BOOK REVIEWS

John Hattendorf (ed.). Maritime History, Volume end of the eighteenth centuries. The authors have 2: The Eighteenth Century and The Classical Age laid out the problems and the history of the solu• of Sail. Open Forum Series; Malabar, FL: Krieger tions clearly, and while perhaps not to everyone's Publishing, 1997. xvi + 304 pp., illustrations, taste, an understanding of the subject is vital to figures, maps, photographs, chapter notes and anyone seeking to grasp the complexity and bibliographies, index. US $26.50, paper; ISBN 0- breadth of maritime history. While praising the 89464-944-2. inclusion of this section on navigation, however, the reviewer laments that a similar topic, like This is a collection of selected lectures delivered shiphandling, was not included in the collection. at the 1993 summer institute in early modern Daniel Baugh and N.A.M. Rodger each con• maritime history at the John Carter Brown Li• tributed three chapters to section three dealing brary in Providence, Rhode Island. It is the sec• with the Anglo-French struggle for empire. A ond such collection edited by Professor Hatten• brief, rather dated look at American commerce is dorf (see review in TNM/LMN VI, No.3: 49-50). also included here but serves no useful purpose. Like its predecessor, it aims to provide the reader Baugh and Rodger, on the other hand, present an with a general introduction to some of the major excellent overview of the major imperial conflict themes and scholarly debates in maritime history. that remained essentially maritime throughout the The subject is not widely taught in universities century. Their text introduces students to the and colleges and good general histories rarely distinctions between elements of naval power — serve as useful textbooks. Though idiosyncratic in ships, officers and men — and the foundations of the selection of topics, this volume meets its seapower — fighting ability, strategic comprehen• editor's purpose which is to introduce interested siveness, commercial and financial strength, and students to the arcane maritime world of the age political will. One might complain that their of sail and to render it more easily understood. treatment of the Royal Navy during the American The twenty-four brief chapters are arranged War of Independence smacks of special pleading in four sections that deal respectively with open• because America was not the Royal Navy's to ing the Pacific during the second age of discov• lose. But, in addition to providing a clear narra• ery, the science and practice of navigation, the tive, they introduce readers to some of the ques• Anglo-French struggle for empire, and the mari• tions being currently debated in the literature. time legacy of empire. Student and scholar alike And while it is not comprehensive, this feature will enjoy Glyndwr Williams's four chapters on adds interest to their treatment. the Pacific voyages. Written with grace and The four chapters by Roger Knight in the learning, they present a succinct overview of the final section on the maritime legacy of empire are precursors, the explorers and geographers, their equally valuable. The editor's inclusion of a chap• impact on science and philosophy, and the tragic ter on romanticism and the literature of the sea is aftermath of exploitation and death that followed misplaced. Knight, however, provides an excel• unrolling the chart of the vast Pacific Ocean. lent overview of the Atlantic economies during The next three sections, each containing five the score of years before 1800, the changing to eight chapters, are nearly twice as long as the technologies and materials introduced, the naval first and quite different in content and tone. More dimension of the Anglo-French wars during the obviously didactic, they are intended for under• Revolution and Empire, and the last years of graduate students — and perhaps their instructors naval sail. Though these topics may appear in search of reading assignments. Karel Davids eclectic, and certainly others may occur to read• and Willem Môrzer Bruyns each prepared four ers, Knight's cogent, concise style of writing chapters in section two covering the science and brings the volume nicely to a close. More than practice of navigation from the sixteenth to the other authors, Knight fulfils the editor's aim to

63 64 The Northern Mariner introduce students to problems and debates as but Scandinavian and German ship owners appre• well as to overviews. ciated its advantages. I for one cannot speak of it All things considered, this volume succeeds too highly from personal experience aboard the as an introductory textbook for undergraduates on four-masted barque Passai. Good grief, what sea power in the classic age of sail more success• would our lot have been if we still had to deal fully than did the first one published in 1996. The with long braces with a watch of eight or nine suggested readings that accompany each chapter men at best! are up to date and allow students to explore the In a section devoted to social history we find topics more fully. One irony lies in the choice of an article titled "Prayers yes - Schnapps, No; frontispiece. It portrays a giant French battleship, amity on board during a time of upheaval." It a first-rate from the navy of Louis XIV. Built examines conditions on mid-nineteenth-century during the seventeenth century, it never put to sea German merchant vessels, a time when seamen during the classic age of sail. demanded better food and reduced working hours while in port and that the consumption of alcohol James Pritchard be strictly prohibited because it endangered the Kingston, Ontario safety of the voyage and often lured masters and mates to excessive and rude behaviour. This Uwe Schnall and Ursula Feldkamp (eds.). problem surely existed in merchant fleets of other Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv XVIII (1995). Ham• nations as well and it is to be hoped that more burg: Ernst Kabel Verlag for the Deutsches work will be done on this particular and still Schiffahrtsmuseum, 1995. 336 pp., photographs, existing problem. Another article examines in illustrations (b+w, colour), figures, maps. DM 46, detail the accidental death in 1907 of an appren• paper; ISBN 3-8225-0360-6. tice of the German cargo-carrying training vessel, the Herzogin Sophie Charlotte belonging to the Here I am faced yet again with another of those North German Lloyd while in Sydney, Australia. splendid volumes produced by the Deutsche Under the heading of fisheries and whaling Schiffahrtsmuseum and Ernst Kabel Verlag. It is Uwe Steffen tells in a thorough manner with difficult indeed to sing its praises without repeat• beautiful illustrations the story of "Jonah and the ing myself, since much of what I said in my Great Fish," not only as he appears in the biblical review of Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv XVI story but also how this story permeates Jewish, (1993) in TNM/LMN V, No. 4 applies here. Christian and Islamic traditions. Klaus Barthel- In the section on merchant shipping, we find mess and Britta Schleicher elaborate on an hith• the memories of Captain Scharf, the last Master erto unknown pamphlet which contains a humor• of the North German Lloyd Europa, as well as the ous poem about Portugal's fishmongers and experiences of Gertrud Ferber