BOOK REVIEWS

Eric Axelson. Vasco da Gamma: The Diary of His ices will discover it to be an enjoyable, accessible, Travels Through African Waters, 1497-1499. and engaging account. It is certainly a good buy Somerset West, South Africa: Stephan Phillips for most research or university libraries. (Pty) Ltd., 1998. vii + 102, notes, appendices, bibliography, maps, illustrations. ISBN 0-620- M.A. Hennessy 22388-x. Kingston, Ontario

Eric Axelson, former head of the Department of History at the University of Cape Town, is to be L.M.E. Shaw. The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance commended for producing a richly illustrated and and the English Merchants in Portugal, 1654- comprehensive new translation of this diary. 1810. Aldershot, Hants. & Brookfield, VT: Translations or the Portuguese original have been Ashgate Publishing, 1998. xii + 233 pp., maps, published previously in 1898,1947 and 1954. The photoplates, appendices, bibliography, index. US last of these, African Explorers (Oxford, 1954), $76.95, cloth; ISBN 1-84014-651-6. was also edited by Axelson, but it did not address the voyage from the coast of Mozambique to This work marks a further contribution by Dr. India and back. That shortfall has been avoided in Shaw to Anglo-Portuguese history in the seven• this valuable new edition, which also contains teenth and eighteenth centuries, significantly other useful features. developing her earlier studies, among them her The anonymous diary commences with da notable investigation into the serious effects of the Gamma's ship leaving Portugal and ceases some• inquisition on Portuguese mercantile wealth and where off Gabon - Axelson addresses why this is resources. Dr. Shaw now provides a general so in his long and highly informative introduction, discussion of political and mercantile relations which is the true value added in this new edition between the treaties of 1654 and 1810. It is based of the diary. Axelson uses the introduction to on an impressive range of British and Portuguese contextualize the diary and explore the problems primary sources, archival as well as printed, and associated with trying to determine the exact a considerable secondary bibliography. nature of da Gamma's ship, voyage, and the like. The work has four parts. The first two review The translation itself is new, and the diary re• the commerce between the two countries over the counts in brief detail this epic voyage from Portu• period, as well as the organisation of the British gal, around the Cape Horn, and on to India. It also consuls and the merchant factories in Portugal. includes much of the return voyage. The third part, comprising nearly two-thirds of the That discussion is further enriched by a book, examines in detail a series of special issues number of high quality colour and monochrome to do with customs duties and disputes; the Bra• illustrations and three appendices. The first ap• zilian corn import and Oporto wine export trades; pendix addresses the question of locating in the seamen and shipping; and the religious problems present the landing point at Natal as described in arising from a group of overwhelmingly the diary. Appendix 2 gives a brief synopsis of da Protestant merchants residing in a strongly Catho• Gamma's life following his 1497-1499 voyage. lic land. Pombal's attempts to redress Portuguese Appendix 3 addresses the Portuguese epic poem economic dependence on England deservedly 05 Lvsiados de Lvis de Camâs (1572), and a receive much attention. But the very important number of lesser known South African poems gold bullion import trade into England, and the influenced by the da Gamma epic tale. This last little recorded and officially noticed but still quite appendix is clearly the most novel - its utility was significant import of Newfoundland dried cod or not immediately apparent to this reader - but no bacalhau into Portugal, perhaps do not get the doubt it will appeal to others, and it is not without attention they deserve. The discussion throughout its own utility. That observation aside, I found is coloured by the sources used, being focussed on this to be a very valuable little book. Experts will official and institutional matters and problems. A find it a lovely addition to their library and nov• fourth part, a thoughtful conclusion, nicely rounds

103 104 The Northern Mariner off the volume, reiterating among other matters 1628 succeeded (at least in the seventeenth cen• the crucial role of British naval power in Anglo- tury) in replacing the existing Protestant trading Portuguese relations. class (dominant both in the town's external trade With this useful addition to the literature, and municipal government) with a newer cluster Anglo-Portuguese trade is becoming one of our of families, all Catholic, who took over both the most studied seventeenth and eighteenth century municipality and its external trade, particularly branches of English foreign trade. This, however, that to Canada. Yet, this new trading elite had to can be justified by its importance in English operate in a socio-economic world of serious commercial expansion, particularly in the first challenges and ill-defined boundaries in the sixty years of the eighteenth century, through the seventeenth century. Bosher shows that the access it gave English merchants to the riches of Gaigneurs introduced many related Catholic Brazil and particularly the gold of Mina Gérais. families into the North Atlantic trade but at the same time were prepared to borrow needed funds Stephen Fisher from French Huguenots and Dutch Protestant Exeter, Devon houses and to join with such allies in joint ven• tures. This contrast between the deceptive clarity of Olaf Uwe Janzen (ed.). Merchant Organization royal policy and the less obvious pressures of the and Maritime Trade in the North Atlantic, 1660- market appears as well in the papers of other 1815. Research in Maritime History, No. 15. St. contributors. On the one hand is the highly regu• John's, NF: International Maritime Economic lated world described by A. Zabala Uriarte's History Association, 1998. x + 267 pp., maps, paper on "The Consolidation of Bilbao as a Trade figures, tables. US $15, paper; ISBN 0-9681288- Centre in the Second Half of the Seventeenth 5-8. Century." Yet one suspects that over time much of the success of Bilbao depended on local, rather This interesting collection of papers on maritime than central, initiatives. This same half-century history was originally assembled for the planned saw the elaboration of the English legislation international economic history congress at Seville governing trade with that country's American in 1998. The aborting of that conference was a colonies. Yet Nuala Zahadieh's paper shows that serious challenge which the session organizer has the individual merchant needed more than legisla• met by this publication. It is all too easy to view tive protection to survive and had to construct his the maritime life of the early modem Atlantic own edifice of personal credit and reputation, the world as being composed of a series of bilateral edifice that made it possible for him to make exchanges, in which the colonies of any particular purchases on credit and to attract consignment maritime power were constrained by laws or business. Daniel Rabuzzi's paper shows how, market forces to direct most of their external trade after the Revolution, American merchants, freed towards the "mother country." By contrast, much from the restrictions of the navigation acts, could recent work, particularly that of Ian Steele, who try to trade directly to northern Europe, an area provides an introductory essay, has tended to formerly supplied with American products via the emphasize the multilateral character of much British entrepot. They were often successful but North Atlantic commerce. Such a focus turns the still had to utilize British correspondents for attention of the researcher and reader away from information and financial services. Less depend• the systematic and planned schemes of royal ent on British help were the activities of Amer• officialdom towards the more chaotic, less sys• ican merchants in Bordeaux during the war years tematic activities of individual traders and local (1793-1815), the subject of Silvia Marzagalli's markets. interesting paper. Less successful were the efforts To say that modern scholarship seeks to of a small group of British merchants to develop escape from earlier legal and policy-defined a trade with Iceland, a hitherto neglected topic categories does not mean that all policy-oriented that is explored in the pioneering paper of Anna legal arrangements are ignored. J.F. Bosher's Agnarsdôttir. The coolness of the Danish govern• extremely interesting article on the Gaigneur ment forced the traders to seek more of the sup• family of La Rochelle makes clear how royal port of the British government than they perhaps policy after the surrender of the Huguenot town in had first envisaged. Long before the American Book Reviews 105

Revolution, though each colonial power had its Troops in the Conquest of Africa (1998) - The own version of a regulatory system designed to World and the West is not strictly an academic conserve as much of the trade of its colonies in book. It has neither notes nor bibliography; the hands of its own subjects as possible, there instead it has further readings at the end of each were objective needs in those colonies that could chapter. most efficiently be satisfied from the British This is by no means to denigrate a fascinat• North American colonies. The intrusion of the ing book. Curtin's monograph is aimed at what North American ships into the French and Span• used to be called the intelligent reader, academic ish colonies is relatively well known. Johannes or otherwise. It is divided into four parts. The Postma expands our knowledge of this phenome• first, "Conquest," sets the scene. Curtin puts non in this paper on "Breaching the Mercantile forward the reasons for exploration and coloniza• Barriers of the Dutch Colonial Empire: North tion and the various, and varied, forms that the American Trade with Surinam during the Eigh• latter took. He also deals with why the Europeans teenth Century." In this area, the New Englanders were able to impose their will. While superior had achieved success in selling a considerable weapons technology was crucial to success, variety of goods starting with horses. Curtin also emphasizes the administrative and Not all mercantile ventures were automati• medical advantages that underpinned Western cally successful. Olaf Janzen's paper analyses the advances. difficulty the Scots had in breaking into the The second part discusses "Culture Change Newfoundland fish trade long dominated by the and Imperial Rule." Here Curtin looks at a num• southeastern English ports. R.C. Nash shows that ber of particular case studies: South Africa, success might not always have been long lasting. Central Asia, and Mexico. He puts particular Huguenot merchants were successful in develop• emphasis on how the differing circumstances of ing a significant trade in South Carolina's earliest conquest have affected the resultant societies. days, but the next generation of such families While the percentage of Europeans in the mixed often invested in land and planting and left populations tends to influence just what sort of Charleston's trade to other houses, usually of society emerges, there is no simple equation British origin. provided: x percentage of Europeans does not Individual papers in this collection will necessarily always create a specific sort of coun• interest different readers, but all can be com• try. Instead, a wide range of factors - including mended for their serious research and effective what happened to the indigenous population when presentation. initial contact was made, what was the initial fertility rate of the European settlers and so on - Jacob M. Price were important. Finally, the administrative Ann Arbor, Michigan choices made by the European colonizers - what sort of land tenure was imposed being crucial - strongly influenced what impact the Europeans Philip D. Curtin. The World and the West. The had on the existing culture. European Challenge and the Overseas Response Sometimes, of course, the Europeans arrived in the Age of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge with a cultural mission in mind. An examination University Press, 2000. xiv + 294, maps, tables, of this, "Conversion," is Curtin's subject in part selected readings, index. US $27.95, cloth; ISBN three. He considers a number of case studies, 0-521-77135-8. beginning with Christian conversion in East Africa and going on to look at the cases of Japan This is another book by Philip Curtin, Herbert and the Ottoman Empire. The latter two are Baxter Adams Professor of History, Emeritus, at particularly important, for they allow Curtin to Johns Hopkins University, dealing with the consider how societies attempted to resist conver• cultural interactions between Europeans and non- sion. The most important ways appear to be Europeans during the age of imperialism. Unlike imitation, reform and restructuring. When a his earlier works - Cross Cultural Trade in World society was strong enough or fortunate enough to History (1984), The Rise and Fall of the Planta• escape immediate defeat by the Western powers, tion Complex (1990), Death by Migration (1990) Curtin argues that they immediately realized the and Disease and Empire: The Health of European necessity to change in order to keep their inde- 106 The Northern Mariner

pendence. How successful they were depended on harbourmasters' registrations of private traffic in circumstance, political will and geography. fifteen major ports in Java, registering more than The final part of the book deals with the 20,000 ship movements in the mid-1770s, are collapse of the European empires. The reasons for analysed and combined with other data derived the collapse were as varied as the reasons for the from the rich Dutch East India Company (VOC) initial conquest. It was not, however, the general sources. The result is a rather precise reconstruc• case that the Europeans were expelled by force of tion and analysis of the structure and dynamics of arms, or rather, it was not the case that the local shipping and trade along the coast of Java and its populations suddenly were more militarily capa• role in larger commercial networks. ble than the Europeans. Instead, it was a change The detail in this study is overwhelming, of attitudes among the Europeans towards empire, though fascinating. Voyage durations, turnaround combined with the fact that the military techno• times in ports, ownership and crew, costs of logical gap had narrowed sufficiently that to shipbuilding, cargo and volumes, destinations and maintain empire in the face of determined local seasonality, and fiscal regulations and passes are opposition would be prohibitively expensive in all discussed at length in the second part of this terms both of men and money that turned the tide. study (part one sets the stage, with a chapter on Of particular interest to readers of this jour• the economic policy of the VOC and a chapter nal is the ubiquity of sea power, defined broadly, describing the ports of Java). It is easy to under• to Curtin's account. Without the ability to com• stand the relevance of the first two words of the mand the seas, European imperialism would have title of this book when reading chapter 4, which been confined to the Russian expansion into dwells extensively on the many types of vessels in Siberia and Central Asia. The Western European use. Knaap gives a sketch of the tiny, indigenous empires were essentially maritime empires, vessels, fifty-one percent of which were of the underpinned by superior naval technology - in mayang type, plying as a "mosquito fleet" be• terms of ships, firepower and navigation. For tween the lesser ports. These craft were responsi• those interested in the broad cultural impact of ble for nineteen percent of the private transport of maritime superiority on the history of the past half goods, while the gonting took fifteen percent and millennium, Curtin's book is an interesting and the pencalang thirteen percent. European types important starting point. transported forty-five percent of the volume: the chialoup twenty-nine percent and the brigantijn Keith Neilson (or barque) sixteen percent. Kingston, Ontario In part three the author places the results of his research into the broader perspective of long- term developments (sixteenth-nineteenth centu• Gerrit W. Knaap. Shallow Waters, Rising Tide. ries). In her study Asian Trade and European Shipping and Trade in Java around 1775. Leiden: Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago between KITLV Press, 1996 [Koninklijk Instituut voor 1500 and about 1630, M.A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, PO Box 9515, argued that non-European shipping in the Malay- 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands], xii + 255 pp., Indonesian Archipelago was already being re• maps, tables, figures, illustrations, appendices, duced to the coastal trade in the seventeenth bibliography, index. /50, paper; ISBN 90-6718- century. Knaap confirms the picture of Javanese 102-1. skippers specializing mainly in local shipping for which they used vessels that were best suited to The early modern maritime trade of Southeast shallow waters. Nonetheless, in Knaap's view Asia was influenced greatly by the intrusion of Javanese skippers had been specializing in local Europeans, be it by state-run enterprises or by and inter-insular connections from a much earlier private trading companies. But many questions date. They were hardly ever seen on intra-Asian related to the actual process of this intrusion and routes and were entirely absent in long-distance to the way indigenous maritime trade adapted to trade. The very fact that the Javanese did not take the new situation still have to be answered. This part in global or intra-Asian activities eventually unique case study reveals in minute detail the role disadvantaged them in the competition with the of Java in inter-insular and intra-Asian maritime Europeans and Chinese. Knaap concludes that the trade about 1775. The records of the surviving latter originated from societies which already had Book Reviews 107

