. Wideman. The Sinking of the USS while supervising a torpedo crew operating Cairo. Jackson: University Press of Missis• along the Yazoo River in Mississippi in sippi, 1993. xii + 139 pp., photographs, support of the defence of Vicksburg, Mc• figures, appendices, notes, bibliography, Daniel sank the Cairo. This was the first index. US $20, cloth; ISBN 0-87805-617-3. instance of a warship destroyed by what is now known as an undersea contact mine. The loss of the USS Cairo has been discussed Most wartime accounts concluded that the in numerous books and periodicals related to torpedo that sank the Cairo had been deton• Civil War naval history, notably in Edwin ated electrically by galvanic batteries. Wide- Bearss' seminal work, Hardluck Ironclad: The man, however, provides a detailed explanation Sinking and Salvage of the Cairo, and in of the construction and operation of McDan- Infernal Machines: The Story of Confederate iel's torpedoes, which were self-detonating. Submarine and Mine Warfare by Milton F. The destruction of the Cairo was not the Perry. To my surprise and delight I dis• end of Zere McDaniel's wartime career. covered that the title of John Wideman's book While attempting a repeat of his success on is misleading. The Cairo is really a footnote, the Yazoo, McDaniel managed to keep one albeit a major one, to the career of his real step ahead of the Union envelopment of the subject, Zere McDaniel, a special operations Mississippi valley. Although the record of his officer in the Confederate secret service. movements is sketchy, Wideman makes the 106 The Northern Mariner

best of the material that is available, even as Caribbean. In each instance American forces he has the reader leapfrogging across the overwhelmed the Spaniards with their fire• South with a severe case of "torpedoeus power, with scarcely any loss to themselves. interruptus." Wideman readily acknowledges, Do such one-sided victories qualify as "great" however, that these torpedomen produced naval battles? Apparently the editor thinks so. more detailed accounts of their successes than Honan next inserts a well-written account their failures. of his own, pertaining to the sneak attack in Wideman has written a compact volume 1904 by eleven Japanese torpedo boats upon containing a great deal of information on a the Russian Asiatic Squadron at Port Arthur. very esoteric subject. One of the major Three Russian warships were sunk as a result. strengths of the book lies in the straightfor• But this, too, was hardly a "great" battle. ward explanations and illustrations of the One engagement that does fit the title of construction of torpedoes and their detonating the book concerns the Battle of Tsushima devices. Much of this material survives thanks Straits in May 1903. In this well-known to McDaniel's repeated — and unsuccessful — battle, thirty-eight Russian vessels were sunk, efforts to receive a lucrative compensation captured, or put out of action with little loss from the Confederate government for the to the Japanese. Honan allows us to witness destruction of the Cairo. An appendix of the the battle through the account of a Russian original documents relating to the Cairo officer who was present. incident, a complete bibliography, user-friend• As we come to World War I another ly index and ample notes make this work a journalistic account sketchily describes the valuable addition to the libraries of naval and exploits of the men aboard the German com• mine warfare scholars. merce raider Emden. It is a great story, but from a strategic point of view Emden's activ• W. Wilson West, Jr. ities had little bearing on the outcome of the Washington, DC war. Honan also rums to more journalists to cover the Battle of Jutland. It would have William H. Honan (comp. & ed.). Great been far more preferable had an expert written Naval Battles of the Twentieth Century. Lon• the complete story. A chart of the battle is don: Robson Books, 1993. xviii + 361 pp., sorely missed, and in fact there are no charts photographs, map. £18.95, cloth; ISBN 0- of any of the battles described here. There is 86051-862-0. one world map in the book. This merely lists the locations of the naval actions mentioned. The blurb on the dust jacket of this book calls The World War I period ends with accounts it "the finest anthology of modern naval of a couple of audacious raids. But raids writing ever published." If only this were hardly qualify as battles. true! Students of maritime and naval history As we turn to World War II, there is expecting a scholarly treatment of the subject broad but uneven coverage. Honan provides will be sorely disappointed. The selections accounts of the attack on the French ships in that William H. Honan has compiled here Oran, German submarine action, the Bismarck clearly reflect his background as a reporter. episode and, of course, Pearl Harbor as por• Some of the selections are even taken from trayed by historian S.E. Morison. Sadly, newspapers, and the whole work is so uneven Honan has chosen the condensed version in scope that it has the appearance of being instead of the broader version that Morison collected hurriedly. wrote in his fifteen-volume History of United The anthology begins with the Spanish- States Naval Operations in World War 11. For American War, with accounts on the Battles the Battle of the Coral Sea, where the oppos• of Manila Bay and of Santiago de Cuba in the ing forces never saw each other except from Book Reviews 107 the air, Honan turns once again to a descrip• military adventures. The navy was also a tion provided by a journalist; more appropri• victim of the fact that the people who would ately, a pilot discusses Midway, while Hanson seem to have been their natural allies, the Baldwin, truly an expert, recounts the Battle colonialists, often could not arrange an ac• of Leyte Gulf, which was perhaps the greatest commodation of views with the sailors. This battle of modern times. was compounded by the Jeune Ecole. Like the In more recent periods the editor includes reformers in England, they seemed unaware a reporter's story of US Navy air action over that their obsession with ship type provided Vietnam, the search for missing pilots, and anti-naval ammunition for the enemies of fleet the editor's own story as a reporter concern• development. But unlike the Royal Navy, the ing the close encounters of the US and Rus• French Navy had no Admiral Fisher to knock sian Fleets in the Mediterranean. There is also the heads of these feckless combatants togeth• a discussion of the undersea tracking of each er. The fact is, that under the whole of this other by American and Russian nuclear sub• interesting account of shifts and turns of naval marines. How can any of these events qualify fortunes, the French Navy was simply slow to as naval battles? The final piece in the book develop settled responses to the new age. This relates the sinking of HMS Sheffield by an was true of education, the relationship of Argentinean Exocet missile. engineers and executive officers, and strategy. All the accounts in the volume are stories The problem with strategy was that the of undoubted courage, daring, and heroism, French arrived at some conception of warship but only a few could be called "great" naval type in the machine age at about 1906, ten battles. The book requires a more apt title, years behind the British. Naval debates as to and a serious student of naval history must whether the enemy was Italian, British or look elsewhere. German, both in the Fleet and in the Chamber of Deputies, were delayed and not helpful. At Moreton J. Ensor the time when the British were backing off Brewster, Massachusetts development by concluding an agreement with Japan, was precisely the moment when anglo- Ray Walser. France's Search for a Battle phobia was most rampant in Paris. The pecu• Fleet: Naval Policy and Naval Power, 1898- liar fixation with the English held the French 1914. New York: Garland Press, 1992. viii + back from rational appreciation of their real 310 pp., tables, sources, index. US $72, cloth; naval