who provided the peddlers of broadsides in the second half of the kind of services to passengers together with eighteenth century. It is a marvelously illustrated secretarial duties for the Master of the NDL and extremely well annotated article. Bremen which foreshadowed those of the cruise Very much closer to our time is an article by directors found on passenger liners today. Both Kurt Deggim who describes the beach fishery at articles make us aware of the political pressures Sorkau (in the former East Prussia) on the Baltic put on German merchant officers and crews by between 1930 and 1945. Boats, methods of the regime of the Third Reich. fishing, handling of the catch and working and The last article in this section is (surprisingly living conditions are covered in great detail and is for a German publication) devoted to Captain also well illustrated. J.C.B. Jarvis, the famous Scottish master mariner The German navy is treated by well-known whose invention of the brace winch earned him ship historian Arnold Kludas in an article on the sobriquet brace-winch Jarvis among seamen "Passenger ships as auxiliary cruisers — a short and owners of sailing vessels; among seamen history of a ship category," and by Ursula because it made their work less dangerous and Feldkamp who reports on the last voyage of the among owners because it saved them on crews. Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse by her Master, Cap• His inventions never really caught on in Britain tain Meyer. Both stress the unsuitability of pas- Book Reviews 65

senger liners as auxiliary cruisers, an experience range extends from early modern times to the late shared by the Royal Navy in World Wars I and II. 1970s. What follows is a brief account of those An illuminative article by Ekhardt Berken- articles which are of more than just local interest. hagen demonstrates that the history of art has not The volume opens with a description by been forgotten in this volume. Supported by Astrid Olhagen of an interesting replica, that of beautiful black and white and colour illustrations, the sailing well-boat Jehu, which was launched in he writes about Pieter van der Velde in the light spring 1996. Such craft, which normally mea• of Flemish marine painting of the sixteenth to sured a good forty feet overall, were used to eighteenth centuries. transport both live fish and passengers over the Detlev Elmers touches on the archeology of Aland Sea. The reconstruction was based on the ships. In his inimitable way, he tells us what can well-known lines drawing from the 1760s by be learned from "Loose objects found on ship• Fredrik Henrik af Chapman, plus a partly pre• wrecked cogs." Do I have to add that Elmer's served wreck of a similar vessel. The replica was copy is enhanced by superb illustrations? rigged according to the manner which was com• Much emphasis is placed on ship and boat mon at the end of the eighteenth century. The building, particularly on the history of small craft. article includes a good number of pictures and This volume includes Part I of an article on Saami presents a vivid account of a beautiful, well- boat building with its sewing and lacing tech• sailing, newly-built "old-timer." niques. It is a thorough study, well illustrated and Quite logically, the volume continues with wide ranging, which will interest all small craft Jerker Ôrjans' short note on the history of the afficionados. So will the article by Fred Hanke passenger traffic over the Aland Sea. This has a who writes in a continuing series on traditional connection with the exhibition "The Childhood of boats in Germany, this time on wooden boats of Passenger Traffic on the Baltic" in the Mariehamn the river Main. Plans drawn to scale of 1:10 are Maritime Museum in 1995. It is just a brief list of included. certain events which the author has regarded The last pages give an extensive report on important but it may be useful in giving an easily the activities of the Deutsche Schiffahrtsmuseum, grasped overall view of the development. its collections, its wide ranging research, exhibits, Next follows a long article on how Gustaf publications and lectures by its staff. Erikson, the famous sailing-vessel owner, bought As I have said on more than one occasion, the Belgian sail-training ship L'Avenir in 1932. these northern European museum yearbooks are The article is written by the former curator of the ajoy to behold and a rich treasure of knowledge. Maritime Museum, Gôte Sundberg, who has When will maritime museums on this side of the delved deeply in the archives of Gustaf Erikson big pond follow in their course? (now in the Provincial Archives of Aland). It describes in detail how the negotiations, in which Niels Jannasch Erikson was represented by the well-known Tantallon, Nova Scotia shipbroking firm Clarkson in London, proceeded. The article gives a vivid insight to the maritime Bôrje Karlsson et al (eds.). Sjôhistorisk Ârsskrift markets of the early 1930s, albeit a fairly special for Aland, 1995-96. Mariehamn: Âlands Nautical part of them. Club r.f., Stiftelsen Âlands Sjôfartsmuseum, There are short biographies of two sailing- 1996. 175 pp., photographs, illustrations, figures, ship masters, Anders Wilhelm Jansson and tables. FIM 100, paper; ISBN 952-90-8073-5. Ragnar Lindholm (by Bertil Lindqvist and Gôte Sundberg). Jansson (1839-1913) was an illegiti• The eighth volume of this annual publication of mate son of a farm maid who not only became a Aland Islands' Nautical Club and Maritime Mu• master but even shipowner and became known as seum contains almost twenty articles and short a very colourful person. Lindholm acted as master research notes (plus a few annual reports). The on many big windjammers owned by Gustaf themes cover a wide field, from ordinary shipping Erikson but his career was marred by frequent ill- history to a description of the restoration of an luck and shipwrecks. Both articles present an eighteenth-century octant; chronologically, the interesting micro-level view of the everyday life 66 The Northern Mariner of those who gained their living from shipping. historian John Gardner before his death in 1995, There is even a Canadian connection, a and while it makes use of the same formula as description by master mariner Yngve Hâgerstand Building Classic Small Craft ( 1977), More Build• of how he sailed a car-ferry over the Atlantic in ing Small Craft (1984), and Classic Small Craft the autumn of 1967. This ferry, the Apollo, was You Can Build (1993), it is perhaps the most sold to a Canadian company for traffic on the St. successful of the lot. Lawrence. Since the ship had been constructed This book contains an introductory chapter for Baltic short-sea services and had a volumi• on the history of the small craft preservation nous car deck the transfer was not any easy movement, a brief chapter on Centennial, the 20- business. The buyer sent a full transfer crew to foot dory in which Alfred Johnson made the first help the master and chief engineer but since they solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in 1876, a only included a few with any Atlantic experience chapter on the migration of the Hampton boat, they were not very useful. The voyage was fourteen chapters dealing with the history, con• stormy and both stem and bow ports leaked but struction, and replication