much more commercial economies and more Robert Bohn (ed.). Nordfriesische Seefahrer in developed technologies. der friihen Neuzeit im Auftrag der Ferring- The data in this study show that at the inter• Stiftung. Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, mediate levels of shipping and trade, European 1999. 166 pp., illustrations, photos, maps, tables, vessels were gradually displacing Asian crafts in figures. /39.50, cloth; ISBN 90-6707-514-0. the intra-Asian trade and insular trades. The success of the VOC and the English country This pretty little book resulted out of a conference traders using ships of 100-300 lasts was striking. organised by the late director of the Ferring- But the supremacy of European technology was Stiftung, Dr. Frederik Paulsen. The foundation not limited to the intra-Asian routes. Part of it was endeavours to unearth the history of the island of copied by Javanese shipbuilders, who sold Euro• Fôhr. There are contributions from historians who pean types of vessels, like the chialoup and concentrated their research on the history of brigantijn, measuring between 10-100 lasts, to Nordfriesland or one of the islands (Albert private Chinese and European customers. Even Panten, Georg Quedens, Brar C. Roeloffs) and the VOC built these vessels at Rembang. Knaap's others, for whom Fôhr was only one of the ele• explanation is that these vessels, with their Euro• ments in an international labour market for sea• pean rigging, were less dependent on monsoon men (especially Jaap R. Bruijn and Paul C. van winds than were indigenous vessels. Moreover, Royen). Besides the variation in focus there is the hull shape provided better sailing performance also a great variety of methodology. On the one on both short-haul and long-distance voyages. hand, Georg Quedens has painstakingly collected They also enabled better man-ton ratios. material on every seaman from the North Frisian "The traffic in the shallow waters along the Islands who during seventeenth and eighteenth coast of Java appears to have experienced a rising centuries bought citizenship of Trondheim in tide of Dutch presence," according to the dust order to be able to be the master on a ship of that jacket. The Dutch presence and their technical city. At the other end of the scale we find a dis• expertise must have amazed the indigenous cussion on sources by Harald Voigt and a very skippers and their crews. One wonders at their well-reasoned piece on the limitation of archival reaction, for example, when seeing the pair of sources by Paul C. van Royen. As is often the ship's camels, built at the VOC's expense to help case with collections that come out of confer• ferry large vessels across the sandbanks in front ences, there is also the odd article which, though of the yard at Rembang. Together with the two it may be interesting (this one deals with the wind-driven sawmills on the Island of Onrust (the specific voyage of a slave ship to East India), centre of VOC ship repair activities) in the Bay of does not seem to have any relation to the general Batavia, they reflected technical innovations topic. Taken together, however, the different brought by foreign intruders. contributions provide us with new insights, not Nonetheless, as a group the locals survived in only about the specific history of seafarers and a restricted fashion in the short-haul trades, fishermen from the North Frisian Islands but also although some profited more than others. This on the development of the international labour study provides an extremely interesting market for seafarers and fishermen in early mod• perspective into the booming economic power of ern period in a specific region. It is this aspect the Chinese after the VOC took over control of which makes this little book not only valuable for the north coast of Java in the 1770s. They were amateurs interested in Frisian history but also for responsible for handling two-fifths of the volume historians and sociologists interested in the inter• of private shipping outside Batavia, whereas the national composition of crews. Javanese handled one-quarter and the Malays one- There seem to have been some branches of ninth of the entire volume. The Chinese took the maritime employment in which foreigners were lead, a fact which coincided with their dominant not welcome. According to Piet Boon, one of role in the economy of Java, a role which was these was the Dutch herring fleet. Boon assumes indispensable for the functioning and survival of that this may have been caused by a desire to keep the VOC in its Asian headquarters. fishing and conservation techniques secret. On the whole, however, merchants, whalers or seafarers Lodewijk Wagenaar from the island of Fôhr were not only present in Amsterdam, The Netherlands foreign towns and on foreign ships but also at 108 The Northern Mariner certain times even dominated specific branches. characterised sea power in the 1700s. Profit Further research may produce different results, obviously motivated privateers, but desire for but the evidence presented in this collection monetary gain was also a powerful motivating suggests processes of internationalisation more or force for naval personnel, a fact frequently ig• less devoid of local prejudice against foreigners. nored by naval historians searching for the devel• Instead, they demonstrate the working of an opment of "professionalism" in eighteenth-cen• international business community and a labour tury navies. James A. Lewis' interesting study of force which, though its members competed, South Carolina, a frigate in South Carolina's state accepted each other as equals. Brar C. Roeloffs, navy during the American Revolution, reveals the for example, points to the fact that language did importance of the profit motive during this era. not seem to be a problem. When in the eighteenth Neptune's Militia discusses many themes century most of the trade from Copenhagen to associated with the diplomatic intrigue surround• Greenland was carried by vessels under the ing the American Revolution: France's support command of a captain from Fôhr, Copenhagen for the United States, Dutch bankers' willingness merchants accepted that the journals on these to loan money to the Americans, Britain's intelli• ships would be kept in German. gence network trying to blunt European support This is not the only topic of interest for the for the republic, and Benjamin Franklin's efforts general reader. There are also some bits on vio• to secure support for the Revolution. The overrid• lence aboard ships. Harald Voigt believes that the ing theme of Lewis' book, however, is the relent• institution of the Waterschout was meant to less attempt by South Carolina's, owner and counteract these practices. And he also disputes commander to profit from the Revolution's the dominant assumption that in pre-modem times maritime conflict. costs for medical treatment, rudimentary as they South Carolina's story was complex. To may have been, fell "on the ship." According to assist the Americans, the French government built Voigt, seamen were charged for the medications the large, powerful frigate, originally named they were administered, a practice that could L'Indien. Because France and the United States leave them in debt to the ship at the end of a had not yet become allies, the vessel was built voyage. Some authors concentrate on the causes secretly in Amsterdam to prevent Anglo-French for the fluctuating demand for foreign whalers friction. Problems plagued the frigate from the and seamen and hence on the varying opportunity beginning. The ship drew too much water to leave for Frisians to find employment: (Bar C. Roeloffs, the harbour. France entered the war before con• Jaap R. Bruijn, Paul C. van Royen). And struction was completed, so the Royal Navy Louwrens Hacquebord has written a very fine would have intercepted L'Indien had it attempted article on Dutch and German whaling in the to leave Holland under French colours. To allevi• seventeenth century, criticising en passant inter• ate this problem, Louis XVI loaned the ship to pretations which focus on political decisions. Anne Paul Emmanuel Sigismond de Montmoren• All in all, this is a very nice collection of cy, the chevalier de Luxembourg, one of France's scholarly work that is of interest and value to most powerful aristocrats, who already possessed those interested in the topics presented. his own private army. Luxembourg alleged that L'Indien was an East Indiaman, not a warship, Heide Gerstenberger bound for the east. Shortly after acquiring the Bremen, Germany frigate, Luxembourg signed a contract with Commodore Alexander Gillon, a native of Rotter• James A. Lewis. Neptune's Militia: The Frigate dam who had emigrated to Charleston, where he South Carolina during the American Revolution. became a prosperous merchant. Gillon obtained Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1999. x + command of the renamed South Carolina for 235 pp., illustrations, maps, appendix, notes, three years in exchange for 300,000 livres. The bibliography, index. US$39, cloth; ISBN 0- commodore was required to employ the frigate as 87338-632-9. a commerce raider and to dispatch all prizes to France to be sold by Luxembourg's banker. One of the difficulties of studying eighteenth- Gillon's attempts to honour this contract dictated century naval warfare is understanding the mix• South Carolina's actions in the Revolution and ture of public service and private interest that also provide the focus of Lewis' book. Book Reviews 109

Gillon faced numerous difficulties profiting Frederick C. Leiner's study of the construction by from his command. Although South Carolina private subscription of nine warships by citizens possessed substantial firepower, it was a dull - largely members of the mercantile community sailor. His large, predominately French crew - in ten ports during the war scares of the late mutinied several times over back pay owed by 1790s. Luxembourg. Gillon alienated important Amer• The story of these subscription warships is a ican politicians because he chased prizes instead fascinating vignette of America in the Federalist of delivering war materiel to Philadelphia, as he period, a time when precedents were few and the had promised them he would do. Even South relationship between public and private interests Carolina's most successful exploit, its participa• remained blurred. As seizures of American mer• tion in the capture of the Bahamas, failed to earn chantmen and the tawdry demands of the XYZ a dollar because of the actions, or rather inactions, Affair inflamed public opinion and generated of the Cuban Captain-General Juan Manuel de demands for protection and reprisal, the US found Cagigal, commander of the Spanish troops in the itself almost totally without a navy. Indeed, the combined operation, who reneged on his agree• "official navy" in 1798 comprised only three ment to reward the commodore. Gillon finally frigates: the forty-four-gun United States and failed completely when the Royal Navy captured Constitution and the thirty-six-gun Constellation, South Carolina in December 1782. all of which were launched the previous year. South Carolina's saga did not end with its Clearly, these ships were unable to protect either capture, as Gillon and the state of South Carolina US merchant vessels or American honour, but faced numerous lawsuits filed by unpaid sailors, Congress remained hopelessly deadlocked on the Luxembourg and his heirs, and European busi• issue of building more vessels. It is within this nessmen. The court actions dragged on for de• context that a group of merchants in Newburyport cades, complicated by Luxembourg's death, the first decided to open a subscription list to build a French Revolution, and Gillon's dogged determi• warship for the government. Although there were nation to escape personal bankruptcy. The legal no guarantees of repayment at the outset, the disputes were not settled until 1856. influential mercantile community soon persuaded Neptune's Militia relates a little known but Congress to issue bonds paying six-percent inter• fascinating story of eighteenth-century naval est to pay for Merrimack. Soon, mainly commer• warfare. Based upon extensive archival research cial interests in Boston, Salem, Providence, New in Britain, France, Spain, and the United States, York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Charleston - as Lewis has made a useful contribution to the well as Norfolk and Richmond, which combined maritime history of the American Revolution. to procure a single vessel - had begun similar subscription drives. In the end, none of the war• Carl E. Swanson ships was paid for totally by private funds; even Greenville, North Carolina in Newburyport, subscriptions accounted for only about fifty-seven percent of the more than $72,000 that Merrimack cost. Still, the involve• Frederick C. Leiner. Millions for Defense: The ment of the private sector in this whole business Subscription Warships of1798. Annapolis: Naval speaks volumes about both American defence Institute Press, 1999.262 pp., illustrations, appen• policy and the meshing of public and private dix, notes, bibliography, index. US $36.95, CAN interests. $57.50, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-508-X. Canadian Leiner takes us on a tour of all the port cities distributor: Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, involved in this experiment and, in general, does ON. a thorough job of describing what went on in each. But the author's excellent narrative is not Two generations of students of American history always matched by his analytical abilities. There have learned of Charles Wilson's perhaps apocry• are two arguments that I find particularly uncon• phal boast that "what is good for General Motors vincing. One is his oft-repeated contention that is good for the USA." But is what is good for the these lists should not be viewed merely as expres• USA likely also to be good for General Motors or, sions of the various mercantile communities. indeed, for the business community as a whole? While it is impossible to calculate what propor• This is the central, if unanswered, question in tion of funds in every town that came from mer- 110 The Northern Mariner

chants, complete lists do exist for Boston, Salem, with unreliable latitudes from the Russian Philadelphia and the Virginia cities; while there sources, Davidson set out to reconstruct the tracks are some subscribers with no apparent links to of Sv. Petr and Sv. Pavel. mercantile interests, it is clear that the vast major• Throughout, the author expressed great ity had ties to the maritime/mercantile commu• admiration for the Russian commanders, officers, nity. Indeed, he provides occupations for almost and crewmen who for eight years overcame all the subscribers in Salem, which makes it easy daunting adversities. Bering, Chirikov, and their to see that, charitably, more than four-fifths of the men first crossed Russia and Siberia with their subscribers were merchants. My other concern is scientific instruments and much of the basic his unwillingness to provide a sensible discussion equipment needed to outfit a voyage of explora• of the motivation behind these projects. In a tion to America. The ships had to be built, century in which public and private interests were equipped, and provisioned in the primitive settle• frequently intertwined, there is little question that ments of Siberia and Kamchatka. After sailing in both were motives. But these men were "mer• April 1741, on 21 June the vessels lost company chant capitalists" who had long profited from and from then on conducted separate voyages that these kinds of endeavours. Subscription warships sometimes parallelled each other or crossed tracks in large measure were privateers - but privateers within a few days. that guaranteed at least a six-percent return. Davidson set out to establish the courses of In the end, Millions for Defence is a useful the Russian vessels and their exact landfalls. This book which sheds light on the navy and defence was of particular interest concerning Chirikov, politics in the Federalist era. Leiner's narrative whose crew suffered a dreadful marine disaster strength means that almost anyone will enjoy the that even today remains a great mystery. After descriptions of what happened to the vessels. The sighting the North American coast on 15 July, at book will also be useful for those interested in 55 degrees 21 minutes by his estimation, the what the episode means. But readers should be Russian captain guided Sv. Pavel northward in forewarned that Leiner's questions are more search of a suitable port to replenish fresh water important than his answers. supplies. On 17 July, Chirikov dispatched his longboat, commanded by the ship's mate and ten Lewis R. Fischer well-armed men, to reconnoitre the shore. After a St. John's, Newfoundland few days and some apparent smoke signals that did not match agreed-upon patterns, Chirikov sent his only remaining small boat with a rescue and George Davidson. The Tracks and Landfalls of repair crew to recover the longboat and its men. Bering and Chirikof on the Northwest Coast of This boat also disappeared without a trace and the America. San Francisco, 1901; reprint, Fairfield, only contact from shore occurred when two native WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1994. 44 pp. + added canoes approached Sv. Pavel and quickly returned material. US $11.95. cloth; ISBN 0-87770-527-5. to shore. Concluding that the lost men must be dead or prisoners of the natives, Chirikov had no Some readers may wonder why the editors at Ye alternative than to abandon the rescue attempt and Galleon Press decided to republish George begin the return to Kamchatka. Davidson's 1901 study of the expedition of Vitus Davidson placed the disaster site in Sitka Bering and Aleksei Ivanovich Chirikov to the Sound, in the lee of Cape Edgecumbe. The na• Northwest Coast (1741-1742). In some respects tives of the region were well known later for their this short essay is dated and there are errors owing warlike tendencies and aggressive attitudes. to the limitations of published sources available at Davidson suspected that they possessed a tradition the beginning of the twentieth century. Neverthe• of plundering Japanese wrecks. In 1775, the less, the book serves to showcase Davidson's Spanish lost a boat with six seamen near quite remarkable knowledge about the Alaska Grenville Harbour on today's Washington coast Coast based upon his own observations; the under somewhat similar circumstances. It is also breadth of his scientific interests as an astronomer possible that the boats might have foundered in and coastal surveyor; and his efforts to clarify the treacherous rip tides. In 1786, the French La historical record concerning the early Russian Pérouse expedition lost two boats at Lituya Bay explorations. Lacking accurate longitudes, and with twenty-one men drowned. Book Reviews 111