predicament. Triumph may have visited ISBN 0-8153-0667-9. the political-planning arena between 1910 and 1914 as the author suggests, but the sanity This book should be called Hidden Gold, came at too low a level to make cooperation because it is so full of interesting and helpful with allies effective. Up to 1914 the French information that is effectively concealed by an could not make up their minds who their real index that is of no appreciable use. This is a sea enemies were, and they were unwilling to pity, because Walser has amassed a wealth of pay for a blanket policy. It is a sad story. information about the relationship of political However, Walser shows how the political manoeuvring and naval posturing in France. If shifts and traditions were unable to control or the Franco-Prussian war had a traumatic effect mould naval attitudes and traditions. This on the army, it had an even greater effect on indicate story is well told here, and will not the less powerful and nationally less highly need to be done again, at this level, for many regarded navy. Arguments that subsequently years. developed about ship type and production ar• rangements were fated to succumb to the Donald M. Schurman general French desire not to pay heavily for Kingston, Ontario 108 The Northern Mariner

Siegfried Breyer. Soviet Warship Develop• well, they began to build gunboats for riverine ment, Volume 1: 1917-1937. London: Conway operations in the Russian Far East. This Maritime Press, 1992. 288 pp., photographs, gunboat programme was a harbinger of things figures, tables, appendix, references. £35, to come because a feature of the first Soviet cloth; ISBN 0-85177-604-3. naval construction plan (1926-1931) was the production of shallow draft, armoured cutters What can one say? Soviet Warship Develop• equipped with tank turrets that could be used ment gives fresh meaning to the expression, on the great Russian rivers to support the labour of love. Breyer toiled for almost thirty flanks of the Red Army. Parenthetically, years researching, writing and gathering readers may wish to consult Robert Herrick's illustrations for this, the first in a projected Soviet Naval Theory and Policy: Gorshkov 's multi-volume chronology that will trace the Inheritance (Naval Institute Press, 1989) to evolution of Soviet naval policy in a compre• gain a fuller appreciation of the war in which hensive fashion. The focus of this volume is the Red Army subordinated naval operations on the period from the 1890s to the 1930s at prior to the 1960s. Breyer's encyclopedic which time the broad outlines of the Soviet, analysis demonstrates how this subordinate post-revolutionary, navy had become clearly role was translated into boiler plate and rivets. visible. The central theme, throughout, is The modernization of shipbuilding that technology; it is a theme buttressed and took place after the Russo-Japanese War was enlarged by a remarkable array of elevations, still underway in 1914 when the navy was photographs, diagrams and tables. plunged into the maelstrom of war, revol• At the heart of this story is an intriguing ution, and civil strife. What is amazing, as paradox. On the one hand, Russian and Soviet Breyer chronicles, is how early Soviet naval industrial capacity was almost always inad• planners were able to begin rebuilding a con• equate to the task at hand. Throughout the struction industry paralyzed by bureaucratic period Soviet shipbuilders were obliged to incompetence, vandalism, and lack of techni• order power plants from Germany and Great cal expertise. Making virtue out of necessity, Britain and many Soviet ships were built the planners embraced a jeune ecole philos• abroad or derived from foreign designs. On ophy. They had been deeply impressed by the other hand, the Russians and the Soviets British motor torpedo boat operations against achieved an impressive number of firsts in the Russian naval forces at Kronstadt in the field of warship development. The General summer of 1919 and sought to develop their Admiral in the 1870s was reportedly the own class of MTBs. In fact, three hundred G- world's first armoured cruiser. The four- class MTB's were built but their duralu- funnelled destroyer Novik, launched in 1911, minium hulls (designed to minimize weight) was the fastest ship of its class in the world corroded so badly during service in the salty with an endurance speed of 36.82 knots. And Black Sea that they had to be overhauled as the Soviets are credited with producing the often as once a week! first triple-tube torpedo mountings in the While there were some capital ships like world in the 1930s. the Gangut-ciass battleships (constructed The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) between 1928 and 1938 and identified by the resulted in the wholesale destruction of much rakish angle of their fore funnel top) the of the czar's navy. In the aftermath of the Soviet navy was primarily a destroyer, patrol war, the Russians devoted a great deal of time boat and submarine navy. The earliest Soviet and energy to improving the armour protec• submarines appeared in the mid-1920s and tion on their warships and to increasing the reproduced many features of contemporary number of destroyers — of which the Novik Italian designs. The submarine programme, was one — in their fleets. Significantly, as like so many others, was hamstrung by the Book Reviews 109 inadequacy of Soviet industrial capacity. institute a programme of reforms designed to Geography also played a part and the 32- bridge the gap between the relatively primi• metre, M-l class submarines of the 1930s tive equipment of the age of sail and the were built in Sverdlovsk, transported by rail growing sophistication of the products of the to the Black Sea for trials, and then sent, via industrial revolution. In the face of consider• the Trans Siberian Railway, to Vladivostok. able professional and social prejudice he This is a first class work. Although sought to raise the status of the engineer. (strangely) it lacks an index, it is organized in Through training he set out to develop a a sufficiently clear and systematic fashion that specialist officer branch to ensure that the one can follow the evolution of Russian and efficiency of the fleet would not be Soviet ship types from their inception to their jeopardized by the faulty maintenance of the final deposition. In fact, an interesting feature innovatory machinery. He anticipated what a of Soviet Warship Development is the thumb• German Panzer General was to preach fifty nail histories of vessels. These enable the years on, namely that the engine was as much reader to track the often chequered history of a weapon as a gun. craft like the destroyer Kapitan Saken which Admiral Le Bailly traces the early suc• was captured by the Germans in May 1918, cesses of Fisher and the subsequent abandon• seized by British interventionist forces later ment of his schemes in the financial strin• the same year, transferred to the French, gency following World War I. The decisions transferred again to the White Russian forces, reached in the 1920s had consequences that and eventually interned in Bizerta where it affected the efficiency of the Navy into the appears to have languished for a decade early years of World War II. He recounts how before being broken up in the 1930s. wartime operational experience shook the Ad• miralty out of its complacency and how the James A. Boutilier Royal Navy, more accustomed to operating in Victoria, British Columbia the confines of the North Sea and the Western Approaches, learned many practical lessons Louis Le Bailly. From Fisher to the Falk- from their American counterparts familiar lands. London: Marine Management (Hold• with the vastness of the Pacific. ings) Ltd. for The Institute of Marine Engin• By the 1950s the Royal Navy had eers, 1991 [76, Mark Lane, London EC3R become so hi-tech that the Admiralty set up a 7JN, England; orders must be accompanied by Royal Naval Engineering College at Manadon, payment; postage is extra], xii + 227 pp., near Plymouth. At some stage in their careers