of specific types (rang• finally the ship arrived at its destination. ing in size from an eleven-foot, ten-inch Dion In addition to this stormy business, the tender to a thirty-seven-foot V-bottom work yearbook contains two stories of shipwrecks, launch), a chapter on scale half-models, a chapter those of the barkentine Angela in 1881 (by Ing- on taking off boat lines, and a concluding chapter war Liewendahl) and the barkentine Neptun in which comprises several brief essays on salient November 1928 (by Helge Heikkinen). The latter aspects of small craft construction such as caulk• is based on the author's own experiences and is an ing, steaming, and boatbuilding woods. unusually vivid and dramatic description, but then Readers familiar with Gardner's other books he is an experienced writer who has published a will recognize this mixture of philosophy, general number of maritime novels. small craft history, the history of individual boats For those interested in landward cultural and types, plans, detailed instructions, general history there is a description of a captain's house information on boatbuilding, and information on from the 1880s and its inventories. There is also the little known sub-skills of the boatbuilding a description how Justus Harberg collected mate• trade. If this is the finest of Gardner's books, then rial and wrote a book on the history of Aland's it is because these various interests come together machine-powered shipping, Âlândsk sjôfart med somewhat more harmoniously than in the earlier maskindrivna fartyg, which was published in books. It is difficult not to suspect that even as he December 1995. (As some readers may know, a approached his ninetieth year, the multitude of history of Aland shipping under sail was pub• facts at his disposal continued to constellate into lished already in 1940 by Georg Kâhre.) an ever more coherent overview of the history of Clearly there is a continuing interest in small craft. shipping history on the Aland Islands. All the This continuing intellectual growth is also articles are again supplemented by short English behind the appearance of the word "use" in the summaries so that even those who do not com• title. All of the earlier titles refer only to the mand the Swedish language can at least follow building of boats. This is because Gardner's the thread of the articles. involvement in the movement to preserve Amer• ica's small craft heritage began in earnest in the Yrjb" Kaukiainen late 1960s, a time when the focus of marine Helsinki, Finland museums was beginning to shift from the collec• tion of historic small craft to their replication. As John Gardner. Wooden Boats To Build and To Garner explains in the introductory chapter, this Use. Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1997. reorientation kept the artifacts relevant by pre• 261 pp., photographs, illustrations, figures, tables, venting the loss of traditional boatbuilding tech• index. US $29.95, paper; ISBN 0-913372-78-1. nology and by providing boats which could be studied under working conditions. The success of Wooden Boats To Build and to Use was the last this new approach eventually allowed even book written by boatbuilder and small craft greater emphasis to be placed on the use of rep- Book Reviews 67 lica. By 1993, when Gardner wrote the talk which been an ambitious project, and its size and scope became the introductory chapter, he had become are reflected in both the content and format of the so convinced of the importance of using replica volumes and in their price (in Canadian dollars, that he felt it necessary to admonish his col• the complete set would cost nearly $850 with leagues that "As museum professionals, preserva• tax). tion is our business...so we had better understand All the volumes follow the same format, with that the way to preserve small craft is not to an introduction and a series of free-standing embalm them for static exhibits or to tuck them chapters, each of which is written by an acknowl• away in mothballs, but to get their reproductions edged authority in the field. The overall feeling is out on the water, use them, wear them out and that of a general encyclopaedia for specialists. replace them." (p. 11) That is, some background knowledge is assumed, While the use of replica has proven to be an but with this book a researcher familiar with, say, excellent way for museums to stir public interest the vessels of Egypt and classical antiquity could in historic small craft, Gardner saw in it a much gain a basic understanding of the state of knowl• deeper importance. Near the beginning of his edge about Viking-era vessels. At the same time, concluding chapter he writes, "Building and using the best essays in the book are more than just a small wooden boat helps wonderfully to rees• literature reviews, though there is an excellent tablish and strengthen connections with the annotated bibliography at the end. natural world that so many of us have lost or are The book has both the advantages and the in increasing danger of losing. Wind and water shortcomings inherent in such a collection of have not changed, and the age-old workings and essays. There is unavoidably some overlap and needs of the human body and psyche remain the repetition among the chapters. In some instances, same and cry for expression and fulfillment in a this shows clearly how the same archaeological cold world of artificial abstractions and flickering and pictorial evidence can be understood in images." (p. 239) These words penetrate to the different ways. Some chapters mention recon• heart of the small craft preservation movement. struction projects which are not necessarily Almost everyone senses that it is a profoundly reviewed in the "Problems of Reconstruction" important movement, but few people have been section. The writing style and level of detail vary able to explain why this is so. In the last chapter considerably between chapters. of his last book Gardner has given license to Some, as with Jeremy Green's "Arabia to preservationists to think and speak in terms of the China: The Oriental Traditions," read like ex• human spirit. It is only in these terms that the tended summaries of archaeological reports, and importance of the movement can be adequately cover large spans of time and geography in a very expressed. hurried summary. Others, such as Sean McGrail's "The Bronze Age in Northwest Europe" or Detlev Philip Gillesse Ellmers' "Celtic Plank Boats and Ships, 500 BC Kingston, Ontario to AD 1000," are comprehensive and polished accounts, presenting extensive conclusions drawn Arne Emil Christensen (ed.). The Earliest Ships: from the available evidence. The Evolution of Boats into Ships. "Conway's On the positive side, each essay is written by History of the Ship." London: Conway Maritime a specialist in the field, and takes advantage of the Press and Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996. most up-to-date research. In many cases new 143 pp., figures, maps, illustrations, photographs, findings or interpretations are presented, though bibliography, glossary, index. US $46.95, Cdn those not familiar with the individual fields may $65.