Davidson employed his knowledge of Both Savours and Delgado are well known as Alaskan waters to locate the Russian vessels using writers in the field of maritime history. Both have contemporary descriptions and the arcs of visibil• similar professional backgrounds - blessedly non- ity relating to high peaks, such as Mount St. Elias academic, some might think. Savours was for and Mount Fairweather. His approach established many years on the staff of the Scott Polar Re• accurate latitudes and geographic references for search Institute and then of Britain's National the excellent chart that is published with the Maritime Museum. Delgado is currently the volume. During the return voyage along the Executive Director of the Vancouver Maritime Alaska coast, Davidson charted the Russian ships Museum, and thus has in his care that great as scurvy and poor food took a heavy toll. Al• national treasure, St. Roch. Before this, in his though more recent studies by scholars including native United States, Delgado played a major role James Gibson, Glynn Barratt, Basil Dmytryshyn, in the preservation of maritime historic sites. He and several Russians offer more detail on the also has extensive archaeological experience in Bering and Chirikov expedition, Davidson's work Canadian and American waters. remains useful for establishing where the Rus• Across the Top of the World is designed to sians went and as an example of early research on appeal to a popular audience. It is another of the Northwest Coast exploration. masterfully produced, eye-pleasing books printed by the Manitoba firm of Friesen's. There are Christon I. Archer about 200 illustrations, many of them full-page Calgary, Alberta and in colour. There are photographs of the Arctic today, of archaeological sites, and of artefacts and of fine reproductions of those stirring Victorian Ann Savours. The Search for the North West renderings of Arctic scenes which have lost none Passage. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. x of their power to thrill over the years. There are + 342 pp., maps, illustrations, photographs, notes, nine very clear and useful maps, eight showing appendices, index. US $29.95, CAN $43.50, the tracks of voyages from Frobisher (1578) to cloth; ISBN 0-312-22372-2. Larsen (1940-1944). There are many sidebars, perhaps a design element meant to appease a James P. Delgado. Across the Top of the World: modern tendency to grow restive if confronted The Questfor the Northwest Passage. Vancouver: with long expanses of text. If so, it has to be said Douglas & Mclnytre, 1999. xii + 228 pp., maps, that the sidebars, nearly all of them biographies of illustrations, photographs, notes, bibliography, men or ships, are little gems, both informative and index. CAN $45.00, cloth: ISBN 0-55054-734-8. entertaining. The actual narrative, although not long, does a good job of telling the tale without The story of the search for the North West Pas• seeming breathless or hurried. Delgado achieves sage has long proved compelling. Those familiar this by giving some explorers pretty short shrift with it are willing to read it again, and each (Dease and Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Com• generation provides a new audience who want the pany, for example, are dispatched in a paragraph), tale as told in their own time. James Delgado was leaving himself free to write in more detail about prompted to write his book by his wife, Ann others. His chapter on Amundsen and Larsen is Goodhart, a librarian who told him that there was particularly fine. In writing about Larsen and a need for "a new, popular overview." (xii) Dur• about the Passage since 1945, he makes as good ing the 1990s there was a surge of interest in the a case as can be made for Canadian sovereignty. story, prompted by David Woodman's research Across the Top of the World is definitely into Inuit testimony and by the investigations of suitable for the bright high school student or the Owen Beattie and Barry Ranford. Ann Savours history buff, but would make an excellent addi• initially embarked on an historical introduction to tion to anyone's library. It is both a pleasure to a book that Barry Ranford was to produce for look at and to read, and is also a convenient, McClelland and Stewart, presumably intended to trustworthy reference tool. There are some slips, capitalize on the interest piqued by his articles in such as calling the redoubtable Captain Smellie of Equinox. When this project collapsed due to Nascopie Robert instead of Thomas. That aside, Ranford's untimely death, Savours wrote her own the story about Smellie is a good one. He objected book. to Mounties as passengers because their spurs 112 The Northern Mariner scuffed the decks and tore the carpets. for the North West Passage will become a classic, The Search for the Northwest Passage is also but it certainly deserves to. There are not many bountifully illustrated, with several colour plates women in the story of the Passage - Green Stock• and numerous black and white photos, many of ings, the beloved of Robert Hood, Iligliuk, the them drawn from the immense riches of the musician and map maker, the indomitable Lady National Maritime Museum. Most touching is the Franklin - and it is pleasant to think that one of final photo, which shows one of the Franklin the best tellers of the tale should be a woman. relics in the Museum - the pair of gloves found by Sherard Osborn on Beechey Island in 1850, Anne Morton where they had been left to dry on a rock. Still Winnipeg, Manitoba retaining the shape of their owner's hands, they make an unsettling image. The text, however, is the real strength of the book. The product of wide Rainer K. Baehre (ed.). Outrageous Seas: Ship• and attentive research, it never, full of detail wreck and Survival in the Waters off Newfound• though it is, seems laboured. The reader feels that land. 1583-1893. Montréal: McGill-Queen's the author has submerged herself in the story. University Press for Carleton University Press, Those who know earlier books by Savours, such 1999. iii + 392 pp., map, illustrations, photo• as Scott's Last Voyage and The Voyages of the graphs, appendices, bibliography, index. CAN Discovery, will recognize the warm human $65.00, cloth; ISBN 0-88629-358-8; CAN touches, not to mention the evident fondness for $27.95, paper; ISBN 0-88629-319-7. animals. To give but one example of the wonderful In his introduction the author states a two-fold things in this book, in her section on Parry's purpose: to make selected narratives of ship• second voyage of 1821-1823, Savours devotes wrecks in Newfoundland waters more accessible much space to the respectful relationship between than they have been; and, more importantly, to Captains Parry and Lyon and the local Inuit. Lyon begin the process of placing such narratives more was struck by the well-behaved children and fully in the context of the region's social and resolved that if he ever had a family of his own he cultural history. To begin we must note that would tell them about the Inuit children as a good "Newfoundland waters" is a generic rather than a example. Later on, Savours rounds off the story of geo-political designation. The domain of the Lyons' life. He died in 1832 and his wife in 1826, wrecks chronicled here extends from the northern only a year after their marriage, without children coast o f Labrador toNewEnglandand outward to to tell about the Eskimos: the very edge of the continental shelf, encompass• ing most of the northwest Atlantic. But in a real One wonders whether it was his wife, sense, the precise location is less important than Lucy, who wrote the well-illustrated the historical setting, inasmuch as the latter plays little children's book by "A Lady," the preponderantly important part in shaping a entitled A Peep at the Esquimaux... regional consciousness, informing the ethos of a published in 1825, in which the Eskimo community and reflecting what Mr. Baehre calls boys and girls provide a lesson for the "a region of the mind." English ones. (123) The chronologically ordered series of tales assembled by the editor, ranging from the wreck This is an impressive display of the author's of Humphrey Gilbert's Delight m 1583 to Captain command of the topic, as well as a feeling heart. Bob Bartlett's account of the loss of Corisande in It also strikes a blow in passing at the school of 1893, come close to the heart of the Newfound• thought which views naval officers in the Arctic land historical experience over a period of some as prisoners of imperial culture who might have 300 years. For while the Canadian identity may done better had they learned more from the have been shaped in the response to the chal• indigenous peoples. This, as Savours crisply lenges posed by a vast continental land mass, the remarks, is "something perhaps easier said than Newfoundland world view was otherwise in• done" (79), but they were more adaptable than formed. Standing at the very edge of the sea, current belief gives them credit for. spuming the continent behind him, the New• It is, of course, too early to say if The Search foundlander faced outward to his constant, though Book Reviews 113 capricious mistress, whose smiling beneficence narratives are cultural mirrors in which many could be changed in a moment to a raging and Newfoundlanders see themselves reflected. The deadly fury. trials of shipwrecked sailors are an analog for The juxtaposition of puny man with the their own incessant struggles with a harsh land, an titanic and uncontrollable forces of nature is a often cruel sea, and a dispiriting climate. The backdrop against which the dramatic history of qualities and characteristics of shipwreck survi• Newfoundland is set. On stage, the story of vors are quintessentially those of the ideal. Cour• Everyman is the story of a struggle for survival, age, even heroism, strength, endurance, versatil• of daily wrestling with superior forces, of accom• ity, and selflessness are among them; and these, modation to uncertainties, of stoical acceptance of together with values of communal sharing and the the determinations of an inscrutable Providence. neighbourliness that goes without saying among It is, moreover, a story in which qualities of shipmates, inform the ethos of the community. As courage, stamina, endurance, resilience, strength, often as the shipwreck stories are told they rein• good humour in the face of trials that would make force the fundamental values of the community, Job jealous, and simple faith in an omniscient and establish the ethical framework for daily living, ultimately benign Providence are the standards and confirm the simple faith that even though against which a people are judged. It is a story in Providence will determine the end result, there is which no man demanded; in which the interests of no salvation for those who merely lie down under the community at large (the crew) come before the "bludgeonings of chance" or "in the fell clutch those of any individual. It is a story in which of circumstance." Death is a shipmate whose role is both understood The editor's splendid introduction provides and accepted, as in the ballad of Jack Hinks: "oh, a scholarly and lucid context for the tales he Death he will come like the sound of a drum/For presents. The stories are compelling and, of to summons poor Jack to his grave;/What more themselves, well worth reading. They illuminate could he do, for we all know 'tis true;/'Tis the significant aspects of Newfoundland's history. fate of both hero and slave." They explain a great deal about patterns of The narratives in this collection illustrate all thought and action that invoke a distinctive cul• of those themes. Of course, not all were written ture. The appendices are useful, and, in respect of for didactic purposes. Some were penned to the two poems chosen for inclusion, add a dimen• convey a sense of great adventure; some to titil• sion of delight. I might quibble with some of the late through horror; some to raise funds to support omissions from the bibliography, but it is reason• the distressed; some to influence the development ably comprehensive. The index is good. In short, of public policy in respect of marine safety; some this is a work that I gladly recommend. to point a moral or to convey a spiritual message; some for the sake of telling a good story. But Leslie Harris whatever their intended purpose, they do more. St. John's, Newfoundland Certainly, as "stories in history," they add a particular dimension to our understanding of our past, often, in Vico's phrase, throwing "a bright Charles Tyng. Before the Wind: The Memoir of an prismatic light" upon such matters as the dangers American Sea Captain, 1808-1833. New York: and difficulties of supplying the Moravian mis• Viking Press, 1999. xviii + 270 pp., illustrations, sion settlements on the Labrador coast; the dark notes, index. US $24.95, CAN $34.99, cloth; side of the timber trade and the horrors to which ISBN 0-670-88632-7. Distributed in Canada for seamen were subjected in an age of unrestricted Penguin Books Canada by Can Book Distribution enterprise; and the perils of navigation in pre- Services. radar, ice-infested waters. As well, they expose such social phenomena as rescue, succour of the It has taken a long time for this work to find its shipwrecked, wrecking, salvage, and the crime of way into print. Written about 1878 and describing barratry; and they enable us to examine critically the professional and personal life of an American such oft-quoted principles as "women and chil• mariner during the first third of the nineteenth dren first" and "the captain goes down with the century, it is a compelling read that will be en• ship." joyed by maritime historians and laymen alike. More important, perhaps, these shipwreck The publishers have presented the story in an 114 The Northern Mariner attractive edition that can be wholeheartedly unusual commercial ventures was the purchase of recommended to anyone with even a passing a half-share in the rare commodity of a "mummi• interest in commercial sailing ships in the days fied Japanese mermaid." Many of these ventures before steam-powered vessels drove them from paid off handsomely, so that by the time he was in the sea. his early thirties, Tyng owned a number of ships The author, Charles Tyng (1801-1879), was and could draw on bank credit for up to one one of eight children bom to Dudley and Sarah million dollars. Although he was involved in a Tyng of Boston. His mother died when young variety of different trades and routes, most of his Charles was just seven years old, and he was then money seems to have come from exporting sugar sent to live, first with relatives, and then at a from Cuba. succession of barding schools. His experience at The book has a good introduction and con• the latter was generally unhappy, and he ran away tains a thoughtful afterward by Thomas Philbric, several times before his father finally decided to which places Tyng and his story in its historical see if his son's interest in ships might translate context. As far as criticisms are concerned, there into a career at sea. are just two illustrations in the book, and more Thirteen-year-old Tyng was sent aboard contemporary images of the places he visited Cordelia, which then sailed to Canton for a cargo would have been welcome. But these are minor of tea. It was a highly profitable voyage for the quibbles about an otherwise excellent and highly owners, but pure hell for young Tyng, who was recommended book, that a wide audience will terrorized by a tyrannical first mate. On arrival enjoy. back in America, young Charles vowed he would never board a ship again. But his father would not Mark Howard allow him to quit after a single voyage and sent Melbourne, Victoria him back to sea to try again. His second voyage was more agreeable and convinced Charles that a career as a mariner Samuel Leech; Michael J. Crawford (intro. and might be possible. Having decided to persist, he notes). A Voice from the Main Deck. Being a began to work hard, learning his new trade and Record of the Thirty Years 'Adventures of Samuel impressing his superiors with his diligence. His Leech. 16th ed., Boston, 1857; "Classics of Naval description of these early years of struggle, and Literature" reprint edition, Annapolis: Naval details of contemporary life aboard a sailing ship, Institute Press, 1999. xxvi + 211 pp., US $34.95, are among the most appealing parts of the book CAN $53.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-192-0. Dis• and are conveyed with a clarity, honesty and tributed in Canada by Vanwell Publishing, St. humour that helps to carry the narrative forward Catharines, ON. like a novel. As young Tyng achieved promotion, he faced The Naval Institute Press' new edition of Samuel a new set of problems, the foremost being how to Leech's A Voice from the Main Deck (first pub• impose his will on drunken unruly seamen who lished in 1843 and sometimes known by its were unimpressed by his youth and slight build. It alternate title, Thirty Years from Home) brings was to be a continuing problem throughout his back into print the most famous American lower- career, and had to be overcome by force of per• deck autobiography of the nineteenth century. sonality, and sometimes, with his fists. But he Leech, the son of a family in the employ of persevered and soon was rewarded by appoint• members of the British nobility, went to sea at the ment to the command of a succession of ships at age of twelve in the then-British frigate Macedo• an unusually young age. nian. When Macedonian was captured by the An interesting feature of the book is the frigate United States on 25 October 1812, Leech gradual emergence of Tyng as an entrepreneur (as did many of his shipmates) contrived to avoid and business man. One of the prerogatives of repatriation to England as a prisoner of war and ships officers at the time was a certain amount of entered the United States Navy instead. Although free space in the hold to store their own trade his new ship, the US brig Syren, was captured by goods. Tyng took advantage of his position and HMS Medway on 12 July 1814, Leech eluded this privilege to trade in goods ranging from detection as a deserter from the British service Brazilian parrots to ladies hats. One of his more and returned to the United States to enlist in the Book Reviews 115

US brig Boxer in the years immediately following especially helpful. This reviewer wishes that the War of 1812. Tiring of the harsh and capri• Crawford had construed his editor's mandate to cious discipline in Boxer - reminiscent of the include surveying local history sources for Con• same approach to leadership he had experienced necticut and Massachusetts towns to fill out the in Macedonian - Leech deserted the American story of Leech's post-naval adult life. It would be naval service on 20 December 1816. He wandered good to know more about the mature man who from one civilian job to another in the Connecti• felt compelled to tell his life story in the early cut River valley. He eventually experienced a 1840s. One might also wish that Crawford had religious conversion, acquired strong temperance given readers his considered opinion as to why A convictions, and achieved apparent financial Voice from the Main Deck became, in effect, a security as a village storekeeper in south central nineteenth-century best seller, while other, Massachusetts. equally interesting sailor autobiographies, ap• As Richard Henry Dana pointed out in his peared in a single printing and then vanished from foreword to the 1857 edition of A Voice from the view save for occasional high-priced sightings in Main Deck, one of the great strengths of Leech's the catalogues of antiquarian book dealers. A book as enlisted autobiography is that the author more contextually complete placing of the book confines his narrative to things he personally and its importance would have made the modern witnessed and emotions he felt at the time. He reader more aware of its overall worth. does not pad the text with copies of official dispatches and other non-personal material. An Christopher McKee equally important strength is that Leech discusses Iowa City, Iowa the motivations for his actions and reflects on his experiences, rather than giving the reader an introspection-free narrative of external events - a Marc Serge Rivière (trans, and ed.).The Gover• failing of certain other much-touted sailor autobi• nor 's Noble Guest: Hyacinthe de Bougainville's ographies. Account of Port Jackson, 1825. Melbourne: Although A Voice from the Main Deck is Miegunyah Press (an imprint of Melbourne often quoted by historians for Leech's heartfelt University Press), 1999. xxvii + 291 pp., appendi• denunciations of flogging in both the British and ces, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. AUS American navies, it is equally an anti-war tract, as $49.95, cloth; ISBN 0-522- 84852-4. witnessed particularly in the ex-sailor's graphic description of death and human suffering in the Hyacinthe de Bougainville (1781-1846) always Macedonian-United States encounter. Indeed, had a hard act to follow. His father was Louis- Leech is so effective a writer, and so committed Antoine de Bougainville (1729-1811), the com• an advocate, that historians have all too often mander of the first French circumnavigation of behaved as if Samuel Leech were the voice from the globe. Bougainville fils entered the navy in that main deck. He should be viewed instead as 1799 and the next year joined Nicolas Baudin's an author, with the more modest role which he expedition as a midshipman on Géographe. What assigned himself - that of a single voice. This might have been a springboard to glory proved book is the latter-day memoir of one middle-aged otherwise. As a result of repeated clashes with his (and sometimes tediously moralistic) adult's commander, Hyacinthe sought voluntary repatria• experiences as a teenage boy. It is important for tion from Port Jackson on Naturaliste in 1803. readers to note then that there may be different Baudin's uncomplimentary report on his young perspectives on lower-deck life to be culled from subordinate might have destroyed his prospects in other, less-prominent autobiographical sources. the navy had his famous father not intervened. Those should be added to, not overridden by, the After the collapse of the Peace of Amiens, views created in this work. Hyacinthe rose steadily through the ranks. He Editor Michael Crawford's introduction and commanded a succession of corvettes and frigates notes are of the excellent standard that one would - when not serving as a senior officer on larger expect from this fine scholar. Maritime and naval men-of-war or languishing as a prisoner of the historians, for whom the history of religion is an British (1814). In 1811, he was made a baron of uncharted sea, will find Crawford's identification the Empire but was also decorated under the of religious figures, prominent and obscure, Bourbon Restoration. He was given command of 116 The Northern Mariner

an expedition in 1824, which visited Bourbon (La While Professor Rivière makes admirable Réunion), Pondicherry, Manila, Macau, Surabaya, use of familiar Australian biographical sources, Port Jackson (Sydney) and Valparaiso in two his textual notes lack symmetry with regard to vessels, Thétis and Espérance. Although French sources. I was very surprised to see no Bougainville was expected to conduct hydro- explanation for the general reader of significant graphic research during the voyage, his mission French scientific figures such as André Thouin was not one of exploration but of political, strate• (after whom a bay is named in Tasmania) and gic and mercantile reportage. A decade after Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire. Their records could Waterloo, a more confident, commercially expan• have been easily had from the Dictionnnaire de sionist France wished to show the flag, seek out biographie française. Furthermore, biographical trading opportunities and gather intelligence in details of Bougainville's officers would have been case of any future war. readily accessible among the dossiers of the This book marries Bougainville's private Service Historique de la Marine. diaries, kept during his return visit to New South Despite its editorial omissions and errors, Wales in 1825, with extracts on Port Jackson from The Governor '$ Noble Guest is yet another beau• the published Journal de la navigation autour du tifully produced Miegunyah book, complemented globe (1837). The former are part of the by a fine selection of illustrations. Like Professor Bougainville family archives now held in the Riviere's earlier translations, it will undoubtedly Archives Nationales in Paris. Among the appendi• prove a valuable historical resource, making ces, Professor Rivière has included a detailed list accessible much candid material on familiar of Bougainville's papers on Australia, his Port names in early Australian history, such as Gover• Jackson journal of 1802, and his confidential nor Brisbane, Nicholas Rossi, John Macarthur, report on the colony's defences. Samuel Marsden, John Piper, Allan Cunningham Although Professor Riviere's translation is and many others. Furthermore, it offers valuable praiseworthy, his explanatory annotations are at descriptions of early Parramatta, Windsor, Liver• times frustrating. Historical translation often pool, the Blue Mountains, Cow Pastures and Emu requires a grounding in numerous fields. It is Plains. From his narrative, Hyacinthe de sometimes difficult for historians and translators Bougainville emerges as a thoroughly likable and to secure the range of expertise required for a erudite individual who very much left his heart in particular project. Nevertheless, there is no substi• Sydney. tute for meticulous checking. Popular reference works such as Frances Bodkin's Encyclopaedia Edward Duyker Botanica (1986), cited by Professor Rivière, Sylvania, New South Wales should be used with caution. Tasmania's majestic Huon pine (famed as a timber for shipbuilding) has not been included in the genus Dacrydium Veres Laszlo and Richard Woodman. The Story of (52) for nearly twenty years; rather it is a member Sail. London: Chatham Publishing; and of the restricted genus Lagarostrobus. The grass Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999. 352 pp., tree used by Australian Aborigines to make spear figures, colour plates, sources and bibliography, shafts (98) and as a source of resin to "fix the index. US $55, CAN $84.95, cloth; ISBN points of spears" (195) was the Xanthorrhoea, 1-55750-896-8. Canadian distributor, Vanwell which can be seen in Joseph Lycett's illustration Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. on the dust jacket of this book. Professor Riviere's square-bracketed textual inclusion, The title naturally invites comparison to Richard Dracophyllum milllganii, a member of the Woodman's History of the Ship, which might be Epacridaceae family found only in Tasmania, is considered a condensed version of the same a serious ethnographic and botanical mistake. firm's twelve-volume History of the Ship series. There are others. The "white-coloured myrtle" in In fact, the layout and intention of the work being the botanic gardens (65) is unlikely to have been reviewed is substantially different. Melaleuca acuminata, since this was first col• The illustrator and author, Veres Laszlo, is a lected many years later. Indeed the botanist who graphic artist and free-lance book-illustrator who described it, Ferdinand von Mueller, was bom in lives in southwestern Hungary. Over the past the same year Bougainville visited Port Jackson. twenty years, he has amassed a remarkable collec- Book Reviews 117