illustrations, appendix, index. £18.73, cloth; all officers of the seaman branch, whatever ISBN 0-907206-40-9. their speciality, would undergo training at the college with the object of ensuring that ships The sailing navy and a nuclear powered task at sea are led by teams of officers whose force have an important attribute in common skills are complementary. The author provides that was lost for several decades following the a comprehensive picture of the development development of the dreadnought: mobility. In of the engineering side of the service, the this sequel to Man Around the Engine success of whose evolution was tested to the (reviewed in The Northern Mariner III, no. 2, full in the recent Falklands campaign. p. 98), we learn of the steps taken to restore It is a cautionary tale for politicians bent mobility to the Royal Navy's conventional on running the armed forces on the cheap, but fleet. for the historian of the future writing about In 1883 "Jackie Fisher" held the first of the Royal Navy in the twentieth century it a series of Staff appointments ashore. In will prove an invaluable guide and source of various capacities he was in a position to reference. As a sea-going Engineering officer 110 The Northern Mariner and later in Staff positions the author had book's appeal is not confined to communica• personal experience of the technological and tion specialists, naval strategists and tacti• management changes taking place and at some cians; in style and scope it will hold the time worked for or with many of the person• attention of the general reader. alities who achieved so much. It is sad to Much of the narrative is directly pertinent report history is repeating itself. On 1 March, to the RCN, given the close relationship to the 1993 The Times (of London) published a RN that existed until recent decades. Indeed, letter from Admiral Le Bailly regretting that an Appendix contains the names of some ten the Royal Naval Engineering College at RCN officers who took the Signal Long Plymouth was to be abolished and the faculty Course at the RN Signal School before corre• merged with the Royal Military College of sponding training was instituted at HMCS St. Science at Shrivenham, another centre of Hyacinthe (Québec) in 1944. A section of the excellence but with little relevance to the book dealing with Commonwealth training needs of the Royal Navy. facilities provides a summary of the develop• ment of communications in the Canadian Norman Hurst naval service from 1939 through several Coulsdon, Surrey restructuring exercises to the adoption of the Warfare Officer principle. Barrie Kent. Signal! A History of Signalling From the earliest forms of visual sig• in the Royal Navy. Clanfield, Hampshire: nalling, Kent describes progressive develop• Hyden House, 1993. xi + 371 pp., figures, ments in morse and semaphore, wireless tele• maps, photographs, appendices, bibliography, graphy and direction-finding, underwater sig• index. £19, cloth; ISBN 1-85623-006-6. nalling, RDF (radar), HF/DF (Huff-Duff), codes and code-breaking, and the secure high• It was interesting to learn that the initial speed data systems that ultimately became an wording of Lord Nelson's famous flag signal element of the new Warfare Branch, merging before the Battle of Trafalgar was amended to operations and weapon engineering. Concomi• conform to the limited vocabulary of the tantly, the book outlines the organizational Admiralty code book employed at the time; and training adjustments necessitated by curious, too, that when Marconi demonstrated technological change. Looking ahead, one can his wireless communication equipment in envisage the establishment of a fully auto• Royal Navy ships, a serving RN officer, mated and integrated communications system. working independently, had already succeeded Captain Kent recognizes that the modem in transmitting morse signals over a distance trend towards automated systems is not with• of three miles from a training ship to a rec• out concern for the human element in sig• eiving set in Admiralty House, Plymouth. nalling. This reviewer recalls the late Captain Gems of information such as these permeate Eric Brand saying that in a dire emergency this history of signalling in the Royal Navy. we might be dependent on "a boy scout on a Writing Signal! entailed a prodigious bicycle" for vital communication. It may be amount of research, the assistance of many providential that naval and ex-naval personnel individuals and organizations, and the per• have been encouraged to practise and hone spective of a highly experienced, literate and traditional skills in radio, including morse, witty specialist. Barrie Kent, who was Captain through The Royal Naval Amateur Radio of the RN Signal School (HMS Mercury) Society, whose world-wide membership circa 1970, was an inspired choice to under• continues to grow. take the task. A foreword by Admiral of the The arrangement of the book is unusual, Fleet Sir Edward Ashmore establishes the the narrative proceeding in historical sequence setting and significance of the account. The through seventeen chapters followed by a Book Reviews 111

"signal anthology" of six chapters and a final specially men not involved in the mutiny's chapter on the Colours of the Fleet. Another causality which is the great search of those at distinctive feature is the use of marginal the top. This becomes doubly true if they can annotations whereby the author, at the risk of find a cause divorced from themselves or their diverting the reader's attention, provides a high-placed colleagues. fund of supplementary or elucidative informa• The causality of mutiny is generally tion that might go unnoticed if it were in the somewhat difficult to ascertain because every• form of footnotes. Throughout the text, the one involved, even in the remotest fashion author intersperses descriptions of the tactical seeks to exculpate themselves and, if possible, use and performance of signalling methods, to do so by inculpating others. In Invergord• for example at the Battle of Jutland and in the on, the cause was a proposed cut in the sail• campaigns of World War II. The appendices ors' wages. This was the second time wages will be of interest particularly to signal had caused mutiny in the Royal Navy, the officers and communicators familiar with the first time being the mutinies at Spithead and RN Signal School. the Nore in 1798. Both times make clear the Signal! appears at a time when, with reluctance of British sailors to have politicians evolving changes in training requirements, the tamper with their wages. The British custom Signal School (HMS Mercury), situated since of overpaying senior officers and underpaying 1941 at Leydene, near Peterfield in Hamp• mere sailors gave great force to the mutiny shire, has moved to HMS Collingwood at factor in such circumstances. Fareham. The book, printed in clearly read• Coles sets out much of these circum• able type with few typescript errors and stances. He is clearly a Tomkinson man and profusely illustrated, is a handsome addition gives much good reason for being such. There to the nautical bookshelf. can be little doubt that Admiral Tomkinson was badly or unfairly dealt with by the Admi• George Schuthe ralty. Unfortunately there exists, particularly Ottawa, Ontario in Britain, a curious impression that the Admiralty is a group of men above the ordi• Alan Coles. Invergordon Scapegoat: The nary human passions and quite incapable of Betrayal of Admiral Tomkinson. Farr Thrupp, unfair conduct. This, of course, is simply Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton, 1993. x + 193 nonsense. The conduct of the Sea Lords in pp., photographs, notes, bibliography, index. Tomkinson's case was deplorable and clearly £14.99, cloth; ISBN 0-7509-0233-7. unfair. Yet mutiny always generates panic at all levels: the mutineer is terrified of retribu• The title of this book is misleading. It is tion, while the Sea Lords are equally terrified given as "Invergordon Scapegoat" which that they will be found incapable of running naturally evokes overtones of the great mutiny a navy or of preventing a mutiny. Invergordon of the Royal Navy at Invergordon, Scotland in was no exception to this rule. 1931. In reality the book is a biography of One of the more curious aspects of Inver• Admiral Wilfred Tomkinson. Of nineteen gordon is the fact that there was never any chapters, only four deal with Invergordon or inquiry into what happened. Poor Tomkinson with mutiny and they only with Invergordon was justifiably bitter about this aspect of related to Admiral Tomkinson. things. The Sea Lords kept passing judgement Tomkinson is a most engaging figure. His on events and individuals but without the naval career was most promising until Inver• benefit of knowledge arising from any gordon intervenes to ruin it. People forget just inquiry. Yet how could they know what had how much a mutiny in a navy can ruin the happened? Indeed, mutiny in Britain as else• career of men not really responsible and where is something which naval authorities 112 The Northern Mariner