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-201-3. not recognize them as such. Sometimes, divergent interpretations are offered, and authors make it This is the last of Conway Maritime Press' clear that they are departing from conventional twelve-volume encyclopedic "History of the wisdom. The book is sumptuously illustrated with Ship" to be published, though it is historically and photographs, maps, plans and drawings. A minor chronologically the first. Others in the series quibble concerns the illustrations, which are not continue up to the present day. The series has numbered or otherwise keyed to the text. This 68 The Northern Mariner occasionally makes it difficult to follow. small craft; or Jeremy Green's persistent confu• The overwhelming impression that is left sion of waterways and limber holes. upon reading this volume is of the richness and Overall, this is a first-rate piece of work, and complexity of the maritime tradition. It is evident it fulfils the publisher's purpose of providing a that many of the conventional explanations for basic first reference work for this most significant such epochal events as the first boats, or the technology. introduction of oar or sail power, do not now hold up under scrutiny. Much has been learned in John Summers recent years, particularly in archaeologically-rich Etobicoke, Ontario and well-studied areas such as Scandinavia, but a great deal remains to be explored. Thomas J. Oertling. Ships ' Bilge Pumps: A His• Many disciplines have contributed to the tory of Their Development, J500-J900. "Studies understanding of the maritime past, including in Nautical Archaeology," No. 2; College Station: archaeologists, historians and ethnologists. It Texas A&M University Press, 1996. xvii + 105 takes particular qualifications to do good research pp., illustrations, photographs, line art, notes, in maritime history, as Dr. Basil Greenhill makes bibliography, index. US $17.95, paper; ISBN 0- clear in his introduction to the volume. Speaking 89096-722-9. of the history of pilotage and navigation, he suggests that they might best be studied by those "All ships leak...." With these words from the who have had the experience of being pilots and introduction, Thomas Oertling launches into a navigators. The same holds true throughout the discussion of, until now, a poorly understood volume. aspect of nautical accouterments. In this small but I would extend that principle to suggest that detail-filled offering, the author traces the devel• those who study early boats and boatbuilding opment of bilge pumps from the beginning of the should have some knowledge of the trade as it has sixteenth century, where pumps were laboriously been practised, and some first-hand experience of made by hand, until the early twentieth century it themselves. Even though it is always necessary when mass production was the norm. Oertling not to control for modem bias in tools, techniques only describes the technical innovation and and attitudes, enough similarities remain to evolution of pump design over the period under provide a worthwhile ground for the researcher's consideration but also gives us a glimpse into the work. With such experientially-based understand• lives of the seafarers who had to rely on these ing, I suspect that some of the features of these machines to preserve their vessels. early ships and boats which seem quite mysteri• It is quite amazing, considering the impor• ous to archaeologists would yield themselves tance of pumps to a vessels well-being (mariners much more readily to explanation. generally deemed them more vital than sails, All of the chapters would have been en• rudders or anchors) that so little has been written riched, too, by more exploration of how the boats concerning them. It may be that, as William and ships were constructed: what of the fasten• Falconer points out in his dictionary, they were so ings? how were the planks gotten out? how were common and well understood that they hardly they shaped and fitted? were they bent? hewn? required description. Due to this paucity of histor• were there moulds or patterns of any kind? have ical data, the author relies heavily on archaeologi• tools survived along with the boats? are there cal examples of real working pumps for much of evidence of repairs? use-wear? what species of the information concerning these vital pieces of wood were used? and so forth. ships' equipment. Marshalling what pertinent Finally, greater knowledge of the materials historical accounts and descriptions that do exist, and processes of boats and boatbuilding would Oertling melds these with the archaeological have prevented some odd statements, such as information to produce a balanced and informa• Lionel Casson's assertion that spritsails cannot be tive exposition of the subject. brailed up, which would no doubt come as a The book is divided into seven chapters. The surprise to the users and builders of Thames first chapter explores the nature of leaks in ships' barges or a variety of traditional North American hulls and the various techniques used by mariners Book Reviews 69 to detect and control these leaks. Dotted with short, anyone with an interest in naval architec• historical accounts of sinking ships, the real ture or technology will find this book a valuable human aspect of a ship in distress is highlighted and worthwhile addition to their book shelves. as is the vital necessity of bilge pumps to the people on board. Chapter two deals with the tools R. James Ringer and techniques used to manufacture wooden Ottawa, Ontario pump tubes, by far the most common type until well into the nineteenth century. Himanshu Prabha Ray and Jean-François Salles The next three chapters contain the essence (eds.). Tradition and Archaeology: Early Mari• of the book, the pumps themselves. In succession, time Contacts in the Indian Ocean. New Delhi: the author deals with the three main types of Manohar Publishers, 1996. x + 338 pp., figures, pumps from the period under study: the bun- maps, photographs, chapter bibliographies, index. pump, the common or "suction" pump and the Rs.950, cloth; ISBN 81-7304-145-8. chain pump. For each of the pump types Oertling describes their historical development, how they Marie-François Boussac and Jean-François Salles functioned, technological improvements and (eds.). Athens, Aden, Arikamedu: Essays on the derivative types. To aid the reader with the tech• interrelations between India, Arabia and the nical descriptions, the book is profusely illus• Eastern Mediterranean. New Delhi, India: Mano• trated with photographs, the author's own line har Publishers, 1995. 