tion of illustrations and plans of ships, which between the eighteenth-century frigate, hekboat, currently totals about 1300 items. In part, to solve barque, pink, flute and cat, vessels which sailed in the question of storing this large collection, he the Baltic, as well as those dealing with the craft developed a technique of reducing the plans to a of the western Mediterranean - pinque, polacre, scale of 1:200. Over a thousand of these plans are barque, tartane, chebec, and felucca - and the reproduced here, along with sixteen coloured material which considers the craft which sailed on plates, which illustrate everything from a Viking the coasts of Arabia and East Africa, such as the long ship to a modern Polish sail-training ship, ghanja and baggala. and demonstrate his skill, developed as a medical The work is thoroughly indexed and the illustrator, in handling the air-brush. sources on which the artist depended for each The explanatory text which accompanies the entry are indicated. Because of its encyclopaedic drawings is the work of Richard Woodman, who nature, this volume would make a useful addition as a writer extremely well qualified for the job. to the library reference shelf, but will be appreci• He is best known to many of us as the author of ated by anyone who just enjoys browsing. fourteen nautical historical novels, which use the Napoleonic wars as background and feature his John Harland hero, Nathaniel Drinkwater. But it is when it Kelowna, BC comes to the general field of ships and the sea that his expertise is most impressive. He is a maritime historian of stature, being the author of the defini• Granville Allen Mawer. Ahab's Trade: The Saga tive book on the Arctic convoys (1994), and of a of South Seas Whaling. New York: St. Martin's forthcoming work on the Malta convoys. A Press, 1999. xv + 347 pp., glossary, index, bibli• master mariner who spent a total of thirty-one ography, maps, illustrations. US $29.95, cloth; years at sea, eleven of them in command, he is a ISBN 0-312-22809-0. keen yachtsman, with square-rig experience, acquired sailing in the replica of Endeavour and Granville Allen Mawer has undertaken to write the brig Royalist. for a general audience an overview of South Seas Starting with a consideration of primitive sail whaling in the eighteenth and nineteenth centu• and the beginnings of seafaring with Egyptian and ries. He dwells chiefly on the American sperm Roman vessels, Viking ships and medieval gal• whalers, claiming that "[i]t was they who broke leys, we move on to the story of the cogs, caravels whaling out of the ice of the North Atlantic and and carracks, and the great galleys of the Venetian led it south to become the first truly global republic. Then the stories of the development of industry." the Dutch, English and French navies in the Tracing the sperm whale fishery from its seventeenth century; the development of the inception in the early eighteenth century off the frigate; the ships of the American Continental and Atlantic coast of the American colonies, he Federal Navy are told. The section on commercial follows it into the South Atlantic and around Cape sail in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centu• Horn and the Cape of Good Hope as new grounds ries covers the types of vessels found in British became accessible. In the Pacific, where Herman and in northern waters and offers a selection of Melville's legendary Captain Ahab pursued his plans of clipper ships, plus profiles of mammoth Moby Dick, American whalers led an interna• steel sailing vessels, like Preussen, which epito• tional race that scoured the ocean to its farthest mised the last days of commercial sail. This is seas. By the latter half of the nineteenth century followed by a discussion of the smaller coastal the sperm whale fishery went into serious decline, craft of Britain, the Mediterranean, North Africa though the last of the New Bedford wooden and the Red Sea, as well as the fishing craft of the whalers made short voyages through the First Mediterranean and of North America, including World War. the schooners which fished on the Grand Banks. Mawer touches on the industry's progress The final chapters comprise a section on yachts through innovative new technology, marketing and yachting; scientific and exploration vessels, strategies, political arrangements, bold forays into and sail training ships. unknown seas, and perseverance in finding new The most interesting and useful sections of grounds when the over-exploited ones became the book are those that discuss the differences depleted. He concludes that the wooden whalers 118 The Northern Mariner had little, if any, impact on overall numbers of the reader puzzled by a reference to something or sperm whales. someone fifty or more pages back. Fifteen little The international character of early sperm boxed descriptions further complicate the text's whaling and the competition for oil and markets flow. They describe the making of spermaceti are discussed, emphasizing the pursuit by prag• candles, the trade in sperm teeth to South Pacific matic Nantucket colonists of opportunity to islanders, scrimshaw, various aspects of life on a continue whaling from England and France in the whaling ship, and the actual engagement between face of America's revolution. We are told spar• whaler and whale. ingly of British initiative in sending the first Mawer's miscellany includes more than the whaler around Cape Horn into the Pacific and of usual collection of whaling lore. His reporting, for Spanish, French and British hostility during the instance, of the efforts of Lieutenant Charles wars of the late eighteenth century. Wilkes, USN, on behalf of the safety and success The book claims five maps and thirty-three of American whalers is not common fare. Be• illustrations but fails to list in the front thirteen tween 1838 and 1842, Wilkes' small squadron very handsome colour plates. Endnotes are in• explored and surveyed the Southern Ocean, cluded. The glossary does not explain a number of charting coastlines, islands, reefs and shoals, and terms that will be unfamiliar to a general audi• attempted to arrange for the peaceful reception of ence. "Lay," a word referring to whaling grews' visiting American whaling ships to the area. pay, is given in the text the mystifying definition, Further, based on his study of ocean currents, he "net of the small stores." One is not told that it devised, with input from successful whalers, a will be fully discussed on pages 109-112. This is model of whale density correlated to abundance one example of a number of inadequate explana• of squid carried by those currents. He even tions and obscure references which, unfortunately, worked out departure times from New England to are rather common. get whalers to the various grounds at the best time Mawer's telling of history is so hurried, so of the whaling season. glossed over, that a newcomer to the literature Newcomers to whaling literature will proba• needs Edouard Stackpole's Whales and Destiny at bly find this collection of anecdotes and descrip• his elbow to find out what was going on. Allu• tions interesting. As a serious history, it may be sions to events or dates are not enough: a time disappointing. But, then, Mawer did warn us! line would have been helpful. His intent, Mawer announces, is to evoke the past as much as to Joan Goddard explain it, confessing that: Victoria, British Columbia

[t]he narrative is self-indulgent. It can• not be trusted at any particular point in Kevin Littlewood and Beverley Butler. Of Ships time to be discussing the most important and Stars. London: Athlone Press and the Na• matters in the industry, but I hope that it tional Maritime Museum, 1998. xxiv + 275 pp., will always be attending to the most black and white photographs, appendices, notes, interesting and revealing. (6) index. £35.00, hardcover; ISBN 0-485-11537-9; £ 16.95, paperback; ISBN 0-485-12146-8. Distrib• His aversion for "the tyranny of chronological uted in Canada, the United States and South narrative" has strongly influenced his treatment of America by Transaction Publishers, 390 Campus the subject. Mawer devotes whole chapters to the Drive, Somerset, New Jersey, 08873. colourful aspects of sperm whaling, such as whaling gear and the hunt itself; processing Of Ships and Stars is perhaps a misnomer. This whales; personal aspects of the whaler's life, such book is not about ships or stars and it is not a as pay, living conditions, discipline; and horrify• catalogue of the National Maritime Museum at ing stories of mutiny. This is the stuff he loves. Greenwich, although it does indeed explain how The book, a combination of history, anecdote the museum obtained some of its artifacts. and description, is organized to present the Instead, it is mainly about the creation and devel• themes in alternate chapters, naming the descrip• opment of one of the world's best museums, one tive chapters "tailpieces." The resultant padding that attempts to explain aspects of British seafar• between the historical narrative chapters leaves ing, navigational astronomy and time-keeping. Book Reviews 119

Histories of maritime museums are, accord• sity College, London. Together they have ing to the introduction, rare commodities. Perhaps authored a book free of grammatical and typo• this is because there are so few, and many are graphical errors that is interesting to read, which small and newly formed. Here is one attempt to makes it a pleasurable read. It certainly whets analyse how a museum got started and how it fit one's appetite to visit or revisit Greenwich. Even in with already established museums (Imperial though I have visited twice, this book makes me War Museum, Science Museum, Royal Naval crave to return for an even deeper examination. Museum, and National Portrait Gallery). The book deals mainly with the early phases of the David H. Gray rise of interest in the maritime past and the emer• Ottawa, Ontario gence of the modem maritime museum move• ment. It addresses the lifestyle differences be• tween the Victorian and Edwardian eras and the Parker Bishop Albee, Jr. Letters from Sea, 1882- post-Second World War era, with television and 1901: Joanna and Lincoln Colcord's Seafaring competing commercializations. The book for• Childhood. Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House and mally stops in 1967 because that is the cut-off Searsport, ME: Penobscot Marine Museum, 1999. date for access to certain public documents xxiii + 168 pp., map, photographs, select bibliog• needed to write a proper history. Nevertheless, raphy, index. US $35, cloth; ISBN 0-88448-214- Roger Knight, the museum's deputy director, 6. Distributed in Canada by Fitzhenry & White• summarizes those thirty years in the final chapter. side, Markham, ON. The Museum's history starts around the 1860s, with the International Exhibition at South Grief-stricken by the sudden death of his sea- Kensington and the Admiralty's transfer of ship captain father in 1913, the blossoming Maine models and engines to the South Kensington writer, Lincoln Colcord, Jr., found consolation in Museum. The Museum's buildings at Greenwich sorting out the family's store of seafaring letters, - the Old Royal Observatory, which was actively until then left neglected in the attic of their used as part of the time service into the 1950s; the Searsport home. Inspired by the memories they Hospital and Asylum, founded in 1805 to look evoked of a childhood spent partly at sea, he after orphans from the Napoleonic War; and the embarked on a programme of transcribing them, Queen's House, which dates to the early 1600s - and then, with his sister, Joanna, binding the are woven into the history. The buildings at collation into a coherent narrative with a running Greenwich were also the home of the Royal commentary. It was a task fated apparently to be Naval College and the Royal Naval Museum. The unfinished, for it was put down at the start of the situating of a seafaring museum at Greenwich First World War and never resumed. Fortunately, must also be put in the context of the alleged however, the unfolding yam was taken up by inaccessibility in a pre-automobile age outside a Professor Parker Bishop Albee, Jr., Curator of the much smaller city of London. Lincoln Colcord papers. His efforts have resulted The Museum was created largely out of the in this very handsome volume. personal collection of a wealthy shipowner, Sir Both Lincoln and Joanna were bom on James Caird, and the scholarly and enthusiastic shipboard during their parents' honeymoon first director, Sir Geoffrey Callender. These two voyage on Charlotte A. Littlefield, 1881-1883. gentlemen orchestrated the restoration of HMS This, in that time and setting, was not uncommon: Victory and then acquired much of the art, arti• Joanna wrote afterward that the briny wave had facts and manuscripts that make the museum so been the birthplace of more than seventy citizens outstanding. Later successes by the Museum were of the small town of Searsport. Nor was it extraor• Cutty Sark and the clocks of John Harrison. The dinary that the Colcord children should go on the book does a good job of exploring the personali• occasional voyage with their parents, either ties that created and developed the museum, as separately or together, at intermittent intervals well as describing the many frustrations en route. over the years 1889 to 1901. What was unusual According to the dust jacket notes, Kevin was Lincoln's intense response to the experience. Littlewood is a freelance writer and researcher in In the spring of 1899, when Lincoln was not London and Beverley Butler is a lecturer in quite seventeen years old, Captain Colcord was museum studies and cultural heritage at Univer• given command of the great square-rigger, State 120 The Northern Mariner

of Maine, for the first of four China voyages and, that captivates this author, who argues that the while he took his wife and daughter along, the true historical significance of the White Star liner decision was made to leave Lincoln at home. It is revealed only when the "text" of the myth is was a good choice, made by wise and caring properly "decoded." Undertaking this task, parents who were very aware that all the time an Howells charts a complex course which includes adolescent boy was at sea, he was not learning the an excursion through Edwardian popular culture, skills that would serve him well in adult life. If an exploration of myth formation, and an exami• Lincoln stayed too long on board ship, the only nation of the persistently mythic elements of the occupation open to him would be seafaring - and western mind up to and including our own day. this at a time when it was obvious that the demise Altogether, staking a bold claim, Howells pur• of the square-rigger trade was imminent. For ports to offer "the first serious analysis of the Lincoln, however, it was a heartbreak he never Titanic as myth." (3) Taken in the most strict and got over. The disappointment, he wrote, "marked literal sense, this is probably true. Thus, Howells my character for all time. I never recovered from brings the full arsenal of myth-analysis, from it." (77) This book, being a direct result of this Malinowski through Geertz, to bear on his sub• obsession, offers a most privileged view into a ject. But stripped of all this theoretical baggage, seafaring family's private joys and pains. one wonders just how much he adds to our gen• The photographs are a particular delight, eral understanding of the matter. With some many of the best being the work of young Joanna, justice, for example, John Wilson Foster might who carried a camera on State of Maine. Gener• dispute the unalloyed claim to originality. His ous captions mean that Letters from Sea could be Titanic Complex (reviewed here in January 1999) read as a coffee-table book without referring to anticipated many of Howells' observations, while the text. This would be a pity because the reader drawing on a broader range of evidence over a would miss out on Captain Colcord's marvel• longer period of time. In fairness, Howells and lously vigorous writing style, so eloquent of his Foster were writing almost simultaneously. Thus, humour, love of the sea, deep regard for his it would be understandable if the former were family, and basic decency. unaware of the latter. Howells, moreover, pens If Lincoln Colcord had recommenced the the more coherent of the two books. Still, while task of collating this volume after reaching matu• illuminating in detail, his general assertions strike rity as a noted writer and literary critic, he could the reader with something less than the force of have edited out some repetitious material and put blinding revelation. ships' names in italics instead of upper case. Accordingly, after theorists from Lévi- Unfortunately, this last is reflected in the index, Strauss to Adorno have been cited, after function- which also lists ships with people's names as if alism and the Annales school have been con• they were people themselves, surname first. Thus, sulted, we are told that the Edwardians interpreted the barque Charlotte A. Littlefield is indexed as Titanic's story through the filters of gender, race, LITTLEFIELD, CHARLOTTE A. But these are and class. Further, in their quest to find meaning minor flaws. This is a book that will live with the in the face of tragedy, they applied the age-old reader a long time, a highly recommended addi• hubris-nemesis formula to what, in fact, was a tion to the collection of any maritime enthusiast simple accident, while also transforming avoid• or social historian. able disaster into moral triumph. So, what's new? Howells is at his best when describing the cultural Joan Druett mechanisms at work in all this, but even here it is Wellington, New Zealand possible to take issue with some of his method• ological assertions. For example, he is clearly enamoured of Robert Darnton and others who Richard Howells. The Myth of the Titanic. New probe historical mentalités, a term that he trans• York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. xii + 213 pp., lates too loosely as "attitudes."(2) More properly, photo plates, notes, bibliography and sources, this concept is rendered in English as "para• index. US $29.95, cloth; ISBN 0-312-22148-7. digms," structures of thought that embrace the "thinkable" for the whole of society at any given There are, says Howells, two Titanics: the physi• moment in time. Thus, historians such as Darnton cal vessel and the enduring myth. It is the latter scour all levels of cultural expression, popular and Book Reviews 121 elite, in search of an era's "mentality." Howells, thesis. by contrast, excludes daily news articles as ephe• Although Feuer adds little to our understand• meral, and contemporary informed dissent by the ing of the deployment and effectiveness of the US likes of Conrad and Shaw as literary and, there• Navy in World War I, he succeeds on another fore, marginal. He rivets, instead, particularly on level. He has a crisp writing style and an eye for two commemorative articles that set the tone for a good story. In twenty-four essays, some only the Titanic myth. To some extent, his point is three or four pages in length, he covers a wide perhaps well taken, but this highly selective range of topics, including aerial photo reconnais• approach to the evidence leaves one wondering sance and balloons, the Yangtze Patrol, the how much of the complex Edwardian mentality Otranto and North Sea barrages, convoy duty, he has truly captured. This concern is only ampli• subchasers, ship construction (including experi• fied when one considers that Howells himself mental concrete ships and the "unsinkable ship" perpetuates a long-discredited myth. He describes - which alas did sink - that was fitted with 6000 the disaster as having transpired at a time of water-tight wooden boxes), and the operations of "enormous national self-confidence." (156) the Naval Air Force in the North Sea, Adriatic Yet this was the era of invasion scares, of and elsewhere. This mixture may be a recipe for Home Rule and suffragette turmoil, and of all the Maconochie's stew, but it certainly is not as many anxieties documented by Samuel Hynes, indigestible as the infamous British Great War Barbara Tuchman and others who have charted ration. One of the most interesting essays de• the mentality of the age. For those who wish to scribes how homing pigeons saved the lives of fathom the mind of that prewar generation, there naval aviators. Carried in a cage behind the pilot's are more subtle guides than Howells. All told, this seat, pigeons informed rescuers where the aircraft is an interesting work, but neither the student of had gone down in the treacherous North Sea. Titanic nor those familiar with the Edwardian turn There is none of the anti-war sentiment of mind will find it wholly revelatory. found in the works of the trench poets in these first-hand accounts. Action, glory and heroism James G. Greenlee replace images of rotting corpses, futile attacks, Comer Brook, Newfoundland and blundering generals. The reader, for example, is provided with the mental picture of hundreds of sailors bobbing in the sea singing patriotic A.B. Feuer. The U.S. Navy in World War I: songs such as the "Star Spangled Banner" and Combat at Sea and in the Air. Westport, CT, "The Navy Took Them Over, and the Navy Will Praeger Publishers, 1999. xii + 244 pp., index, Bring Them Back" while awaiting rescue after select bibliography, maps, photographs, glossary. their warship, San Diego, was sunk by a mine. US $55.00, cloth; ISBN 0-275-96212-1. Although not recommended for graduate or research collections, this work will find an audi• A freelance newspaper and magazine journalist, ence among many World War I enthusiasts who who served in the US Navy from 1943 to 1946, desire an intimate description of the war up close A.B. Feuer has written a most curious book. The from the perspective of American sailors and title is somewhat misleading. The introduction, an naval aviators. essay on camouflage, does not introduce the book. As much as one-half of the text is quoted mate• David R. Woodward rial, yet there are no footnotes. The bibliography Huntington, West Virginia includes three books, none of which is among the standard works on the role of the US Navy in World War I. The rest of the bibliography consists Garry Cranford. Tidal Wave: A List of Victims of a handful of magazine and newspaper accounts and Survivors, Newfoundland, 1929. St. John's, and a short list of unpublished memoirs, letters NF: Flanker Press, 1999. xxv + 264 pp., glossary, and photographs. The reader is given no informa• index, maps. CAN $14.95, paper; ISBN 1- tion on where these unpublished materials can be 894463-08-0. found. If this book were to be judged only on its mechanics and depth of scholarship, it almost This book is essentially a presentation of the certainly would not be found acceptable as an MA documentation housed in the Newfoundland 122 The Northern Mariner