always seek to conceal from the public, and cadets traces their lives from their upbringing consequently a list of the known mutinies in during the Weimar Republic through their the Royal Navy reflects little credit on that naval training, wartime experiences, and service. postwar careers. Special emphasis is placed on In Canada in 1949, when our three mutin• their psychological outlook. The book sheds ies became known, the government of the day light on the German naval officer corps as an immediately ordered a full inquiry, which institution and fills a void in naval subsequently reported at length. I have no historiography. special knowledge about Invergordon but I Rust chose Crew 34 because of its age say unhesitatingly that the British were fools and size. Previous crews were too small to be not to do the same. Had they done so there representative while following crews were too would not have been the tergiversations large to survey easily. Most members of Crew lasting to this day and showing the Sea Lords 34 served during the war in the ranks between not only to be a pack of fools but also a pack Lieutenant and Commander, being junior of mean-spirited fools. When they were faced enough to serve at sea but senior enough to with mutiny, the Sea Lords, terrified that the achieve command. Rust relied upon personal mutiny might be laid at their door, took every interviews, questionnaires, crew newsletters, means, fair and unfair, to prevent this and to and archival documents but official personnel ensure that blame was attached elsewhere. In records remain closed. The confidentiality of the absence of an inquiry, I remain convinced his sources has been protected by the use of a that they simply did not know what happened code. This has perhaps ensured more honest but acted blindly, perhaps a bit hysterically responses but prevents the reader from getting and certainly not very honestly. much of a feel for the personalities of individ• One criticism levelled at Tomkinson was ual officers. his failure to act energetically at the outset. The family background of Crew 34 was Yet at the beginning of any mutiny, the primarily upper middle class, reflecting the mutineers have a serious feeling of hurt and fact the Reichsmarine considered lower they are close to hysteria; in such conditions middle class applicants undesirable yet was energetic action could inflame the mutineers unable to attract members of the nobility. to regrettable action. I stand behind Tomkin• Most of the crew came from North Germany son on this score. What did "Their Lordships" and consequently Protestants greatly outnum• know to allow them to make this criticism? A bered Catholics. The political views of their good deal less than Tomkinson himself. parents were overwhelmingly deutsch-nation- The book is interesting and well written. al, that is, the conservative, monarchist, It is a good depiction of the Royal Navy in authoritarian, and anti-democratic beliefs the twenties. expressed by the German National People's Party. Rust's survey revealed "amazing una• L.C. Audette nimity" on this score. If the respondents can Ottawa, Ontario be trusted, only one father joined the Nazi party early on. Eric C. Rust. Naval Officers Under Hitler: The most controversial conclusions regard The Story of Crew 34. Westport, CT: Praeger, the political sympathies of the crew, and the 1991. xii + 229 pp., tables, photographs, Kriegsmarine's relationship to Hitler and the notes, bibliography, index. US $47.95, cloth; Nazi party. Rust argues that the naval officer ISBN 0-275-93709-7. corps was insulated from political influences and remained steadfastly apolitical. The This collective biography of the 318 men who Navy's disastrous political intervention joined the Reichsmarine in 1934 as officer between 1917-20 had created an ethic of strict Book Reviews 113 obedience to civilian authority. Though Hit• Hugh I. Power, Jr. Battleship Texas. College ler's rearmament and foreign policy triumphs Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993. received widespread support from the crew, xx + 141 pp., photographs, figures, glossary, only a handful of the men, perhaps as few as appendices, suggested further reading, index. ten, could be described as hard-core Nazis. In US $29.50, cloth; ISBN 0-89096-516-1. many instances, crew members resisted intru• sions from the Nazi party during the war and The Texas is unique among twentieth-century were supported by their superiors in these battleships simply because she is the only efforts, notwithstanding Dönitz's collusion first-generation dreadnought which has been with Hitler. preserved. She saw extensive service in World Crew 34 compiled an impressive record Wars I and II, and has the distinction of being of wartime service. Thirty-nine members the only American battleship to fire upon received the coveted Knight's Cross. The ace Vichy French, German and Japanese shore in• was Erich Topp who stood fourth among stallations during the latter conflict. In 1948, German submarine commanders in terms of the state of Texas purchased her from the US tonnage sunk and was the most highly decor• Navy in order to preserve her as a state mem• ated member of the crew, as well as the only orial and museum, and she is now berthed at one to attain the rank of captain during the San Jacinto State park. The reader should note war. In contrast, Heinz Eck was the only that Power's contribution to this volume con• submarine commander to be executed by the sists largely of the many photographs pres• Allies for war crimes, the machine gunning of ented in the second part of this work. The survivors. Slightly over 40 per cent of the Introduction, which is really a brief historical crew died during the war; three-fifths of them narrative, was written by John Reilly. were submarine officers. Thirty-eight crew The book is divided into two sections of members ended the war in captivity, mostly in unequal lengths. The first is a narrative his• camps in the United States and Canada. Two tory of her career and her place in the history of the latter group later settled in Canada. of battleship development. The second is best After the turmoil of the immediate described as a personalized guided tour of the postwar years most of Crew 34 had taken up ship as she appears today. Readers who are rewarding civilian careers when the Bundes- unfamiliar with naval terminology and history marine was created in 1955. One-third opted will certainly appreciate the glossary which to return to the Navy. The imprisonment of Power has provided. The first appendix gives Dönitz and Raeder steeled the will of many, us a detailed summary of the ship's construc• especially former submariners, not to serve tion and armament data, for both her original with the western allies. Curiously, many of configuration and that of 1945. The second those who rejoined later complained that lists her captains and their periods of service. promotion depended upon membership in the The introductory text is well-illustrated proper political party. with many photographs and a few illustra• Naval Officers Under Hitler makes a tions. The latter include her starboard profile, significant contribution to our understanding a view of her main deck, as well as the two of the beliefs, motivations, and experiences of full-length lower decks. A good feature of the German naval officer corps, and is a these two-page drawings is that no details are valuable addition to the naval library. lost over the book's spine. The major draw• back of all the illustrations in this book is that the scale is never indicated. The few smaller Robert C. Fisher ones which accompany the introduction also Ottawa, Ontario appear to be overly simplified. Nonetheless, Reilly has provided a very useful summary of 114 The Northern Mariner