272 pp., maps, photographs, drawings and historical diagrams depicting the figures, chapter bibliographies, index. Rs.400, pumps in question. These have generally been cloth; ISBN 81-7304-079-6. placed close to the related text, requiring a mini• mum of page turning. On a slightly negative note, To some extent these two books complement the small format of the book has rendered most of each other. Tradition and Archaeology contains the historical illustrations to such a diminutive a selection of papers presented at the International size as to be difficult to decipher. Seminar on "Techno-Archaeological Perspectives The sixth chapter very briefly discusses later of Seafaring in the Indian Ocean, 4th Century BC pump types, such as force and diaphragm pumps, - 15th Century AD" which was held in 1994 in that became popular during the later part of the New Delhi. That seminar concentrated on the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centu• technological aspects of seafaring and recent ries. These varieties of pumps represent the apex archaeological discoveries in the Indian Ocean. of technological development of manual pumping Since earlier studies have been general and text- systems for shipboard use. The final short chapter based, the seminar sought to examine and discuss consists of a summary and concluding remarks. the relevance of maritime archaeology in Indian This is followed by chapter notes, a useful bibli• Ocean studies. Athens, Aden, Arikamedu is a ography and a good index. reprint of articles extracted from the journal Overall, the book is well written as well as Topoi. Orient-Occident in 1993, many of which easy and pleasurable to read although the author in turn had been published elsewhere. While the occasionally slips into a terse, fact-filled prose former deals with a wider range of subjects, the that becomes distracting. However, this is a latter is more geographically confined to Graeco- niggling fault. The author has admirably suc• India and concentrates more on literary evidence. ceeded in bringing to light a hitherto overlooked Both books are variable in their material and a aspect of naval technology that is deserving of little inconsistent. intensive study. This book will be of interest to The Delhi Seminar in "Techno-Archaeologi• professionals and amateurs alike, from maritime cal Perspectives," which I attended, was highly historians to archaeologists to nautical enthusiasts stimulating. It brought together several different in general. Museum workers and marine archaeol• research fields that would not normally have been ogists will find it particularly useful as a manual together; in fact the conveners went further and for the identification, classification, dating as well set the program in a non-thematic form thus as the assigning of the proper terminology to the preventing one from avoiding sessions and oblig• various pump components they may encounter. In ing delegates to sit through multi-disciplinary 70 The Northern Mariner

sessions. The result was surprisingly successful. Indian ships. There are comments on the appear• I think we all discovered the extent of the overlap ance of axial rudders in the eleventh to the thir• and cross disciplinary potential of our respective teenth centuries. Finally, and most welcome, is fields. To some extent, the book loses a little of some evidence that Indian ships had transom this feeling. One issue that did surprise me was sterns long before the Portuguese appeared in the the disproportionate interest in what is a paucity Indian Ocean, thus dispelling one of the many of evidence for Mediterranean artefacts and Eurocentric myths that Asian shipbuilders mind• culture in India. Both books dwell excessively on lessly copied the European transom (and a lot of the Western (Greek, Hellenistic and Roman) other things too). The time may come when presence in the Indian sub-continent while ignor• scholars may suggest that axial rudders came to ing much of the reverse process and the signifi• the West from the East, in the same way that cance of the people in the middle. Amitav Ghosh, gunpowder and cannon came. a participant at the seminar (although not a con• Athens, Aden, Arikamedu has a more restric• tributor to these proceedings) underlined the tive geographical range and concentrates more on significance of the complexity of this process, as literary sources. The single paper on shipbuilding illustrated for the Fatimid period in the Geniza by Varadarajan, deals with the sewing boat in documents and popularly described in his novel India; it seems curiously out of place here, as she In an Antique Land. was a contributor on this subject at the Delhi The articles in Tradition and Archaeology Seminar where several papers were given and can be divided roughly into the following sub• published on this subject. There is a long and jects: trade artefacts (numismatics and ceramic), interesting archaeological excavation report on literary accounts, and nautical studies (shipbuild• the monuments of Socotra, though it is somewhat ing and technology). Ray notes in her Overview inconsistent with the rest of the essays. A lively the importance of ceramics and other trade items review by A. Tchernia of the "Proceedings of the in demarcating routes and landfalls and not as Colloquium on Rome and India: The Sea Trade" indicators of "colonies." In his paper, MacDowall which was part of the eighty-eighth annual meet• points out that many of the supposed finds of ing of the Archaeological Institute of America. Roman pottery are in fact indigenous Indian The author concludes the review (I refuse to ceramic products and that the Roman coins were review the review) by dispelling another myth: imported not as currency but as a metal. The that Hippalus "invented" the monsoon. The writer emphasis is towards establishing what is truly emphasises that it has been shown for some time Western and what is Eastern. There are several that a mythical Captain Hippalus was created interesting articles on trade from Southeast Asia through an erroneous interpretation of an adjec• and China, particularly Axelle Rougeulle, "Medi• tive in Pliny's manuscript. Curiously, the "myth" eval trade networks in the Western Indian Ocean is somewhat perpetuated in this volume (p.l 16) 8-14th century," which deals extensively with where J.-F. Salles quotes the "anecdote includes Chinese imports to the Islamic world. In the the discovery' of the monsoon by Hippalus" but nautical studies, the paper by Deloche deals with goes on in a footnote with a cross reference to iconographie evidence of Indian boat building Tchernia. The literary studies include topics on from the second century BC c. to the fifteenth the Periplus, and the question of the trade net• century AD. This important article should be read works within Arab-Persian Gulf and the Red Sea in conjunction with his later book Transport and is dealt with by J.-F. Salles, lexical borrowing by Communication in India prior to Steam Locomo• M. Casevitz and A.B. Bosworth outlines the tion, Volume 2: Water Transport (Oxford Univer• influence of geographical theory (Aristotlean in sity Press, 1994). Significantly, he shows second- particular) on Alexander. and first-century BC reliefs of vessels with planks Both volumes come with extensive indices joined with dove-tail inserts, reminiscent of and together make interesting reading. similar fittings on the nineteenth-century BC Dashur boat from the Nile. The Ajanta paintings Jeremy Green (c. 525-650 AD) are dealt with in detail and, Fremantle, Western Australia contrary to Needham, he concludes that these are Book Reviews 71