archives pertaining to the 1929 Burin Peninsula some however, is the omission of the "Total tidal wave disaster, published here as a compila• payout" figure for all but a few of the affected tion of raw data intended to facilitate further communities, following the "Total losses." The research and to inspire more books on the subject. sizeable difference between the two, especially in As the title clearly states, it is a list, arranged those cases where no compensation whatsoever alphabetically by community, or "settlement," of was granted, seems to me a necessary statement which there are about fifty; and by survivors of the harsh reality of the limits of earthquake within each community, alphabetically by family relief which consisted entirely of charitable (over 800). Each family name is accompanied by donations and not at all likely to be perceived as a list of possessions damaged by the tidal wave an indictment of the committee. Likewise the and an estimate of the cost followed by the inclusion of a portion of what appears to be part amount of financial aid granted, if any. The index of a recent road map of Newfoundland, which of family and place names provides a useful and unfortunately gives a rather inadequate view of convenient tool for the reader with specific re• the area affected by the disaster; a much larger search in mind. The names of the twenty-seven and more legible map of the Burin Peninsula, people who perished are italicised and presented preferably at the time, would be a valuable im• with their community, but might perhaps have provement. These minor quibbles aside, Tidal been better served by a separate list or some Wave fulfils its promise to readers and supplies a special mention in the index. rich store of unexploited material to researchers I confess that I was initially reluctant to read interested in this unique occurrence in Newfound• a book of lists, expecting it to be tedious and land history, who undoubtedly await the publica• impersonal at best, but was quite pleasantly tion of other books with personal accounts, even surprised to realize how much such data actually photographs if available, relating the catastrophe conveys and how interesting it proves to be. in more detail. Moreover, Cranford wisely includes several excerpts from the Report of the South Coast Scott Jamieson Disaster Committee which was responsible for Corner Brook, Newfoundland relief to the thousands of people affected. The content of the declarations that victims were required to submit in order to qualify for compen• Abram Kean (ed. Shannon Ryan). Old and Young sation provides not only a rich data base for future Ahead. St. John's, NF: Flanker Press, 2000. 154 work but also a considerable amount of detail pp., illustrations, photographs, index. $14.95, illustrating the way of life of fishing families at paper; ISBN 1-894463-06-4. the time. The lists are terse, necessarily repetitious and in fact probably not at all meant to be read This book was originally published in 1935 under from cover to cover. The reader's eye is likely to the title Old and Young Ahead: A Millionaire in scan over them rapidly and focus mainly on Seals, being the Life History of Captain Abram essential details: age and number of those who Kean, O. B. E. Kean was a captain in the New• perished and of surviving family members, esti• foundland seal hunt for forty-seven years, spent mated value and kinds of possessions lost and twenty years in the cod fishery, was a member of finally the much lower amount of compensation the House of Assembly and the Legislative provided (usually limited to a portion of replace• Council, and operated vessels in the Newfound• ment costs for a boat, stage, nets, lines to enable land coastal service. His personal life was marked the fisherman to fish). An occasional brief sen• by a curious marriage at age seventeen to his tence is added (by Magistrate Hollett?) to under• family's housekeeper, who was seven years his line particularly worthy cases. The rare indication senior. Surprisingly, his autobiography makes for of the amount of "cash in hand" reflects the sad very dull reading. financial predicament of so many fishing families This re-issue includes an introduction, in early twentieth-century Newfoundland. editor's endnotes, an index, and additional photo• Flanker Press has done a very good job graphs. While the photographs are welcome, the producing this book: the number of very minor introduction, endnotes, and index are perfunctory. typographical or proofreading errors is so low that Occasionally the editor attempts to shed light on they are scarcely worth mentioning. More irk• some of the people and subjects mentioned in the Book Reviews 123

original text, but there is no rhyme or reason as to old sea dogs write their autobiographies? Answer: why he chooses to illuminate some and not others. Because they can. Also, why the introduction should follow, and not precede, the original foreword by Sir Wilfred James E. Candow Grenfell is anybody's guess. The editor states that Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Kean's autobiography is "the first-hand account of sealing of [sic] Newfoundland's greatest sealing captain and is intrinsically valuable be• B.J.C. McKercher. Transition of Power. Britain's cause of that." Yet, as the editor admits, Kean Loss of Global Pre-eminence to the United States, devoted more space to other subjects than to 1930-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University sealing, and it is also true that the information he Press, 1999. xii + 403 pp., notes, bibliography, did offer on sealing adds little to our knowledge index. £40, cloth; ISBN 0-521-440-904. of the subject. This is not so much an autobiography as a The appearance in 1987 of Paul Kennedy's book catalogue of boasts and accomplishments, as The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers has underscored by the sub-title of the original edi• spawned a virtual cottage industry of scholarship, tion. We are reminded ad nauseam that Kean was the objective of which is to assess the validity of the first captain to land over a million seal pelts Kennedy's thesis about the ebb and flow of during his career. His first son "was destined to international economic and military power over become probably the most popular young man in the past five centuries. Of particular interest to Newfoundland" (7); his trip from Trinity to scholars, Brian McKercher among them, has been Sydney, Nova Scotia, and thence to St. John's Kennedy's interpretation of the eclipse of Great with a load of coal in 1888 "was said to have been Britain in the twentieth century as the greatest of the quickest on record" (19); his voyage to the the great powers and its replacement by the seal hunt as captain of SS Wolf in 1889 was, American giant on the other side of the Atlantic. again, "the quickest trip on record." (21) Kean The steady erosion of Britain's share of global tells us (57) that his studies of the lives of great manufacturing output in the late nineteenth cen• men revealed that the true mark of greatness is the tury, and the deleterious effects of the Great War ability to overcome problems; just in case we on British financial resources, Kennedy insists, miss the point, he reminds us that he survived meant that John Bull had already passed the torch three shipwrecks. to Uncle Sam by 1918. Kennedy sees confirma• Real meaning and insight are missing. tion of British decline in the loss of financial Kean's account of his role in the horrific New• influence - as New York rose to challenge Lon• foundland sealing disaster of 1914 takes up only don as the financial capital of the world - and the one page, but he devotes five to the impact of surrender of Britain's naval dominance with the roving dogs on the quality of dried fish. Kean Washington Treaty of 1922. McKercher disagrees attributed Newfoundland's loss of responsible with this view, asserting that the period from 1930 government in 1934 to the immorality and irre• to 1945 represents the critical time-frame when sponsibility of its public men, an argument the Britain gradually lost its "global pre-eminence" to editor quite rightly rebuts. Kean saw economic the United States. To be sure, this is not simply a salvation for Newfoundland in the development narrow debate about when one state supplanted of agriculture, then as always a pipe dream. another as the number one power but rather, as Indeed, with public men like Kean, the real McKercher successfully argues, it is about the wonder is that Newfoundland did not experience inevitability of British decline and the very nature economic and political collapse long before 1934. of power in the international system. If a re-issue with a nautical theme was abso• McKercher's book begins with an effective lutely necessary, there was far better material to discussion of the nature of international power hand - for example, The Log of Bob Bartlett, which challenges Kennedy's somewhat which offers genuine insight into the fishery, seal reductionist concept of power as a nation's ability hunt, and Newfoundland culture in general, all to translate its wealth into military prowess. In its served up with pathos and a self-deprecating place, the author offers what he describes as a sense of humour. Kean's book calls to mind an "subtler" definition. Embracing the view of old joke, which I paraphrase: Question: Why do scholars such as Gordon Mattel, McKercher 124 The Northern Mariner

suggests that in a basic sense "power determines ent historical traditions of involvement in world who gets what, when, where and how." But power affairs, strategic calculations based on these is not only relative among states but is also, as the traditions and the realities of geography, imperial author perceptively notes, "relative according to defence (especially naval) considerations and circumstance, to the way particular situations even the will of policymakers. mould it, and by it not transcending time and McKercher has produced a valuable contri• space unaltered." bution to the ever-growing literature on interwar Using this definition of power, McKercher international relations, naval disarmament, and then turns to an examination of the attempts by rearmament issues. His analysis not only expands British and American policymakers to use the our understanding of Anglo-American relations in means at their disposal to shape and respond to this period but also effectively places this rela• international developments in the period 1930- tionship in a much broader, international context. 1945. This era began with much promise, as The main weakness in this book is the lim• Britain and the United States eased tensions in ited attention given to the wartime period, espe• their relations, chiefly as a result of the London cially after 1941. As Richard Overy has demon• Naval Conference which brought to an end the strated in his superb Why the Allies Won, it is the Anglo-American naval rivalry of the 1920s. Naval period from 1940 to 1943 that dramatically trans• historians and those readers interested more formed the hierarchy of the Great Powers and set generally in sea power will find much of interest the stage for the postwar dominance of the US. As in the chapter on the London Naval Conference. Overy astutely points out, the prodigious efforts McKercher agrees with the view recently put of the American economy during the war sur• forth by Greg Kennedy that the London Naval prised everyone, including the Americans them• Agreement in no way represented a surrender of selves. Britain's decline, particularly in naval British naval supremacy in the face of the Amer• matters, and America's rise, may have been ican challenge. As McKercher concludes, in 1930, predictable after 1940, particularly after the fall of as in 1921, Britain surrendered the symbol but not France, but the 1940-1943 era deserves close the substance of sea power to the United States, study to plot this "transition of power" in detail. especially when one considers Britain's massive The above reservation aside, this is a fine lead in merchant shipping and that resource is example of international history that goes beyond added to the preponderance of fighting ships. The the view from one national capital. book speaks on a wide range of maritime issues, aimed at coming to grips with which of the two Michael L. Roi nations did indeed maintain a superiority in naval Toronto, Ontario power after 1930 and how. Although the end of Anglo-American naval rivalry opened the way to future cooperation of Gerhard Koop and Klaus-Peter Schmolke. Pocket the two principal "English Speaking Powers" in Battleships of the Deutschland Class. London: upholding international peace and security, as the Greenhill Books, 2000. 224 pp., tables, index, decade progressed the divergent views and inter• bibliography, diagrams, photographs, illustrations. ests of these powers militated against a common £25.00, cloth; ISBN 1-85367-402-8. approach in dealing with the rise of Nazi Ger• many in Europe and an aggressive Japan in Asia. As Europe embarked upon disaster in 1914, In fact, McKercher shows clearly and repeatedly Germany's navy hoped that it would be able to that British policymakers were to a much greater defeat its British foes. But except for early raids degree than their American counterparts engaged and a tactical victory (but strategic defeat) at in dealing with the series of international difficul• Jutland in 1916, Germany could not challenge the ties of the 1930s, starting with the Japanese superiority of the Royal Navy. At war's end, the invasion of Manchuria through the Italo-Ethiopian fleet mutinied rather than accept orders to sally war to the Czech and Polish crises at the end of forth in a suicidal last gasp at glory, and much of the decade. In other words, Britain exerted more it was scuttled when the victorious allies de• influence than the US in international affairs until manded that it be handed over to them. Events did 1939. McKercher attributes greater British influ• not unfold much better in the Second World War. ence to a combination of factors, including differ• Definitely the "weak sister" of Germany's vast Book Reviews 125

military apparatus, and often overshadowed by better than it had got (HMS Essex had been forced the exploits and sacrifices of the U-boats, the from the battle with heavy casualties and consid• surface ships of the Kriegsmarine, with the nota• erable damage), the German ship had taken ble exception of the doomed Bismarck, remain enough damage that it could not be repaired mostly forgotten. within seventy-two hours, the maximum period In Pocket Battleships of the Deutschland allowed a belligerent warship in a neutral port. Class, Gerhard Koop and Klaus-Peter Schmolke With British warships hovering on the horizon, have outlined magnificently the history of a class Captain zur See Langsdorff disembarked most of of German warship - Deutschland/Lutzow, Admi• his crew before scuttling his ship. Half the sailors ral Scheer, and Admiral GrafSpee - three "polit• accepted internment; the rest opted to return to ical ships" designed to "bring Germany political Germany, while Langsdorff committed suicide. respectability within international naval treaties This book is chock full of useful and fasci• and win allies." (220) They discuss in exhaustive nating diagrams, maps, and dozens of extraordi• detail the development in the 1920s of what nary photographs that add greatly to the narrative. became the Deutschland class. The first large Though the ships' various technical details are ships to be equipped exclusively with diesel highlighted, so too are the social aspects of a power plants, the Panzerschiff, with their heavy cramped shipboard life. Two cases of human armament, light armour, and long range, were interest stand out in the narrative: Adolf Hitler's viewed as ideal commerce raiders. Many of participation in the 1937 burial of the dead mem• Germany's potential foes thought that the ships bers of Deutschland''s crew and photographs of violated the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty's Langsdorff s funeral in Argentina. The technical limitations on size, in spirit if not technically. material, along with the useful text, make this a The authors then proceed to discuss the reference book well worth having. unhappy operational histories of the three vessels. Deutschland, eventually renamed Lutzow to avoid Galen Roger Perras an embarrassing propaganda defeat if such a Lennoxville, Québec national symbol were lost, suffered casualties and heavy damage in May 1937 in an attack by two Spanish Republican aircraft in the Mediterranean. Michael J. Whitley. Battleships of World War II: In April 1940 Lutzow took minor damage from a An International Encyclopedia. Annapolis: Naval Norwegian shore battery before it was hit by a Institute Press, 1998.320 pp., illustrations, photo• torpedo from a British submarine. Left powerless graphs, bibliography. US $55, CAN $84.95, and rudderless, the ship was lucky to survive, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-184-X. Canadian distribu• although it did not go to sea again for almost a tor, Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. year. Lutzow eventually met its fate in early May 1945, when it was scuttled in the Baltic Sea to This valuable book is another installment in M.J. avoid capture by Soviet forces. Admiral Scheer Whitley's series of excellent single-volume was only slightly more fortunate. Having man• reference works detailing different classes of aged to avoid the attack on Deutschland in 1937, Second World War warships. Battleships of Admiral Scheer had a fairly undistinguished World War Two follows the author's earlier career, first in commerce raiding and later as a publications on destroyers and cruisers. In the training ship before it capsized in April 1945 after present volume, Whitley describes more than 100 being struck in port by allied bombers. capital ships (not exclusively battleships, despite Admiral Graf Spee's operational career the title). The "basic criteria for inclusion" was a proved far shorter. In late 1939 the ship sunk nine ship's "existence in September 1939 or having merchant vessels in less than two months. Such been laid down but not necessarily completed success did not go unnoticed, and soon Graf Spee before August 1945." Coastal defence ships and had no fewer than twenty-nine British and French monitors are not included, although capital ships warships on its trail. On 13 December 1939, two from neutral navies are listed. So Sweden's small British and one New Zealand cruiser found their First World War-vintage capital ships (7600 tons quarry off the coast of Uruguay, leading to a day• fully loaded) are described because they were long battle before Graf Spee took refuge in Mon• armed with four eleven-inch guns. These ships, tevideo harbour. Though Graf Spee had given coastal defence ship/armoured cruiser hybrids, are 126 The Northern Mariner