the career of this historic warship and its There are five major chapters — "Design place in the evolution of this warship type. Genesis," "Physical Characteristics," "Protec• The larger second section consists of tive Systems," and "Radio and Radar." These detailed studies of fifty selected areas of the chapters are further divided into subchapters. ship itself. Each is highlighted by a detailed For example, Chapter 2, "Physical Charac• photograph taken by Power; all are accom• teristics," has within it subchapters on "Hull," panied by a brief note on the use and history "Propulsion," "Crew," "Provisions," and of each piece of equipment or installation. Six "Sanitation." Somewhat confusingly, footnotes of these photographs are further detailed by a appear at the end of each subchapter, rather smaller keyed drawing which identify the than at the end of the chapter or at the end of main components shown in the photographs. the book. Photographs, all from US Navy Power does not seem to have missed anything archives, appear on virtually every page. The of importance, and his comments indicate that close integration of text and photographs he is well-versed on the ship's equipment and helps bring the reader in tune with the subject history. Readers might be surprised to learn of the text. that the Texas was the first American battle- The history of the carriers' design and wagon to be equipped with radar. constant improvements thereto is fully set All in all, this is a good guide to this forth. The emphasis is on the technical sys• ship. One can only hope that other preserved tems of the ships, and less so on the service men-of-war throughout the world will receive histories of the Lexington and Saratoga. similar treatment. It should appeal to people While the Lexington was sunk in 1942 at the who have toured this ship, those who want to, Battle of the Coral Sea, the Saratoga survived as well as model-builders and ship lovers. the war only to be sunk in Atomic Bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. Further, both ships were Peter K.H. Mispelkamp commissioned in 1927, and therefore had a Pointe Claire, Quebec long pre-war service career. It might have been advantageous for the general reader's Robert C. Stern. The Lexington Class Car• benefit to have included fuller accounts of the riers. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, respective ships' service careers. 1993. 160 pp., photographs, figures, refer• There are no appendices but supplemental ences, index. Cdn $47.95, US $34.95, cloth; sections on paint schemes and air groups are ISBN 1-55750-503-9. included after the end of the text. There are no drawings of the camouflage schemes ap• In contemporary warship design, the "weapons plied to these carriers, but a number of photo• system" concept is key; i.e., warships are graphs illustrate the camouflage on the ships. designed as a collection of subsystems, that, The aid this section presents to the modeller working in concert, permit a warship to attack or marine artist is therefore limited. The air a given target at a certain time and place. The groups section is a brief description of the air• concept is not new, and the Lexington-class craft and squadron organization of the car• carriers of the US Navy from the 1920s to the riers. This is far too brief, as aircraft are the 1940s are early examples of the "weapons raison d'etre of an aircraft carrier. There are system" concept at work. no descriptions of the aircraft used, nor the In a lavishly-illustrated book, The Lex• colour schemes applied. The US Navy squad• ington Class Carriers, Robert C. Stern ana• rons of the pre-war era had some very colour• lyzes two early US Navy aircraft carriers, the ful and attractive markings applied, and the Lexington and the Saratoga, from a weapons book would have been better with more infor• system perspective. Stern details these two mation about the aircraft and their markings. carriers in terms of the ships' subsystems. In fairness, however, the book might have Book Reviews 115

expanded beyond manageable limits had more cruisers which would become known as radar. aircraft information been included. Canadian radar officers were involved in In reading this book, one is reminded of most of the British big ship operations and the schoolgirl's comment: "this is a very engagements of the war. Mack Lynch was in interesting book on pelicans; it tells me more the second class, and he deftly tells of his than I really want to know." The book is naval training and how he came to realize his almost an ex post facto technical manual of hopes of joining a fighting cruiser. This is a the Lexington-class carriers, and has no unify• most engaging story told with an economy of ing narrative. It would easily seem disjointed words. Lynch adroitly and vividly sketches in to a casual reader, and not very useful to the everyday life in a cruiser at war as he and his naval aircraft enthusiast. Given the mass of shipmates experienced it. Apparently invar• technical detail contained within, Robert C. iably addressed as "Canada" by his Captain Stem's The Lexington Class Carriers is a and fellow officers, he had a special status as book for the serious student of US Navy ships the expert in charge of the systems which or aircraft carriers. It is not recommended for greatly enhanced his ship's fighting capabili• those without a deep interest in these subjects. ties and ability to survive. Interesting details are given about how knowledge of the oper• Robert L. Snoop ational capabilities - and limitations — of Colorado Springs, Colorado radar were being expanded by radar officers like Lynch. He was an astute observer and Mack Lynch. Orion - Mighty Warrior. covers a wide spectrum including experiences Toronto: Lugus Books, 1992. iii + 313 pp., at sea and ashore, his concern for his subordi• drawings, figures, maps, photographs. $18.95, nates, his relationships with other officers, and paper; ISBN 0-921633-03-3. his technical problems. While there is a sense of an overall sequence of dates and key events The author of this marvellous book was a this is really a series of anecdotes and im• young Canadian radar officer in British pressions. The author is particularly good at cruisers during the war. This is the tautly-told conveying atmosphere. His technical descrip• story of his time in his first ship, HMS Orion. tions are succinct and clear. In reading the Mack Lynch's aim was to tell what it was narrative your reviewer was reminded of C.S. like to be transformed in a matter of months Forester's juxtaposition of action and back• from an engineering student at Queen's Uni• ground detail. It was interesting to read that versity to responsibility for the radar systems Lynch indeed knew Forester well and collab• in a major warship in the heavy Mediterra• orated with him after the war. nean fighting of 1942-43. By recounting his Mack Lynch was twenty-four when he own experiences Lynch hoped to draw atten• joined his first ship. He went on to have a tion to the more than 123 Canadians who distinguished technical career in the post-war served as the Radar Officers of the major Navy. In retirement in Ottawa he was a driv• ships of the Royal Navy. ing force behind the creation of the Salty Dips Theirs is a remarkable story. At the series. It is obvious from this book that he beginning of the war the RN, faced with a learned a lot during his first and eventful severe shortage of technical officers, asked appointment at sea, and enjoyed almost every Canada for the loan of engineering physicists. one of his experiences. While Orion partici• The RCN recruited graduating students into pated in many operations she was, as Lynch the RCNVR who arrived in England just in tells us, a "lucky ship," and this is on the time to constitute the entire first class of whole a sunny story of adventures which officers appointed to look after the highly mercifully did not include the horrors endured secret device being fitted in capital ships and by some others. 116 The Northern Mariner