Louise Levathes. When China Ruled the Seas: The main interest of the book for the mari• The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405- time historian or archaeologist would lie in the 1433. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. New description and discussion of the various types of York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 252 pp., Chinese seagoing vessels of the period, and of the maps, illustrations, notes, index. US $14.95, Cdn navigational methods used. This material occu• $22.50, paper; ISBN 0-19-511207-5. pies quite a small part of the text, and tends to emphasize the size and role of the largest ships. This book looks at a culminating episode in the These were said to be about 400 feet long and history of Chinese seafaring. The Chinese had with a beam of 160 feet, a size which certainly been active and successful long distance voyagers presses the technical limit for ocean-going wood• from the time of the Sung dynasty in the eleventh en sailing ships. This size would not be equalled century A.D. The larger ports of Fukien, Che- in Europe even by nineteenth-century wooden kiang and Kwangtung were trading on a much bulk carriers. The beam is exceptional for a ship larger scale than any European centre at this time, of this size, with a length/beam ratio of 2.5. For and the Sung and later Mongol rulers maintained the serious student of ancient Chinese vessels, effective naval forces. With the accession of the Needham's Science and Civilization in China, Vol third Ming emperor, Zhu Di (Yung le) in 1403, 4.III would be more useful, supplemented by the overseas trade of China expanded; as well, the articles in the scholarly journals on China and emperor and his successor organized seven maritime history and archaeology. government financed maritime expeditions. They Overall the book is well written in a lively, were intended to "show the flag," to show China's and frequently dramatic, style. The human and power and wealth, to impress the various states social side of the period and the expeditions is and rulers from the African coast in the west to fleshed out with imagination and colour. The Sumatra in the east, and to develop diplomatic illustrations complement the text. In the interests and trading contacts throughout this area. But of making a good story, the author tends to make then, after the last of these expeditions, China rather sweeping generalizations about subjects turned inwards; foreign voyages and travel were which are still uncertain or under serious debate. prohibited, and China lost her maritime suprem• At what readership is the book aimed? It is proba• acy in the Far East for the rest of the millenium. bly only of limited interest to the serious student The first three chapters review the develop• of Chinese maritime history and archaeology, but ment of Chinese seafaring during the Sung and should appeal to anyone wanting a general over• Mongol dynasties, and the background to the view of a very interesting period in Chinese career of the eunuch Zheng He (Cheng Ho) who history, presented in vivid and dramatic prose. was chosen by the emperors to command the The book should do very well in the public voyages. A short fourth chapter describes the library system. building of the ships for the seven Ming expedi• tions. The following six chapters outline the R.J.O. Millar voyages, and the last two chapters examine Vancouver, British Columbia legends and evidence for Chinese contact with various coastal parts of India, Africa, Indonesia Robb Robinson. Trawling: The Rise and Fall of and Australia, and the possibility of temporary or the British Trawl Fishery. Exeter: University of permanent settlements or colonies there. Exeter Press, 1996. viii + 280 pp., figures, tables, The author has visited a number of the major photographs, maps, appendix, notes, bibliogra• scholars in the fields of Chinese history and phy, index. £30, US $59.95, cloth; ISBN 0- maritime history. From them she has had assis• 85989-480-0. Distributed in North America by tance in translating some of the primary sources Northwestern University Press. of the Ming period held in both Chinese and occidental archives and collections. There is only Trawling, or "dragging" as it is known in Atlantic a short bibliography of primary and secondary Canada, is an ancient fishing method. It was only sources, but the text has been augmented with of local interest until the mid-nineteenth century, quite extensive notes. however, because the kinds of fish vulnerable to 72 The Northern Mariner

slowly-towed nets could not be preserved by the briefly. The author correctly stresses the need for available salting, smoking and pickling methods. resource conservation and the implications for the Beginning around 1840, railway transport and industry of its failure to protect its own resources. new markets for fresh fish in the English indus• He does not, however, explain such subtleties as trial cities removed these constraints, provoking the differences between halibuting and fishing for explosive development of trawling throughout the the smaller flatfish, which would go far towards North Sea. A major new fishery appeared, soon to explaining why Hull could send halibut factory become the world's largest, and the Industrial ships to Greenland in 1926 even though no Revolution reached out to the fishing grounds for factory trawler was built before 1954. the first time. More disappointingly, the book does not Trawling lent itself to steam power (a devel• offer any comparisons to other fisheries. The opment of the 1880s), to a degree that other growth of trawling was duplicated in other North fisheries did not, and thereby created the potential Sea nations, notably France and Germany, while for widespread over-exploitation of open sea the conflicts between the large-scale trawl fisher• resources — modern concerns about over-fishing ies and smaller-scale, more traditional forms of being largely a result of the advent of the trawl fishing (so evident in Britain from 1860 to 1914) fisheries. The English trawler owners did not have been played out repeatedly elsewhere. They respond to this loss of their raw material by remain very much a part of the fisheries scene in restricting production but rather by increasing Canada to this day. Parallels drawn with this technological efficiency and by moving their broader experience would have served to illumi• operations to undeveloped grounds. The latter nate the progress of the British fisheries. Such sustained them, and their emulators from other gaps aside, there are very few evident errors in countries, until the 1970s, when coastal nations the book. The only one noticeable to this reviewer (Canada included) extended their jurisdictions to is the author's tendency to equate "stern trawler" protect coastal resources from the rapacious with "factory freezer trawler," thus ignoring the distant water fleets. One result was the sudden important wetfish stern trawlers built in the 1960s collapse of the principal British fishery, only and '70s. some 140 years after its appearance. This is not the final statement on the history Parts of this important story have been told of trawling but it is the most valuable contribu• before, though usually only anecdotally. Dr. tion to the literature so far. It should be read by Robinson has now provided the missing rigorous everyone who claims a say in fisheries policy treatment in this superbly written and eminently matters and also as a case study of the rise and readable book. Although not an exhaustive ac• fall of a major industry under the special influ• count, it does provide an authoritative overview ences of a common-property resource, govern• of the business, labour and regulatory aspects of mental management and international law. the tale, while also touching on the social history of the trawlermen. Trevor Kenchington