the smallest considered, while Japan's Yamato Whitley has assembled some fabulous photo• and Musashi are obviously the largest. graphs among the 250 plates included in the book, Whitley provides a brief introduction detail• including many from the Imperial War Museum ing the evolution of the battleship from the mid- and some from his own collection. There are nineteenth century until the Second World War. some particularly stunning photographs of Pro• There follows a profusely-illustrated country-by- vence, Richelieu, Gneisenau, Queen Elizabeth, country listing in which the ships are introduced Hood, Rodney, Duke of York, Texas and Tennes• chronologically by class. The narrative is orga• see. Although the line drawings for each class are nized as follows: initial design characteristics; not especially revealing, Whitley's concise text structural, technical and armaments modifications contains few obvious errors. This is a fine, useful during service life; and prewar, wartime and book. postwar operational histories and fate of each capital ship. This method provides an abundance Serge Durflinger of information, with easy cross-referencing Ottawa, Ontario between classes and individual ships. One drawback is the book's lack of meaning• ful discussion of the strategic context facing each Thomas C. Hone, Norman Friedman and Mark D. nation. Each country's entry normally begins with Mandeles. American and British Aircraft Carrier a description of the first class of ships and much Development, 1919-1941. Annapolis: Naval of the critical technical information. Unfortu• Institute Press, 1999. x + 249 pp., photographs, nately, the operational history which then follows notes, bibliography, index. US $39.95, CAN sinks into a strategic vacuum. Similarly, there are $61.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-382-6. Canadian no summations of each nation's battle fleet expe• distributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, riences. The little analysis is subordinated to the ON. mass of information. The largest entry is that for the United States The First World War was marked by three devel• (twenty-five ships). Readers are reminded of the opments in naval strategy and technology: tele• staggering anti-aircraft protection aboard Amer• communications, submarines, and the beginnings ican battlewagons by 1944; that many were hit by of shipborne attack and fighter aircraft. While Kamikazes; that most of the battleships damaged most navies adopted the first two, only three or sunk at Pearl Harbor returned to service; and nations - the United States, Great Britain, and that the majority of US battleships were of First Japan - pushed aggressively to adopt the third. World War vintage. It is also interesting to read of After 1918, the US and Royal navies developed the lesser-known nations, such as Argentina and the aircraft carrier into an effective instrument of Brazil. The book is full of fascinating and little- war. (Due to the lack of documentation, undoubt• known incidents about the ships of those nations. edly caused by the destruction of World War For example, who remembers that the dread• Two, the Imperial Japanese Navy's development nought Sao Paulo provided seaward defence of of aircraft carriers is less understood.) Recife from 1942 to 1945? That Royal Sovereign American and British Aircraft Carrier Devel• was transferred to the Soviet Union in May 1944 opment is a thorough, scholarly book on the and served as Archangelsk until handed back to American and British approaches to aircraft Britain in 1949? That Revenge bombarded Cher• carrier development in the interwar period. An bourg in October 1940? Or how rarely Italian appendix deals with the known evidence of the capital ships put to sea due to crippling fuel Japanese approach. The entire book reads at times shortages? Whitley also notes that in August like a business school master's or doctoral thesis 1945, King George V became the last British based on a conceptual analysis of the develop• capital ship to fire its guns in anger when it ment of a new product. As such, it is a valuable shelled targets on the Japanese mainland. While addition to the growing body of naval historical several battleships are still in existence as mu• literature. seum ships in the US, the last operational survi• The authors begin by describing pre-World vors from this period are the /ovra-class, all four War One attempts to bring aircraft into a naval of which are in fleet reserve in America. environment. While these were unfruitful due to The book offers good production value, and the fragile nature of early planes, the results did Book Reviews 127

indicate that technical advances held promise. of prewar events, I would not recommend it as a This raised these issues. Could aircraft be inte• "first read" for someone unfamiliar with naval grated into naval services and, if so, how? The aviation or aircraft carriers. It is, however, ideal authors focus on the US Navy's General Board for those with an interest and some expertise in decisions. In the effort to build aircraft carriers, those areas. the USN was unwittingly helped by the Army Air Corps, whose famous bombings of captured Robert L. Shoop World War One German warships gave aircraft Colorado Springs, Colorado carrier proponents additional evidence to strengthen their case that if land-based bombers could indeed sink ships at sea, then naval units Winthrope A. Haskell. Shadows on the Horizon: would require their own complement of protective The Battle of Convoy HX-233. Annapolis: Naval aircraft. The result was the USN's first aircraft Institute Press, 1998. 192 pp., photographs, carrier, Langley, as well as its successors, illustrations, figures, appendices, glossary, Lexington and Saratoga. The authors analyse the sources, index. US $32.95, CAN $50.95, cloth; aircraft and carriers used by the USN. ISBN 1-55750-997-9. Canadian Distributor, The authors do not, however, focus exclu• Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. sively on the USN. The RN's Fleet Air Arm (FAA) is also discussed thoroughly. Here the The Battle of the Atlantic was the most important authors rightly focus on the creation of the Royal naval campaign in the European theatre of opera• Air Force (RAF) in 1918. The RAF was created tions during World War II, and many feel that it from the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps was the most pivotal aspect of this conflict. Most of the British Army and the Royal Naval Air accounts of this titanic struggle tend to be either Service of the Royal Navy. The RAF, therefore, general, covering the entire gamut of the cam• absorbed all British military air assets. While paign or are focussed on individual and well- some provision was made for naval aviation, the known convoy battles. This slim volume veers aircraft were owned by the RAF while the carriers slightly off the beaten path by looking at one of were owned by the RN. It was not until 1938 that the many convoys that have been ignored in other the RN regained control of its own naval aviation. narratives. This is the author's first full-length In the interwar Royal Navy, then, naval aviation work, and he has relied heavily on personal was the "poor relation" of the RAF - last in line contacts with participants from both sides. for budgets and equipment. The authors accord• The text is well-divided between thirteen ingly dissect the disastrous effect this had on the brief chapters which are ably buttressed by a FAA. Underfunded and caught in inter-service forward (penned by Jiirgen Rohwer), introduction, rivalries, the FAA entered World War Two in an epilogues, fifteen appendices, as well as an index, inferior position relative to American naval glossary and bibliography. Strangely, no notes are aviation. It is fortunate that the FAA was opposed offered except for the brief quotations that intro• in the Atlantic and Mediterranean by German and duce some of the chapters. The text is well-served Italian adversaries whose aviation equipment was by the photographs that are included and the few not of the first rank. While the FAA had obsoles• maps. The former depict the men and ships who cent aircraft, the German and Italian navies had participated in this battle. no aircraft carriers and only a minimal amount of There are many noteworthy aspects of this land-based naval airpower. Even with out-of-date text, including the role of the US Coast Guard in aircraft, the FAA showed that some shipbome escorting convoys and the danger of friendly fire naval aircraft were better than no shipbome from merchantmen striking their erstwhile de• aircraft. A brief but well-researched appendix on fenders. A weaker example is the author's inter• the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Force completes pretation of the sentiments and psyches of the story. Germany's submariners, but this element is Overall, this is a valuable contribution to clearly weakened by the lack of footnotes to naval history and aircraft history in general. The substantiate his conclusions. One of the most reader interested in this field will find much of appealing aspects is the author's detailed account value. But given its technical nature and the of the history of U-175 from commissioning to assumptions made about the reader's knowledge role in the battle of HX-233. Another interesting 128 The Northern Mariner

thread is the discussion of the Khegsmarine''s the sinking of Athenia on 3 September 1939 and inability, or unwillingness, to believe the allies describing various events until the conclusion of possessed the ability to pinpoint U-boat radio the war with Germany in 1945. Interspersed traffic. Indeed, the author's observations run the throughout are accounts describing the role gamut from the strategies and tactics of both sides played by various air forces in the defence of to the treatment of prisoners of war. Members of transatlantic convoys. the merchant marine will be pleased by the ful• The author touches upon most of the major some praise and respect. In many ways, these incidents including the sinking of GrafSpee and insights give readers familiar with the Battle of Bismarck, as well as the disabling of Tirpitz. The the Atlantic a fresh perspective on this struggle. fate of some of the badly mauled convoys are Unfortunately, the volume also has a number graphically described, including how the encoun• of deficiencies. Despite its relative brevity, the ters were viewed by the attacking submarine author devotes a substantial number of pages to forces. This includes a full account of the pivotal discussions of aspects like convoy organization, role played by Admiral Dônitz as he orchestrated aircraft patrol, and U-boat and escort tactics. the attacks from his Berlin headquarters. Haskell also uses details from the actual battle of Emphasized throughout are the activities of Convoy HX-233 to highlight his interpretation in the various airborne groups, including the the introductory chapters, which leaves us with a Luftwaffe. Chief among these air forces were sense of deja-vu once we get to the battle itself. In Coastal Command and the Fleet Air Arm, particu• addition, while the secret mission assigned to U- larly the latter in the eventual sinking of Bis• 262 certainly explains its lacklustre performance marck. Full mention is also made of the involve• during this battle, it might have been better to ment of the RCAF and USAF, as well as the mid- discuss this assignment in an appendix. These ocean carriers, including CAM-ships and MAC- tendencies lead the reader to wonder if Haskell ships. The vital contribution of these forces is has chosen the proper subject for a full-length given fair commentary. As well, generous treat• study of a post-turning-point convoy battle. ment is afforded the Luftwaffe as it inflicted Nonetheless, the fact remains that Haskell mortal damage to the Canadian Pacific liner has given us a study of a relatively unknown Empress of Britain off the Irish Coast in October convoy battle, and his use of "oral history" should 1940. The use of air power by all combatants in inspire others to give other "neglected" or "under• the Battle of the Atlantic is an important factor for studied" convoy battles a closer look. Dunmore. The author loses no opportunity to point out Peter K.H. Mispelkamp the coolness that on occasions developed between Dollard des Ormeaux, Québec the different branches of the allied armed forces. Conflicts arose over command and control of areas of responsibility and scarce resources be• Spencer Dunmore. In Great Waters: The Epic tween the RCN and RCAF; between aircrews and Story of the Battle of the Atlantic. Toronto: ships' crews over tactical issues; between naval McClelland and Stewart, 1999. xiii + 342 pp., personnel and members of the merchant navy photographs, appendices, bibliography, index. over convoy control and procedures; and between CAN $34.99, cloth; ISBN 0-7710-2929-2. Canadian and American commanders trying to divide responsibility for operations and opera• The inside cover of this book makes the extrava• tional areas of control. gant claim that the author traces "the complete One sea battle that receives extensive treat• history of the Battle of the Atlantic." The back ment is the encounter between Dônitz's cover is equally boastful in describing the con• wolfpacks and convoys HX-229 and SC-122 in tents as "the full and dramatic account." Given the March 1943. Dunmore asserts that German length of the book this is a tall order. sources rated this as the "greatest convoy battle," Spencer Dunmore, a Canadian novelist of since a total of twenty-one merchant ships were note and a self-confessed flying buff, has blended sunk with the loss of but a single U-boat. The both these attributes in this relatively small but appearance of Coastal Command aircraft in once interesting volume. He traces chronologically this unreachable areas of the mid-Atlantic acted as a celebrated battle by starting the reader off with deterrent against further losses of that magnitude. Book Reviews 129

In contrast to that lengthy account, the magnifi• memories of those who were indeed "invaders," cent effort by the armed merchant cruiser Jervis people who actually participated in seaborne Bay in defending a convoy from total destruction landings during World War II. The memories of by the German battleship Admiral Scheer earlier disembarkation on hostile shores by sailors, in the war is dismissed in one paragraph. The soldiers, marines and even airmen would appear probable reason for the dramatic difference in to have been carefully edited by the author. emphasis of the one event over the other is that Compared to too many similar collections, there the former involved the use of aircraft while the are almost no detectable errors in names, loca• latter did not. Also included, in keeping with the tions, spelling, ship's names and dates. Instead, tenor of the book regarding air power, is an we are largely given well-edited recollections of account of the tragic and highly controversial "how it was" fifty-odd years ago for those who explosion that destroyed the RN aircraft carrier landed on enemy shores, or at least carried the Dasher, resulting in heavy loss of life. Dunmore soldiers and marines to the beaches. Bruce has is content to accept the probable cause as being elected to allow most of the narrators to provide the action of a careless smoker. Finally, in this some pre-landing context, such as where they reviewer's opinion, an inordinate amount of space trained and how. As well, other briefly told is given over to describing the TALLBOY bomb experiences are included, such as travel to the US employed by the RAF to cripple Tirpitz. to pick up and train in newly-built landing craft or This book is obviously written for a general ships. readership, not for the historian or serious student The landing locations ranged from Narvik of naval warfare. This approach is reflected Fjord in 1940 to the North African landings; from clearly in the prose. In describing the atmosphere Sicily and Italy (Salerno and Anzio) to in a U-boat under attack, the submarine pipes are Normandy, the South of France and finally the said to be bent "as if in pain," while the crew is Scheldt estuary in the Netherlands. The last painted as cringing and "feeling as if great steel- quarter of the book involves American landings toed boots were kicking their guts."(259) Such on Pacific islands - Guadalcanal, Betio, Saipan, poetic prose betrays the novelist rather than the Tinian, Iwo Jima and half a dozen others, historian. There are factual inaccuracies as well. including Attu in the Aleutians. Finally, there is a It is claimed that Bosnia was the first British British personnel chapter on landings and fighting merchant ship to be sunk (5 September 1939), in Burma. notwithstanding the fact that the author devotes The narrators included naval seamen and most of the preface to the sinking of Athenia two junior officers who served in beach parties and days earlier. City of Benares was torpedoed in landing craft, men who landed in everything from September 1940 not, as implied, in 1941. (75) early wooden LCAs to larger LCTs and ships Inaccuracies, an inappropriate style and a such as LSIs and American AKAs (assault land• prejudice toward air power distort the book. Yet ing craft carrying purpose-built ships, and includ• it does provide glimpses of the Battle of the ing the two-man crews of DUKWs, the self- Atlantic from a different perspective. For that powered supply "Ducks.") Royal Marine and reason, it is worth borrowing from a library. Army commandoes, artillery fire-support batter• ies, "poor bloody infantrymen," and in the latter Gregory P. Pritchard pages even some American seamen, marines and Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia soldiers all have a voice in the tales told here. Each story is set in perspective by Bruce, from a few of his bridging lines covering the Colin John Bruce. Invaders: British and American individual's place in the invasion scheme to the Experience of Seaborne Landings 1939-1945. larger scene. Many stories carry on for several Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999. 286 pp., pages of reminiscences of post-invasion duties photographs. US $34.95, CAN $53.95, cloth; and experiences, including some by men who ISBN 1-55750-395-8. Canadian distributor, were wounded and then evacuated. There are Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. even a couple of stories by prisoners-of-war who were rescued by invading troops. Bruce includes Unlike a few other similar wartime histories, this in italics his brief, leading questions and then book is exactly as described in its title: anecdotal allows the narrator to explain what, how, where 130 The Northern Mariner and when he was involved as an invader. The the hospital ship Maravel, as well as on snow range of duties, experiences and locations is shoes and using dog sleds, doing their utmost for enormous, but no effort has been made to cover these hard-working, poor people who had almost every possible site or job involved in getting no access to regular medical care. In the course of troops ashore to fight the enemy lodged there. his travels with this group, Tom Higgins saw There is only the briefest of general introductions Bluenose and grew to admire the craft. and no summation. While it might have been In early 1942, German submarines com• valuable to look at lessons learned or seaborne menced attacks on shipping in the Caribbean. invasion as a strategic scheme, those wider as• Apart from the terrible destruction of merchant pects are left for other authors and other books, of ships and tankers, inter-island traffic also suf• which there have already been several. These are, fered. In New York, Higgins suggested to a as the title says, experiences of the invaders rather friend, Jesse Spalding, that internal trade in the than an analysis of strategic concerns or command West Indies would justify the establishment of a perspectives. These personal stories of the reali• small shipping company. Higgins had in mind ties of the front line make a valuable contribution purchasing Bluenose for that purpose. Spalding to the corpus of wartime history, rather like agreed and in January of that year journeyed to Stephen E. Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers (New Lunenburg to purchase the elderly vessel. York, 1997). Captain Angus Walters, the chief owner of Bluenose, had retired from the sea and had be• Fraser M. McKee come a dairy farmer. He and his shareholders sold Markdale, Ontario the ship, complete with two diesel engines, to Spalding for $20,000. Spalding also bought an ex- Coast Guard cutter, a very fast vessel, for another Andrew Higgins and Jesse Spalding III. World $15,000. He then returned to Halifax, formed the War II Adventures of Canada's Bluenose: The West Indies Trading Company, and proceeded Americans. Rev. ed., Newport Beach, CA: West back to New York. Both vessels were put into the Indies Trading Company, 1999. 216 pp., photo• best possible condition before leaving Lunenburg. graphs, maps, index. US $25.00 (plus $5.00 Bluenose was loaded with a cargo of cod for its shipping and handling), paper; ISBN 0-9663073- first voyage under new management. Both ships 1-3. were manned by Lunenburg crews. Spalding and Higgins left for Cuba to await the arrival of their By 1939, wooden fishing vessels were no longer company ships. The cargo of cod was sold for a profitable merchant shipping option. Canada's $7000, covering all the company's operating most famous sailing vessel, Bluenose, rested expenses to date. alongside the wharf in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. In the Caribbean, the first cargoes for the two In 1942 light, fast merchant shipping vessels were ships were 200 tons of avocados and grapefruit needed to carry freight between the Caribbean each. Spalding had many important friends, islands, and Bluenose was purchased for this including Admiral Emory Land of the United purpose. In May the schooner departed from States Shipping Administration. Admiral Land Lunenburg on a new adventure, never to return to provided the West Indies Trading Company with its home port again. an Al Defence Transport Pass and suggested that Andrew Higgins is the son of Thomas Hig• it might carry aviation bombs for the USN. He gins who, with Jesse Spalding, purchased Blue• also recommended that the ships be used to haul nose. He has undertaken to give an account of that dynamite and blasting powder to help build ship's adventures in the West Indies until it was additional airfields throughout the Caribbean. The stranded on a reef off the south coast of Haiti in company's two vessels ranged from Florida to the 1946. The World War II Adventures of Canada's north coast of South America to Central America. Bluenose gets underway with Tom Higgins' In early 1943 the ex-Coast Guard cutter sank in experience as a teenage volunteer with the heavy seas off Cuba, but all hands survived. Grenfell Mission. Started in 1892 by Sir Wilfred Spalding eventually bought out Higgins and Grenfell, the Grenfell Hospital Missions visited moved the operations to Florida. Higgins used his the seagoing communities in Newfoundland and money to buy a tramp steamer in Lunenburg, but Labrador. Mission doctors made their rounds in this vessel capsized and sank in the fairway on its Book Reviews 131