This engrossing book is not only a "good MacKintosh was selected as a candidate for a read" but a highly rewarding one. It must rank commission — a CW candidate — and was sent among the best descriptions by a Canadian of on course to HMS King Alfred. At the end of what it was like to serve at sea during the it, with a new Gieve's uniform and a single war. Mack Lynch died in July 1993. It is a wavy stripe, he became a boarding officer pity that he did not enjoy the fruits of the with the Naval Control Service. The eight labours which went into this book. chapters of this part reflect little but the boredom and frustration of a young officer Jan Drent committed to shore duties on his first appoint• Victoria, British Columbia ment. The reader along with the author is relieved when MacKintosh began his destroy• J.W. (Dick) MacKintosh. The Hunts and the er-familiarization courses in January, 1942. Hunted. Durham: Pentland Press, 1992. xviii He spent the next two and one-half years + 230 pp. £10.50, paper; ISBN 1-872795-67- in Hunt class destroyers. He was present at 6. the Dieppe raid in July 1942. His ship was sunk that December and, in another ship, he Dick MacKintosh joined the Royal Navy went to the Mediterranean to participate in (Hostilities Only) on 1 December, 1939, Malta convoys, the invasion of Sicily, the having just completed his studies in law. Six crossing of the Straits of Messina and the years and one month later he left the navy as landings at Salerno and Anzio. In late summer a temporary lieutenant, RNVR, in a badly 1943 he was appointed Transport Officer and fitting civvy suit with a bounty of £111 and a Executive Officer of a repair base for small letter of thanks from the Admiralty in his vessels at Portville in French North Africa pocket to begin the practice of law. This book where he served a year before being sent is his account of the lifetime of experience home for eventual demobilization. accumulated in those six years. All this should have provided the stuff of The book's fifty-eight short chapters are a good story, but it has not. Part of the prob• best dealt with as three parts: first, the author lem is that MacKintosh has chosen to write in as convoy signalman, then as a sub-lieutenant the third person, giving himself the name of with the Naval Control Service and finally his Kenneth Dow. If the narrator, then, is a experience in the Hunts in the Channel, the fictional character, the reader must assume North Sea and the Mediterranean. that the names of all but the most public The best of the three parts is the first, for personalities have been disguised. The names here the author gives something of a feel for of the five Hunt class destroyers in which he the heavy responsibilities thrust upon these served have clearly been disguised, for only young signalmen who had had very little one of these, HMS Ramsey, is to be found in training and for the most part no sea-going Colledge's Ships of the Royal Navy (New experience. It was upon their sharp eyes that York, 1969), and that one could not possibly the convoy commodores depended to maintain be the Ramsey of these memoirs. A consulta• communications with the ships of the convoy. tion of Lloyd's Register of Shipping would It was an uncertain life: outward bound in one probably reveal that the merchant vessels to ship, homeward in another. Accommodations which MacKintosh refers have also been varied from first-class cabins in the great given fictitious names. Similarly, mystery cargo liners to the forecastle in the small surrounds two place names, Invercaim "in tramps, and the tempers and temperaments of western Scotland" and Portville "in French commodores and masters were as changeable North Africa." The reader could reasonably as the weather. have expected more precise locations for each. Eleven months after joining the navy, There can be a variety of good reasons to Book Reviews 117 hide the identity of certain individuals, ships operations by the US Navy, but also includes or even places appearing in a work such as references offering a more general context. A this. Surely, however, the reader is entitled to good reading quickly reveals the extent to be told what can be relied upon as fact and which the Gulf conflict has been covered, and what, for the author's own good reasons, has will illustrate to the novice the diversity of been related as fiction. Otherwise, the integ• the experience of modem naval warfare. The rity of the whole work is suspect. more than five hundred entries are divided There is thus little left of the book but a into five sections, and are frequently accom• series of vignettes offered in isolation from panied by an insightful one-sentence annota• any sense of reality. Consequently, they add tion on style and substance. The "finding little to what is already available. See, for aids" and "source materials" are comprehen• example, Frederick Watt's In All Respects sive with regards to US government depart• Ready (Scarborough, Ontario, 1985) as an mental publications. The wide-ranging entries authoritative account of the Naval Boarding under "books" cover subjects as diverse as Service, or John Davies' Lower Deck (New Allen et al's CNN War in the Gulf, through York, 1945) as a first-class account of war• Hawley's Against the Fires of Hell: The time life in the messdecks of an RN destroyer. Environmental Disaster of the Gulf War and The authenticity, realism and humanity Palmer's Guardians of the Gulf (reviewed in reflected in both of these works is sadly The Northern Mariner, April 1993), to Yer- lacking in The Hunts and the Hunted which gin's The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, therefore cannot be recommended to serious Money, and Power. The "articles" section has students of naval history. been kept manageable by the wise decision to limit citations to scholarly and defence jour• C.B. Koester nals — researchers will have to conduct their Kingston, Ontario own cull of newspapers and popular maga• zines. Inclusion of a "video" selection is R.A. Brown and Robert J. Schneller (comps.). ground-breaking, for Desert Storm was noth• United States Naval Forces in Desert Shield ing if not a visual experience. and Desert Storm: A Select Bibliography. Without this volume to guide the way, Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, aspiring Gulf War historians would face a 1993. iii + 50 pp.; stapled typescript. daunting task. Omissions are always easily identified, and one hesitates to do so but for Three years have passed since Iraq's invasion the fact that a subject of special interest - of Kuwait, and the reading list continues to relations of the US Navy with its coalition grow by the month. In their introductory partners — rates relatively few entries. The notes, compilers Brown and Schneller admit extent of allied cooperation is not conveyed the elusiveness of their task, advising that by the mere half-dozen citations recounting their work "should be considered a first cut, the British, Italian, German and Argentinean not the last word." (i) Within that recognized efforts. In large part, this is a sad reflection of limitation, this is an impressive attempt. They the state of literature in this field. Still, this have captured the first wave of material, the number could easily have been doubled, and "quick looks" and "lessons learned," along some useful French and Canadian works with the inevitable soap boxes and justifica• included to round out the theme. Overlooked tions. As such, they do not include many of also is an important compilation of basic the more studied works which are just begin• documents on sanctions and their economic ning to appear, but are well-timed to serve as consequences, by the University of Cambridge a foundation for those that will follow. Research Centre for International Law (pub• The approach is directed to the study of lished by Grotius, 1991). 118 The Northern Mariner