The technological evolution of trawlers and Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia their gear, which permitted the expansion of the industry, is not adequately explained however. Wayne M. O'Leary. Maine Sea Fisheries: The There are a few photographs of trawlers, giving Rise and Fall of a Native Industry, 1830-1890. some hint of their changing shape over a century, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996. xii but there are no general arrangements drawings + 391 pp., maps, photographs, illustrations, notes, nor even a diagram of the layout of the working select bibliography, appendices, tables, index. US areas. Readers who have never been to sea on a $55, cloth; ISBN 1-55553-280-2; US $24.95, side trawler may, therefore, miss some of the paper; ISBN 1-55553-281-0. author's meaning. Indeed, the general reader might find that prior study of some illustrated and Maine Sea Fisheries is a masterful addition to the anecdote-laden account of deep-sea fishing would all-too-limited scholarly literature on the fisheries provide the "colour" missing from this book. of the United States. Its subject is Maine's oceanic Natural resource issues are dealt with equally fishing activity. However, the book is broader Book Reviews 73 than its title suggests. Since the author often information on the social conditions of fishermen, compares and contrasts Maine's industry with its including the many dangers and health hazards rivals in Massachusetts and Canada, and to a they faced. lesser extent with those in other areas of the One can only hope that O'Leary will con• United States, this volume offers an overview of tinue his distinguished research on the North North American fisheries throughout most of the American fisheries. As he does, there are addi• nineteenth century. tional issues he may wish to explore. These Wayne O'Leary documents the rise of Maine include the benefits that Maine fishermen did or as the preeminent producer of salt cod, mostly did not receive from the rights granted in the caught on the Grand Banks, in the two decades 1871 Treaty of Washington to use Canadian and prior to the American Civil War. Maine also was Newfoundland inshore fisheries. While the author an important participant in the pickled mackerel makes frequent reference to information provided fishery. But between 1865 and 1890 there was a by US Fish Commission representatives, he does relentless decline in Maine's fortunes as Canadian not explain the nature of that organization and its fishermen proved to be more efficient in the work on behalf of the US fisheries. These contri• Grand Banks saltcod fishery, while the Massa• butions may not have been as substantive as the chusetts ports of Gloucester and Boston domi• governmental bounty provided to Canada's fisher• nated the growing fresh fish market. In part, men in 1882. Nevertheless, the Fish Commission Maine's deterioration reflected the under-capital- located new fishing grounds, supported US ization of its industry. O'Leary also depicts many diplomatic goals regarding access to Canadian other economic factors that contributed to the and Newfoundland fisheries, compiled life history virtual disappearance of Maine oceanic fisheries information on important commercial fish spe• by 1890. Among these were the end of the federal cies, developed a safer fishing schooner, and cod bounty in 1866, Maine's distance from major promoted more efficient fishing techniques. The urban markets, its relatively poor railroad connec• Commission's activities demonstrated that the tions, the state's loss of its former markets for fish United States did not pursue a purely laissez faire products in the southern United States and Carib• policy toward its fishing industry. bean, the high cost of marine insurance in Maine, O'Leary's study is distinguished by important the disinclination of the state's mariners to pursue new insights and by an impressive breadth of winter fresh fishing off Maine's coast, and the research. Maine Sea Fisheries recently was competition of Massachusetts which offered recognized by the North American Society of better wages and benefits to its fishermen. Oceanic History with a Lyman Award as the best A notable aspect of O'Leary's study is his book in maritime history published in the United analysis of the region's capitalist system. He States during 1996. That honor is richly deserved. laments the end of an economic democracy which featured, during the antebellum period, the wide• Dean C. Allard spread ownership of Maine's fishing fleet. Arlington, Virginia O'Leary shows that in the post Civil-War era ownership became increasingly concentrated in Peter A. Robson and Michael Skog (eds.). Work• the hands of larger business units which em• ing the Tides: A Portrait of Canada's West Coast ployed an exploited wage-earning underclass. Fishery. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, Maine Sea Fisheries also will suggest to many 1996. 216 pp., maps, photographs, illustrations, readers that an equally damning critique of index. $34.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55017-153-4. Maine's business community was its simple inability to adapt and hence to survive in an era of There are forty-four tales about fishers and fish• rapid change in markets and technology. ing on the Pacific Coast in this collection. To• O'Leary bases much of his work on extensive gether they tell a fascinating story about life on data bases. This quantification appears in numer• the ocean waves in pursuit of that elusive bo• ous tables printed at the end of his volume. Al• nanza that will cure all financial woes. The tide though primarily a study in economic history, turns, strangely enough, and the reader soon Maine's Sea Fisheries also offers illuminating begins to wonder, who hooked whom? Did the 74 The Northern Mariner fisher hook the fish or did the fish hook the fishers are demanding and getting a larger share fisher? The pursuit of the wily chinook salmon, of a diminishing supply of salmon. All commer• geoyduck or whatever else that comes out of the cial fisheries, whether for halibut, blackcod, sea deeps, often becomes an end in itself for the urchin or whatever are now limited-entry fisheries dedicated fisher. If you want to know and feel requiring huge amounts of capital to buy an what commercial fishing in British Columbia was existing fishing privilege. The days when a lad or all about in the decades following the close of lass from a fishing village could start out with a World War II then you should read this book. beat-up old clunker of a boat, a one-dollar license It is difficult to be critical of these tales. and follow in daddy's wake are gone forever. They reflect actual fishing experiences in an Working the Tides captures an era. The final environment that at times can be benign, is fre• tale, "The Old Captain Takes a Walk in the quently challenging and occasionally brutal Sunshine," gently closes the door on the past. enough to demand human sacrifice. The unwary There is a tendency to write off the past until hit caught in the mighty grip of hurricane force by nostalgia as we grow older. All too often, there winds knows the true meaning of human frailty. is no one left to tell the stories we want to hear. The aura of romance projected in Working the Thank goodness the editors captured the spirit of Tides is tempered with harsh realism. an important era in the BC fisheries when they There are references to fishing in the 1920s did and as well as they did. and 1930s but the stories are mainly about real- life experiences of living authors. They tell the Ron MacLeod stories of individuals and of small fishing families Surrey, British Columbia and capture the flavor of several generations of BC fishers. Pierre Berton; photographs by André Gallant. The One of the small confusions the reader may Great Lakes. Toronto: Stoddart, 1996. 