arrival at Tampa. At about the same time a New few factual errors on the periphery of the account: York firm expressed an interest in purchasing HMS Royal Oak rolled over when sunk (14); the Bluenose. Spalding sold the craft to the Interna• US took only a single German cruiser for the tional Shipping Company, which converted it to Bikini tests (53); it was the battlecruiser a purely cargo ship. On a typical voyage in July Derfflinger, not Durfflinger (85); and it certainly 1945 Bluenose carried 250,000 whole coconuts in was not the cruiser HMS Edinburgh in the Medi• bulk from Honduras to Tampa. terranean in 1936. (136) The account of the loss In January 1946, Bluenose was ordered to of HMS Lapwing in Marchof 1945 is spot-on, but pick up a cargo of bananas at Aux Cayes, Haiti. it does not appear that the submarine that Myngs' Running at night and without cargo, the vessel flotilla "was credited with" (25) was actually passed through a dangerous channel near the Isle sunk. Most annoyingly, the book is written around of Vache. Local navigation lights were not on and a character named "Dave," and nowhere does as a result the venerable old ship ran aground on Churcher mention that this is actually himself. a reef. All efforts to float the schooner were And of course a few illustrations would have been unsuccessful and it was abandoned as a total loss welcome. on 29 January 1946. Yet the guts of the story ring true, and are a This series of events is supported by copies fascinating peek into the wartime lower deck. of documents, letters, family correspondence and Best of all, there are accounts of seamanship not numerous photographs, together with anecdotes often written about - the explanation of the about the Duke of Windsor, Ernest Hemingway, mooring to buoys in Sliema Creek in Malta, and German submarines and the United States Coast foul-weather preparations in destroyers, are both Guard. For Bluenose fans, this book completes the detailed and understandable. There are several history of a remarkable vessel. pieces of interest to Canadian readers, including a description of the torpedoing of the RCN- L.B.Jenson manned HMS Nabob. Throughly enjoyable are Queensland, Nova Scotia the yams dealing with the mythical "shovewood" and "Pincher Martin." The book splits naturally into two parts, the Colin Churcher. To Render Safe. Bishop second being concerned with Churcher's training Auckland, Durham: Pentland Press, 1999. ix + and subsequent career as a diver. Primitive oxy• 233 pp. £12, paper; ISBN 1-85821-695-8. gen rebreathers and the classic hard-hat are ex• plained well, and stand in contrast to the compara• Every now and again, our esteemed former Re• tively comfortable and easy-to-use equipment of views Editor, Olaf Janzen, was fond of flitting today. This book is an interesting segue for those about like an economy-size Tooth Fairy and who have read Harry Grossett's Down to the dropping surprise packages in our mail boxes - Ships in the Sea (diving in the first part of this you never knew what you would find underneath century). Divers will enjoy the description of how the pixie dust and bubble-wrap. In this particular the RN created and tested "saturation tables" for instance, rather than a lump of coal, this reviewer depths down to 1000 feet. Unfortunately, this was given one of the most enjoyable reads he has highlights one other quibble: the author has had all year. included very few dates, making it difficult to put To Render Safe is the autobiography of a events into chronological perspective. In this Royal Navy seaman - a wartime Gunnery Branch instance, providing a year would have made it rating who became a Clearance Diver and officer. possible to connect these tables with advances in He includes everything from his initial training at diving technology not covered by the book. HMS Royal Arthur in 1943 through his first ship In short, not only is this a book to read for (the destroyer Myngs) until his retirement just pure enjoyment but it is also worth looking at for after the Falklands War. In short, we are given the many naval vignettes. It is too bad that it did quite a lot of service, many miles steamed, and all not appear under the imprint of a more rigorous the colourful stories one would expect. publisher. In fairness, there are a few flaws with the book, most of which could have been corrected by William Schleihauf a more stringent and careful editor. There are a Pierrefonds, Québec 132 The Northern Mariner

Len Sherman. Arctic Odyssey: Dove III Masters IIP s eastbound transit of Bellott Strait. There was the Northwest Passage. Anacortes, WA: Fine hardly any ice. This is a very dangerous narrow Edge Productions, 1999. 205 pp., illustrations, passage with fierce currents and usually filled maps, US $24.95, paper; ISBN 0-938665-63-4. with moving ice. In 1943, Sergeant Larsen in St. Roch nearly lost his ship. The author gives credit Arctic Odyssey provides the reader with an ac• to Larsen in a quote from Larsen's report. Good count of a voyage through the Northwest Passage fortune continued to favour Dove III and it was in a twenty-seven-foot auxiliary sailboat. Dove III agreed that the voyage would end at Pangnirtung was designed and built by Winston Bushnell, on eastern Baffin Island rather than challenge the owner/skipper and very experienced round-the- Davis Strait and Labrador Sea with their bad world sailor. weather in September. The author, Len Sherman, from Nanaimo, There have been over the years a number of British Columbia was the third member of the small-boat voyages through the Northwest Pas• crew. He may be described as a fair weather sailor sage - some successful and some not - in a in his own sailboat Dreamer II and with very variety of designs. Considering that the crew of limited knowledge of ocean sailing. He is honest Dove III had no known experience in ice-covered about his capabilities and has self-doubts about waters and that their progress was by trial and his contribution to the venture. Sherman's own error, this voyage was surprisingly successful. boat is well named as he is himself a dreamer The author illustrates the book with very with artistic and poetic bents. Sherman tells the competent pen-and-ink drawings of places, people story in the form of a personal diary which is and life on board. The maps are also well-done effective but gives little insight as regards and in such a book are essential. Bushnell's navigation problems and his decisions in coping with heavy ice. Fortunately, the other T.A. Irvine new member, George Hone, was also an experi• Nepean, Ontario enced long-distance ocean sailor. The route for the voyage was from Vancou• ver Island to Pangnirtung on the east coast of Frank Holober. Raiders of the China Coast: CIA Baffin Island and spanned four months and Covert Operations during the Korean War. 11,500 kilometres. The small steel-hulled vessel, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999. xiii + 253 with its twenty-three-horsepower engine, encoun• pp., maps, photographs, glossary, bibliography, tered difficult ice conditions and on occasions bad index. US $32.95, CAN $50.95, cloth; ISBN 1- weather. The author was susceptible to sea sick• 55750-388-5. Distributed in Canada by Vanwell ness and is commended for his endurance in some Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. miserable personal conditions. After crossing the Gulf of Alaska, Dove met Today, the Central Intelligence Agency is notori• its first ice and finally reached Point Barrow. ous for being America's huge spy agency that From there, along the Alaska coast and especially dominates the world by the use of sophisticated in July, heavy ice can be expected, which is what technology. So it is particularly interesting to read transpired. But the little ship made a good passage Frank Holober's account of CIA maritime activi• close inshore and reached Herschel Island in ties with primitive equipment in East Asia during Canada in nine days. Ice-strengthened ships, with its early years. His book tells how in the 1950s the powerful engines, have been stopped for days in Agency was still a fledgling outfit mainly com• this area. The diary continued with descriptions of prised of enthusiastic beginners learning how to places visited and much hospitality from local play the game of subversion. people. The author gives vent to his innermost Raiders of the China Coast reveals a previ• thoughts in his poetry offerings and is careful to ously obscure story of some CIA operations use politically correct language in describing his during the Korean War. Holober's book adds yet impressions of the Arctic people. There are no another set of initials to our knowledge of various references to their difficulties in everyday life in "black op" services. Western Enterprises Incorpo• a hostile environment, or to over-population or rated - WEI - was the cover name of the organi• lack of employment. zation, which was set up by the US during the The most surprising event occurred in Dove Korean War to launch seaborne raids against Book Reviews 133 mainland China and the various foreign-flag best. Any real success was local, mixed merchant vessels that brought it supplies. The with failure, and of short duration. Early short-lived, clandestine outfit was founded soon on, lofty expectations gave way to lure after China intervened in the war by sending huge of adventure. And I sincerely salute the numbers of "volunteers" to reinforce North Korea adventurers. against the Allies defending South Korea. WEI was intended to aim diversionary military sorties That sentiment is well placed, as this reviewer at China's soft underbelly, the coastal area oppo• thinks that most readers of this tale about mari• site Taiwan. The American unit became known as time adventures in the East China Sea will join the "Quemoy Partisans," comprised of a swash• him in his salute to those fondly-remembered buckling mix of American military officers, days. civilian adventurers, and anti-Communist local fishermen. Their role was to divert Communist Sidney Allinson military resources from use in Korea, through the Victoria, British Columbia conduct of coastal raids, the interception of merchant ships, and the establishment of coast-watching parties to report enemy activities. Daniel Madsen. Forgotten Fleet: The Mothball They did so with the use of a small fleet of motor Navy. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999. x + gunboats and armed junks. The area was ripe for 236 pp., photographs, bibliography, index. US seaborne guerilla warfare, with over fifty islands $36.95, CAN $57.50, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-543-8. scattered across the Taiwan Strait. Canadian distributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. WEI units had numerous combat clashes on Catharines. ON. land with the enemy, but their most important activities were in harassing merchant ships and Daniel Madsen opens this account of the US tankers from Europe, mainly the Soviet Union Navy's post-World War II mothballed ship and Poland. Political circumstances made it a programme with a discussion of its antecedents. topsy-turvy kind of illicit warfare. While British Earlier examples, the author notes, included ships and Canadian troops of the Commonwealth laid up "in ordinary" during the age of sail. An• Brigade were fighting in Korea, vessels of both other precedent resulted from the ambitious nations were trading with China, which though building program undertaken by the American really an active enemy was officially still "neu• navy in World War I. Many vessels produced at tral." This situation created some danger of that time were placed in reserve following the diplomatic embarrassments, especially when armistice. When it became necessary to activate Royal Navy warships intervened to prevent WEI World War I ships during the 1930s and 1940s, craft from boarding British merchant ships. The they often displayed an alarming amount of accompanying photographs, many of which are of deterioration. But the lessons learned from the the snapshot variety, nevertheless convey a strong interwar program were put to good use in manag• impression of the camaraderie and informal ing the reserve fleet established after 1945. One atmosphere that prevailed among these key development was recognition that low humid• little-known clandestine warriors. But it is a pity ity levels had to be maintained within a ship's hull that the two sketchy maps in the book are so to insure preservation. New sealant materials also inadequate. were introduced to protect ordnance and equip• To research his book about the Quemoy ment from the elements. Partisans, Holober contacted many of his old Madsen demonstrates that the reserve fleet comrades-in-arms, then set out on a voyage of concept paid off handsomely during the Korean nostalgia to visit the scenes of combat, fifty years War, when the American Navy activated many on. The result is a detailed account, with many World War II vessels to create the large forces character sketches of some remarkable individu• required by the conflict and, in the longer run, to als. Holober sums up the activities of WEI by wage the Cold War. Some mothballed ships were musing: converted to missile vessels or to other new warship types. The navy activated Iowa-class What did we accomplish? Any contribu• battleships in the early 1950s, during the Vietnam tion to the Korean War was modest at War, and for a third time in the 1980s as part of 134 The Northern Mariner