These hesitations aside, future compilers breadth of choices it can consider in adjusting will now have Brown and Schneller to add to to new conditions and requirements") and, in their list of "finding aids," with the recom• the US system, there is a division of powers mended annotation: "an indispensable starting between the President and Congress ("the point for any study of United States naval President and Congress engage in bureaucratic operations in the Persian Gulf." politics, often bargaining with each other on military questions, since each has roughly Richard H. Gimblett equal constitutional powers over the mili• Blackburn Hamlet, Ontario tary."). President and Congress are unlikely to change their ways, but Peters believes that John E. Peters. The U.S. Military: Ready for better forces could be produced by changing the New World Order? Westport, CT: Green• the DOD organization ("though the presiden• wood Press, 1993. xii + 176 pp., tables, tial-congressional struggle will likely con• figures, bibliography, index. US $49.95, cloth; tinue, radical change could correct the other ISBN 0-313-28591-8. two dysfunctional aspects of the present strategic planning system"). Colonel Peters' (US Army) doctoral thesis In concluding that the Department of from Georgetown University, a study of US Defense is neocorporatist, as opposed to Department of Defense strategic planning pluralist or politico-bureaucratic, the reader is focused on the United States Army, is Num• invited to wade through the following : "plu• ber 133 in the Contributions in Military ralism is a system of interest intermediation in Studies series of Greenwood Press. Peters which the constituent units are organized into asks, and then proceeds to propose an answer an unspecified number of multiple, voluntary, to, the question: "With the Cold War con• competitive, non-hierarchically ordered, and cluded, President Bush's declaration of a new self-determined categories that are not specifi• world order and domestic and international cally licensed, recognized, subsidized, created demands for peace dividends, what kind of or otherwise controlled in leadership election military should the United States have? What or interest articulation by the state and that do capabilities should this force possess? Is the not exercise a monopoly of representational Defense Department likely to produce the activity within their respective categories. forces this nation needs, and if not, why not?" Corporatism is defined as a system of interest The study examines factors and influences intermediation in which the constituent that make changes in the military likely and elements are organized into a limited number advisable, examines the US DOD process for of singular, compulsory, noncompetitive, strategic planning and force structuring, and hierarchically ordered and functionally differ• suggests an alternative approach. entiated categories recognized or licensed (if The book is tough sledding, turgid and not created) by the state and granted a delib• convoluted in style, and full of jargon. The erate representational monopoly within their present strategic approach, says the author, is respective categories in exchange for observ• unlikely to produce the best force for the ing certain controls on their selection of United States because military and civilian leaders and articulation of demands and perceptions of needs and priorities seldom supports." Whew! agree ("a fissure has developed in the process Colonel Peters gives his personal view of that separates policy considerations from what the future holds, and of the military military-technical issues"), new ideas have requirements for the United States which flow difficulty getting accepted in DOD ("the from it. He concludes that such logical plans defense establishment is a neocorporatist as his could not be implemented by the pres• structure organizationally, which limits the ent neocorporatist system. Peters therefore Book Reviews 119 recommends that the Department of Defense W. Michael Reisman and Gayl S. Westerman. be streamlined and a new strategic planning Straight Baselines in International Maritime system be created. The individual services Boundary Delimitation. London: Macmillan, would have to be removed from force 1992. xvi + 242 pp., maps, bibliography, planning; they should train and command index, cloth; ISBN 0-333-56570-3. operational forces. A single 200-strong inte• grated defence staff should be created, under This book is about straight baselines. When a civilian CDS, composed of "defense pro• states demarcate their 12-n. mile territorial sea fessionals" and political appointees which and 200-n. mile offshore zone, they measure would consider political and military-technical seaward from a baseline. International practice matters together. The staff should be organ• accepts that this baseline is either the low- ized in functional areas. water mark on the shore or a straight baseline Peters does have the grace to say: "Ser• constructed seaward from the coastline vice resistance to such a move would be designed to smooth the sinuosities of the extreme". I'll say! And resistance would not coast. The employment of straight baselines be ill-founded. Peters advocates a complete by states is sanctioned by a 1951 International restructuring of the US Armed Forces based Court of Justice decision and both the 1958 upon his own view of the future, and a revol• and 1982 United Nations treaties on the law utionary reorganization of DOD to bring it of the sea. about, both of which to me are folly. The first Obviously, the further seaward a state is folly because "prophesy is very difficult, constructs a straight baseline, the greater the especially of the future" (Sam Goldwyn, I expanse of ocean that comes under its juris• think). In addition, most extremely complex diction. Moreover, the waters landward of a systems, such as defence planning, need to be straight baseline are of a different legal char• able to bring the experience and brain power acter than the waters seaward of a straight of the leaders of the organization to bear on baseline. In simple terms, the waters seaward the decision making. The leaders should have of a straight baseline are the internal waters of strong views, and put them vigorously, reach a state and thus subject to the total control of agreements, and be accountable for the the state. In the waters seaward of a straight results. I would far rather put my faith in that, baseline, a state must accept the passage of than what Peters proposes. vessels in the territorial sea and beyond 12-n. Incidentally, the system described has miles, a state's exercise of jurisdiction is virtually nothing in common with that of the limited to control over resources. Thus, the Canadian Department of National Defence. construction of straight baselines may interfere His only reference to Canada, that "Canada with the navigational interests of other states. has recently abandoned its experiment with an In response to public concern over the integrated defense force. The expected effi• voyage of the US Coast Guard vessel Polar ciency from centralization and pooled expert• Sea through Canadian Arctic waters in 1985, ise especially in the realm of combat support Canada announced a system of straight base• and service support functions apparently did lines around the Arctic islands. It is a highly not materialize," is wrong. technical and debatable point whether the This book may be of interest to students Arctic straight baselines have the legal effect of United States defence matters, and perhaps of assuring Canada's absolute jurisdiction over of marginal interest to Canadian defence all activity in waters landward of the straight planners although the price is a deterrent. baselines. However, it is unquestioned that the straight baselines are a legal and political Dan Mainguy assertion of Canada's determination to view Ottawa, Ottawa the landward waters as controlled by Canada. 120 The Northern Mariner

The 1951 International Court case and the The authors argue their case well, 1958 and 1982 ocean treaties which sanction although the tone of the book with its sug• the use of straight baselines also seek to gestion of dire consequences if the "patho• establish criteria for constructing straight logical" employment of straight baselines is baselines. The criteria lack precision. For not immediately dealt with gives the argument example, there is no limit on the length of a an air of unreality. Certainly, the straight straight baseline, the number of straight baseline phenomenon needs to be monitored baselines that can be used along a coast, or and the truly outrageous practices called into the area of water which can be enclosed by question. Avenues for accomplishing this are the baselines. What is provided is that straight provided by the authors. This is the useful baselines are only to be employed where there contribution of this book for the law of the exists either a deeply indented coast or fring• sea specialist. ing islands and that the baselines are not to depart appreciably from the general direction Ted L. McDorman of the coastline. There are also some con• Victoria, British Columbia straints on features that can be used as base- points. Doug Gray. The Rideau Navigator: Going Reisman and Westerman argue vehement• Down the River, Not Up the Creek. Bums- ly that the ambiguous criteria for constructing town, Ont.: General Store Publishing House, straight baselines must be interpreted narrow• 1993. Ill pp., maps, photographs, illustra• ly, that the criteria have a technical precision, tions, bibliographies. $14.95, paper; ISBN 0- that the criteria are being extensively abused 919431-65-8. and ignored by states, and that there is a pressing need to deal with this problem. Much This is not your ordinary cruising guide. of their book is devoted to pointing out the Rather, The Rideau Navigator is a light- "pathological claims" of states to straight hearted way to absorb some very sensible baselines which, in the authors' opinion, do advice. One doesn't cruise the Rideau seeking not comply with the restraining criteria on high adventure. Nevertheless, twenty-four baselines. Canada's straight baselines on the years of service with the Canadian Coast East, West and Arctic coasts get a mixed Guard taught Doug Gray respect for the review from the authors, although they do not waters and waterways of his world, even systematically examine the Arctic baselines those as sheltered and bucolic as the Rideau which have been criticized by the United which meanders through eastern Ontario States government as not complying with between Kingston and Ottawa. international norms on straight baselines. The author does not try to usurp the func• The authors acknowledge, as they must, tion of the Tourist Bureau. The reader will that: an overwhelming number of states like not find here a guidebook with suggestions as using straight baselines; most states appear to where to shop or dine or enjoy the several comfortable with the flexibility of the ambig• small local museums, or simply absorb the uous criteria of the relevant treaty provisions; legacy of artisanry left by the Scottish stone• the International Court of Justice has not felt masons of a century and a half ago. What he compelled to comment about straight baselines will find is ample space devoted to cruise in decisions where the opportunity has arisen; planning and preparation so that surprises will and there is little state support for a re-exam• at least be manageable. Equipment, provision• ination of the international norms regarding ing, navigation, hazards, locking procedures straight baselines. The exception is the United (some good, sensible stuff here), regulations States and this book is an elegant plea for the and environmental concerns are all discussed American view on straight baselines. — and selection of shipmates. However, not Book Reviews 121

until the very end does Doug Gray let us in pages of this book. Many of the chapters are on his own choice of vessel — the logical, if re-writes of his Offshore columns. The book unusual, product of all that he has told us. is divided into twelve parts covering a variety Perhaps in a sequel we will hear more of of subjects (such as design, stability and dis• the sights and sounds and secret places of the placement, hull shapes, speed, sails, ergonom• Rideau — and become better friends with the ics, and rudders, among others). The chapters ubiquitous Dr. Lake whose pungent comments in each part are provided imaginative titles to introduce each chapter, who is identified only engage the reader. Thus, Part 6 on "The Iron as an "Eye, Ear, Nose, Throat and Skin Blem• Breeze" (on engines) contains five chapters on ish Specialist," and who prepared his "Chart "engine lore," "let's talk torquey," "the care of the Rideau Lakes Route" in 1907. and feeding of a power plant," "the case of The book is well illustrated both photo• the boat that shook," and "outboard info." graphically and anecdotally, making it a good Serious sailors may not appreciate such irrev• bedside companion whether or not one intends erence, but kids and partners seeking a Christ• a Rideau cruise. If this reviewer so intended, mas gift for the boating nut in the family will he would first spend an evening digesting The surely appreciate its user-friendliness. Rideau Navigator into checklists — and then The smoothly written and generally clear take Doug Gray's book along for fun. text is supported by detailed and finely exe• cuted line drawings and photographs where George H. Cuthbertson appropriate. These features are particularly Keswick, Ontario apparent in the section on engines, where there is a very clear comparison of gasoline Dave Gerr. The Nature of Boats: Insights and and diesel engines and analysis of the merits Esoterica for the Nautically Obsessed. Cam• of two or four cycle engines. The only prob• den, ME: International Marine Publishing, lem is that some topics are treated with 1992. xiv + 418 pp., figures, photographs, extreme brevity (thus, only five and a half index. US $29.95, cloth; ISBN 0-87742-289- pages on outboards) and the information, such 3. as that on stemdrives, will date rather quickly. What will not date are Gerr's lucid expla• This is an off-the-wall and entertaining tour nations concerning hull forms, stability and among the questions asked most often about such like. The information is eminently use• boats — why does that sailboat tip more than able; this reviewer has already used the another? how thick should a hull be? — and material on propellers to help a friend who other aspects of what the author calls "boat had just installed a new Perkins engine on a noodling" such as sketching, scheming, ana• Catalina 30 sailboat but could not get proper lyzing, and planning boats. All are behaviours information from either Perkins or the boat of the "nautically obsessed." In its mild forms, manufacturer concerning the best wheel. Gen- boat noodling is not serious, but in its most does not get into this kind of detail either but addictive and trying forms it causes normally the analysis concerning the theory pitch, sane people to go off and try to build a boat. diameter and other matters positions the read• David Gerr is a naval architect living in er to ask the right kind of questions. In brief, New York City and author of a column in this is a boating book with flair and humour. Offshore magazine; his characteristic flair, humour and irreverence are laced through the Roger Boshier Vancouver, British Columbia