the Reagan defence build-up. Madsen pays con• of the mishap. Even as the actions that led directly siderable attention to the battleship's role in the to the accident were being performed in the gun Gulf War. In addition, he briefly refers to the room, up on the bridge the commanding officer, reactivation from the Maritime Administration's Captain Moosally, was telling Vice Admiral reserve fleet of merchant ships to project national Johnson, Commander Second Fleet, that the power halfway around the world in the Gulf War. gunners of Turret II were his best crew. His Despite the cranky performance of some of these comments were interrupted by the explosion. vessels, they probably were more important than The USN quickly determined that the explo• battleships in assuring the defeat of Iraq. sion was caused by a deliberate act that had its Today, most World War II-era vessels have origins in a homosexual love affair that had fallen been scrapped and the American mothball navy is apart, as was widely reported in the press: relatively small. Nevertheless, Madsen demon• strates that the massive US inactive fleet was an This conclusion was clearly in the invaluable strategic reserve of American Navy's self interest, exonerating them seapower throughout most of the Cold War era. of any responsibility for the tragedy due The rise, decline, and significance of the to faulty equipment, procedures, or mothball navy is an important story that can training. It provided the navy with a readily be appreciated by reading the Forgotten clean bill of health on operational Fleet. Unfortunately, the greater part of Madsen's safety, permitting the retention of the book consists of the World War II - and, to a four World War Il-vintage lesser extent, the post-war - operational histories dreadnoughts in active service, (xi) of many of those vessels. The ship histories that Madsen contributes are well written and display The facts, which took rather longer to establish, the author's love of his subject. But this material were otherwise. The real cause was ultimately is extraneous to the story of the reserve fleet. determined in spite of the naval establishment by Further, unlike the mothball navy, the history of Congressional committees that reviewed the World War II maritime campaigns is hardly a Navy's investigation, eventually rejecting the forgotten subject. In my opinion, readers inter• findings and requesting an independent investiga• ested in the operational history of the war at sea tion. Sandia National Laboratories of Albuquer• between 1939 and 1945 will be better served by que was asked to do it. The author of Explosion reading the secondary works that Madsen used as Aboard the Iowa, Dr. Richard Schwoebel, led that sources. Among these accounts one should cer• investigation. His first stated objective in writing tainly include the classic fifteen-volume history the book was "to highlight important systemic by Samuel E. Morison and the narratives of deficiencies that characterized the investigation individual ships contained in the US Naval His• conducted by the Navy." (xxi) torical Centre's multi-volume Dictionary of In the lingering wake of the Canadian American Naval Fighting Ships. Forces' reluctance to accept responsibility for certain problems in Somalia, and more recently Dean C. Allard questions about the medical treatment of veterans Arlington, Virginia of the Gulf War and peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia, this scientific detective story of reconstructing what really happened and Richard L. Schwoebel. Explosion Aboard the challenging the naval establishment to act on it is Iowa. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999. xxiv of more than passing interest. + 301 pp., photographs, figures, appendices, Schwoebel has written a first-hand account index. US$34.95, CAN $53.95, cloth; ISBN 1- of the work of his investigative team from its 55750-810-0. Canadian distributor, Vanwell formation in December 1989 to the submission of Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. its final report in August 1991. In addition to his chronology and discussion of that work, he has At 0955 on 19 April 1989 there was an explosion quoted extensively from the minutes of various in Turret II in USS Iowa. Forty-seven sailors were hearings and from official reports. While this may killed. The battleship had been conducting a lead to some repetition, as different committees gunnery exercise north of Puerto Rico at the time covered the same ground, it serves to emphasize Book Reviews 135 the stonewalling of the navy as new information papers. The contributing works are all written in challenged its interpretation of events. Even after a fine scholarly style and are complete with ample Sandia Laboratories had demonstrated how an footnotes. A detailed index provides an invaluable overran, could have happened, the Chief of Naval means of cross-referencing the various authors' Operations stated at a press conference that "no presentations. In sum, this is a very fine collection plausible accidental cause can be established." that has been masterfully edited. (224) Schwoebel is clear in his conclusion: The breadth of this collection is sufficiently encompassing to suggest that the title does not do the explosion...was caused by an inad• justice to the content of the book. Indeed, these vertent overran....There may have been papers are about much more than just naval several factors contributing to this... strategy and policy. In particular, the final section including inadequate training of some is really about maritime strategy in its fullest members of the centre gun crew; a sense, where naval policy is only one part of the poorly briefed and executed firing greater subject. With articles on such security plan...and, possibly, a malfunction of issues as the environment, human migration, and the rammer" (222) the Law of the Sea, to name just a few, the contin• uing importance of the Mediterranean Sea to a Schwoebel's conclusions have an obvious highly diverse segment of humanity is brought impact on personnel, crew stability, the conduct home forcefully. The complexity of the maritime of training exercises, and the operational deploy• issues that manifest themselves in the Mediterra• ment of ships. None of this would have come to nean are well documented and analysed. light had Congress lacked the independence to The broadened scope of the book leaves open call for an outside investigation. The importance to question what maritime security issues should of this book extends beyond what it says about the have been included in the final section. Although cause of the explosion on 19 April 1989. all those presented are of merit, there is no sepa• rate treatment of the maritime shipping environ• William Glover ment or of the Suez Canal. The building of the Kingston, Ontario canal radically changed the strategic significance of the Mediterranean as a shipping route, while the current trend towards inter-modal shipping of John B. Hattendorf (ed.). Naval Strategy and containerized cargo through hub ports in ever- Policy in the Mediterranean: Past, Present and enlarging cargo ships has decreased the canal's Future. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, utility. A focussed examination of intra- and 2000. xxiv + 445 pp., illustrations, figures, tables, trans-Mediterranean shipping activity would have notes, index. £47.50, US $69.50, cloth; ISBN 0- been a valuable addition to the volume. 7146-4991-0; £20, US $29.50, paper; ISBN 0- In one major sense the book is a disappoint• 7146-8054-0. Distributed in North America by ment: it does not adequately treat the role of the International Specialized Book Services, Portland, major regional maritime powers in the Mediterra• OR. nean. Although two of the three chapters in the second section deal with France and Italian naval The papers of the third Naval War College-Yale policy during the World Wars, one treats France conference on maritime and naval history (June and Italy together and the other looks at Italy in 1997) have been published in this very impressive conjunction with Germany. In neither case does collection. Treated chronologically, from antiq• the approach clearly illustrate French or Italian uity to the post-Cold War era, the scope of this policy, as the methodology of contrasting the work is immense. Divided into four parts of countries' security issues tends to blur rather than unequal length, the reader is provided with a clarify the distinctions. The same can be said of series of fine analytical works on the relatively an article from the Cold War-era section which more distant past, the era of the World Wars, the again treats France and Italy together rather than Cold War period, and the present end-of-century separately. This blurring effect is particularly true era. Each succeeding section increases in length in Gerhard Schrieber's work on wartime Italy and and number of articles, with a certain amount of Germany, where the Italian aspects are almost crossover in each section and in some of the entirely submerged by the author's main thesis, 136 The Northern Mariner which is clearly Anglo-German in orientation. ably to one Ministry of Shipping, and that there This was a lost opportunity to bring a fresh and are moves towards privatization. long-overdue analysis of Italian wartime naval Over ninety percent of Turkish overseas policy to the fore, a subject that is, sadly, not well trade moves by sea and less than half of this is understood. Spain fares even worse in that its carried in Turkish ships. Although many of the treatment is limited almost entirely to the first ships are ferries or general cargo (break-bulk) chapter. As a relatively new NATO member and ships, sixty-five percent of the deadweight ton• an emergent naval power of considerable capabil• nage is in bulk carriers or OBOs. The median age ity, this too represents a missed opportunity to is over twenty years, with the highest medians in address an obvious change in the maritime and the general cargo ships, bulk carriers and the naval dynamics of the Mediterranean Sea. "miscellaneous" group. The bulk carriers are Despite these limitations, this is a major mostly handymax or panamax, but these other work which will be of lasting value to all manner two groups consist mainly of small ships used of scholars and researchers, professional and principally over short routes and to a variety of amateur alike. As Paul Kennedy declared in his often small ports. Overall, sixty percent of Turk• second foreword, the rekindled interest of histori• ish ships were built domestically, often at low ans in maritime affairs is an exciting develop• cost but with long delivery dates and simple ment.(xiii) More exciting still is the broader designs. Less than a quarter of Turkish merchant interest shown by economic, political, military, ships are owned in the public sector and most of and environmental strategists. This important these are fairly small. Private sector ship opera• book will help to increase recognition of the great tors are mostly long-established and the ships are and common influence of the seas on all of often flagged-out. mankind's activities. Some curious statements appear in the book, perhaps having been uncritically taken from Kenneth P. Hansen elsewhere: The Economist is quoted as asserting Toronto, Ontario that there are about "2,500 shipowners in Turkey" (75); however, table twenty-five suggests that fewer than 1000 ships are owned in the private Funda Yercan and Michael Roe. Shipping in sector. This paradox is not resolved. Turkey. "Plymouth Studies in Contemporary Wars in the Gulf and in Yugoslavia have Shipping." Aldershot, Hants. & Brookfield, VT: induced new Ro-Ro services, e.g., between Italy Ashgate Publishing, 1999. xii + 233 pp., map, and Turkey. New or expanded services in the tables, figures, sources. US $61.95, cloth; ISBN Black Sea have also enabled war-torn areas to be 1-84014-651-6. by-passed. Most large Turkish ports are "com• prehensive" in that they provide all services, This book is one of a series from the Plymouth including cargo-handling. As well, some privat• Institute of Marine Studies intended to examine ization has taken place, apparently with success: maritime matters in various parts of the world. an example is cited where the numbers employed The general format is that an academic partici• have fallen from 140 to twenty-six, though we are pates alongside a postgraduate student so that not told what has happened to throughput or some general expertise may be combined with whether some services now come from outside. deeper knowledge from a local specialist. Brokering and insurance services are not well- After an introduction, we have a description developed or regulated, and often seem to involve of Turkish history, politics and economic devel• uncertain legal positions and interested parties. opment, concentrating on recent years. Separate This is a useful study of an oft-neglected part chapters then cover various aspects of the Turkish of the world that concentrates mainly on the maritime sector. Much of this is public sector- presentation of facts derived from published related: Turkish Maritime Lines and Turkish (often secondary) sources and occasionally some Cargo Lines in shipping, various state bodies and rather unsophisticated analyses. There does not municipalities in ports. When this study was seem to have been any collection of original data written some ten government departments were or interviews. Even so, in the format provided it involved. It is not surprising that the Turkish should make a good basis for further studies, Chamber of Shipping wanted this reduced, prefer• though these will be hampered by the absence of Book Reviews 137

an index, a fault as well of two previous works in cargoes from sunken ships. The world's supply this series. In some respects, therefore, it may of recoverable cargo was rapidly diminishing seem that value is being sacrificed for volume. using conventional methods. Recovery technol• ogy was largely unchanged from the 1920s when R.O. Goss the Italian concern SORIMA developed the "eye Pershore, Worcestershire and tool" system. A diver in an observation chamber accompanied a clamshell grab down to the wreck. Risdon Beazley Ltd., the British firm Moya Crawford. Deep Water. Bradford on Avon, which was active in the years following World Wiltshire: Thomas Reed, 1999. [orders to: Thom• War II, continued to use this system until the as Reed Publications, The Barn, Ford Farm, 1960s. Eventually Alec was able to salvage and Bradford Leigh, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire rebuild an old trawler to his own specifications. BA15 2RP, UK (fax: +44 1225 868831)]. vii + He then designed and built a deep-water recovery 280 pp., map, photo plates (colour, b+w), index. system with a hydraulic umbilical cord and £19.95 (p&p: £3.50, UK; £4, Europe or £4 rest of orange-peel grab which, coupled with television the world, cloth; ISBN 0-901281-83-2. cameras, allowed him to reach untouched wrecks. Moya Crawford tells the stories of the Moya Crawford is a wife, mother and business wrecks and the considerable research needed to partner with her husband Alec - not so unusual identify and locate suitable recovery candidates. until one realizes that the business is the recovery She also tells of the financial struggles to develop of valuables from shipwrecks, a high-risk ven• the equipment and to buy materials with humour, tures in dangerous conditions, and with large grace and a steely determination. All this is investments required before rewards are won. combined with the danger of the work and entan• This is very much Moya's story, starting in glements with bureaucracies around the world. 1975, when at age seventeen she met Alec When Alec was thrown into an Italian prison for Crawford for the first time. He and a partner were carrying undeclared explosives, Moya worked free diving from a rubber raft off the Shetland from England to free him, but finally went to the Island of Foula, recovering the bronze propellers scene, where her formidable willpower eventually from Oceanic. Alec was a single-minded mechan• proved too much for the authorities. ical marvel and at first "[t]here were no conces• The most recent account concerns their sions to my presence of any sort: diving and the record-setting deep-water recovery of cargo from Oceanic came first, the [business] partnership the French François Vieljeux in 1250 metres of came second; and I came third." The story contin• water, forty-five miles southwest of Cape ues with their marriage and Moya's deeper in• Finisterre. The ship sank in a storm in 1979, and volvement in the shore-side end of the business in 1990 the Crawfords arrived with some untried while juggling a family which rapidly included new equipment to try to recover 6600 tonnes of four children. The story culminates in Moya's copper and 700 tonnes of zinc anodes from the current role as managing director of Deep Water wreck. They had invested £10,000 of their own Recovery & Exploration Ltd., which allows Alec money in umbilical cable alone. The agonizingly to concentrate on research, development and slow work, punctuated by delays caused by recovery. She is also active in scientific and weather and breakdowns, would eventually result technical circles, and is the first female Fellow of in the recovery of £1.5 million of cargo on behalf the Society for Underwater Technology. of its owners over more than a five-year period. Her fluid writing, personal touch and grasp While the story ends there, the author out• of the technical makes for a unique story. The lines future plans, which include a 3500-metre book's generous illustrations are well chosen and recovery using refined equipment, and plans for complement the text. The occasional view of working at 11,000 metres using a new £ 15 million attractive Crawford children reminds us of the ship. Moya Crawford's last words say it all: contrasts in Moya Crawford's life. "Long may our resolution to withstand the pace Far from being desecrators of historically continue. There is still so much more to achieve." important artefacts, the Crawfords work entirely within the law, with government permits, and M.B. Mackay concentrate on salvaging commercially valuable Halifax, Nova Scotia 138 The Northern Mariner

Glen J. Herbert. Canada's Oceans Dimension: A and enforcement are noted. A researcher could Factbook. Niobe Papers, Vol.11; Halifax: Mari• then consult the endnotes and references to find time Affairs, 1999. c + 81 pp., maps, figures, sources, including web sites that would prove tables, notes, selected readings, and web sites. very helpful for further investigation of the issue. CAN $10, US $7.50 plus $4 (US $3.50) p+h, The synergy between oceans resources and paper; ISBN 0-9698343-6-5. man's cultivation of them is another interesting topic. From "overfishing and ineffective resource Glen Herbert's objective is clear. To "educate and conservation" (29) to shipping, tourism and the inform about the importance of the oceans to offshore oil and gas industry, Herbert elucidates [their] way of life" (63), the "Factbook is de• the various challenges facing Canada. He urges signed to provide the reader with a basis for Canadians and their government to address these further research and understanding of Canada's issues systematically. Herbert emphasizes oceans dimension."(3) In this regard, he has met Canada's "stewardship of [the] oceans and marine his goal. Canada's Oceans Dimension is an resources" (61) and praises the increasingly important resource for a broad range of scholars, cooperative efforts at all levels of government, policy-makers, business leaders, lawyers, and much of it in collaboration with various non• special interest groups. The author's audience is governmental agencies. He remains convinced Canadians, but this work is important to anyone that growing awareness among Canadians will interested in Canada and its "oceans dimension." lead to better protection of the ocean resources. Recognizing Canada's historic and current Certainly his Factbook is a good place to begin. dependence, exploitation, and development of its three oceans, Herbert begins by briefly placing Elizabeth B. Elliot-Meisel Canada in a global context. A short description of Omaha, Nebraska the marine environment, commercial use, and geopolitical and strategic importance of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans follows. Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker. The Beach: The "Important trends, opportunities and challenges" History of Paradise on Earth. London and New in each ocean, covering "marine York: Seeker and Warburg, 1998. xxiv + 310pp., resources...transportation and trade, maritime illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. security and defence, oceans industry, science and £16.99, cloth; ISBN 0-436-41217-9. technology, and recreation and tourism" (3) further define Canada's oceans dimension. En• Lencek and Bosker, respectively professors of dorsing the 1997 Oceans Act as "a comprehensive Russian and medicine at front-rank universities in framework for oceans management and policy" the United States, have apparently written "more (ix), he analyses Canada's record. than nine books selling over two million copies." While the bulk of this slim book is descrip• The UK price of this solidly-built hardback tive, Herbert raises important issues. For example, certainly suggests that they have an excellent the researcher investigating Canadian-American agent, and four research assistants are credited. relations in waters claimed by Canada will find Their scope, too, is ambitious, covering the beach several relevant sections. International oceans from most perspectives between geological governance is described with regard to United origins and current problems and opportunities. Nations' agreements, such as the 1982 Conven• There is a lot to interest the maritime historian in tion on the Law of the Sea. And while there is no their text, but (suspiciously) I found them most specific discussion of the controversial issue of interesting and informative on the areas I knew the Northwest Passage, the reader need only turn least about, and careful examination of their to the "Oceans Sector" chapter to find Canada's presentation of chapters where my expertise was naval resources and capabilities. Herbert not only firmer confirmed more general impressions that lists Canada's equipment but also laments that the the whole book is frustratingly lacking in schol• Navy's "modernization program to maintain its arly rigour, to such an extent that, despite its capabilities [as an instrument of government gestures towards academic apparatus, it is almost policy] is foundering." (38) Further, in "Manag• unusable by professional historians as well as ing Canada's Oceans," the Oceans Act is de• being systematically misleading to the "general scribed and issues of Arctic and maritime security reader" for whom it seems to be intended. Book Reviews 139

The book takes beach environments, and luxury. Telephone and fax numbers are provided human perceptions and uses of them, through should readers wish to book. from prehistory to classical antiquity, the revolu• It will be clear that this is a very strange tion in fashionable perception that made beaches book. I found it particularly interesting on the attractive again in the eighteenth century, the Romans and on the nineteenth- and twentieth successive démocratisation of the beach holiday century US, but it was frustrating not to be able to in the ages of the railway, the automobile and the track down statements or identify the most useful aeroplane, and the changing attitudes to bodily secondary sources. Primary material is confined exposure and physical activity which accompa• to the odd novel and some poetry, although the nied these developments. It is particularly inter• bibliography contains an extensive list of Victo• ested in beachwear, the subject of a previous book rian periodical articles, which suggests that one of by these authors. The geography of the story is the research assistants had done a conscientious confusing: it is European until the mid-nineteenth job without the results of this labour being incor• century, but then becomes almost entirely centred porated into the text. On Britain and Europe, on on the United States until it trickles into the sands the other hand, whole swathes of historiography of the 1960s, with only the most perfunctory of are completely omitted: for example, there is epilogues. The methodology is even more confus• nothing by historians on the Grand Tour, or ing: at times informed by approaches from cul• eighteenth-century consumerism, or spa resorts, tural studies, sociology or anthropology, there is and nothing by John Urry, while the extensive no system or overall argument, and too often the literature which has proliferated over the last story is advanced by hyperbolic assertion, spuri• twenty years or so on the development of English ous rhetorical linkage or purple passage. Here is seaside resorts is ignored completely. The authors an example from one of the imaginary vignettes, rely on Anthony Hern's journalistic Beside the spuriously attached to particular places and times, Seaside of 1967, with even Pimlott's excellent which introduce most of the chapters: The Englishman '$ Holiday, published twenty years earlier but still valuable, left to languish. By mid-afternoon, they are ready for Alain Corbin's The Lure of the Sea is also missing another excursion. With the beach to from the bibliography, but not from the text, their backs, elegantly dressed men and which reproduces large chunks of it almost to the women load into carriages for a ride point of plagiarism. It also reproduces Corbin's through the fig-filled paradise of Pro• misconceptions about English seaside resorts, vence, where velveteen hillsides sprawl including his mangling of a primary source like sheared sheep loins, and shaggy (which the authors cite elsewhere, but seem to eucalyptus hover over peach-colored have used only to pull out a single plum for villas. (114) quotation purposes) to claim that Blackpool had 1500 houses at a time when its entire population was considerably less than that figure, clustered Beyond this kind of absurdity, which makes under the cliffs where they would have been it hard to take any of the book seriously, there are washed away immediately by the first high tide. frequent internal contradictions and errors of If I had space and time such examples could be detail. The British, for example, were both kept multiplied ad nauseam. away from continental Europe during the French wars between 1793 and 1815, and attracted to it Despite some appearances to the contrary, as tourists in large numbers. The text is profusely this is a self-indulgent, pretentious and unreliable illustrated, but the allusive captions seldom give book, assiduously marketed as an easy read for a any indication of when or where the pictures were public with limited critical faculties. This is all the produced, or to what end. There is an extensive more frustrating because of the interesting nature (but badly-flawed) bibliography, but the absence of some of the material which has been assem• of footnoting makes it impossible to source bled. If it is used at all, caution must be exercised, statements or even quotations, and several exten• and time-consuming cross-checking procedures sive passages are clearly based on sources which applied. Let the buyer beware. are absent from the bibliography. There is also, oddly, a list of the authors' favourite beach hotels, John K. Walton with the overwhelming emphasis on ostentatious Preston, Lancashire