224 pp., encounter is in the terminology. Chinook salmon, maps, photographs (b+w, colour), illustrations. for example, are sometimes referred to as springs Cdn $50, US $40, cloth; 0-7737-2971-2. or smileys. These large, silvery beauties are the goal of every salmon troller who ever put on a The Great Lakes is a quite competently designed hook, line or sinker in the ocean. At prices up to coffee table book. The historical images are five dollars per pound and more when some of superbly reproduced, in the case of some of them, these stories were written, why would they not be perhaps for the first time in colour. Gallant's called smileys? For the most part, however, the photographs dominate the work. They both stories are easy to follow and the pictures and illustrate Berton's text and provide their own story sketches throughout the book are an invaluable line. The images reach out over the Lakes, and guide to what might otherwise be a mystery for illustrate the shore as frequently from an airplane many readers. as from the waterline. Gallant is, by and large, a The stories tell yesterday's story of fisheries fine-weather photographer, so the water level that now are changing so rapidly that no collec• shots could have been taken from a canoe, so tion can "tell it like it is." The book presents a quiet are the Lakes. At the same time, if you have snapshot of a time that was but will be no more. another general, illustrated history of the Great There are hints of change in some of the tales and Lakes, you will already have seen most of these some concerns are expressed about proper conser• images (or their near equivalent), and Gallant's vation and the need to put something back. To• photos are not sufficiently outstanding to make day, the salmon fishery that takes up a large share this reviewer lay down the price of the book. of this collection is in the throes of revolutionary Nor, quite frankly, does the text justify the change. The federal government is reducing the price. Berton made his reputation as one of Can• number of fishing vessels from 4,400 to 2,200. ada's great storytellers through the first-person Coastal communities that grew and prospered narratives that were woven into his text. You around commercial salmon fisheries are being wouldn't find many of these in Berton's bibliogra• transformed. Chinook and coho stocks are no phy this time (you won't find notes or a bibliogra• longer abundant. Recreational and aboriginal phy in this volume either, but then this is a coffee Book Reviews 75 table book). Instead most of the stories come from poor living conditions. By 1991 Cove Island was a fairly familiar corpus of secondary works. The the last staffed lightstation on the lakes, and when first person comes from the author himself, who the final keeper vacated his snug, modern bunga• works in dimensions of the Klondike, his low, 133 years of lightkeeping on Georgian Bay youthful terror aboard west coast passenger came to an end. vessels, his impressions of Toronto and Chicago The history of Cove Island lighthouse and its in the late 1940s, protests at Clayoquot Sound guardian spans the tenure of all lights and and birding at Point Pelee. Of history on the lightkeepers on Georgian Bay, and it provides a Lakes there is precious little: some geological fitting beginning to Lynx Images' tribute to the history, the Griffon, the voyageurs skirting Supe• lights that guided shipping through the bay's rior, the Battle of Lake Erie, and a chapter on treacherous waters. Alone in the Night is the first shipwrecks. The chapters on mining and forestry major Canadian book on Great Lakes lighthouses, almost succeed in avoiding the lakes entirely. The and with its companion video, offers insight into single exception is Silver Island (which has the the lives of the men and women who lived and best historical photograph in the work). The worked on remote islands and headlands. shipwrecks chapter is full of mis-information. The The authors make no pretense that theirs is a myth of ten thousand shipwrecks (the author's complete history of Georgian Bay lights. Rather, italics) was exploded a decade ago by Patrick they have assembled a collection of personal Folkes. The chapter dwells on the value of the histories and anecdotes that are as much a social salvageable "treasure" on the bottom of the lakes. history as a record of lightkeeping on Georgian The Great Lakes has very little to offer Bay. Profiles of the lighthouses are interspersed readers of this journal. A survey of local book• with accounts of patronage, shipwrecks, murder stores indicates that many copies were produced, and ghosts. The book also chronicles the rise and so you might want to keep an eye out for the fall of commerce and industry on the lakes; remainder sales. In the meantime, for stories of lighthouses were tangible evidence of growth and the Lakes there is still no equal to C.H.J. Snider prosperity as increasing numbers of cargo and who, thanks to the editorial work of Robert B. passenger ships plied the Great Lakes in the late Townsend, was back in print last year. nineteenth century. As the twentieth century progressed, changing shipping patterns and Walter Lewis improvements in navigation technology eventu• Acton, Ontario ally led to the downgrading and de-staffing of all Great Lakes lighthouses. With de-staffing came Andrea Gutsche, Barbara Chisholm, and Russell demolition of many lights and keeper's houses, Floren. Alone in the Night: Lighthouses of Geor• and this loss of architecturally and historically gian Bay, Manitoulin Island and the North Chan• significant structures is one of the several issues nel. Toronto: Lynx Images, 1996 [P.O. Box 5961, explored by the authors. Station A, Toronto, ON M5W 1P4]. Guide book: Before profiling more than fifty Georgian xx + 292 pp., illustrations, photographs, maps, Bay lights, the book begins with "lighthouse selected bibliography; video: 72 minutes. Cdn basics" — the impetus for construction, architec• $49.95, US $44.95, paperback and video together ture and design of the towers, the people who (video alone, Cdn $29.95); ISBN 0-9698427-5-9. kept the lights, and the development of lens and fog horn technology. Two subsequent sections When stonemason John Brown began construct• look at individual lights, on Georgian Bay and on ing the massive limestone lighthouse on Georgian Manitoulin Island and the North Channel. An Bay's Cove Island in 1855, the stage was set for eclectic mix of history, interview material, anec• a lightkeeping history that would last almost a dotes, archival and current photos, maps and century and a half on the Canadian Great Lakes. charts presents a clear view of the rise and fall of In 1858 a precision-crafted Fresnel lens was lightstations, and presents a compelling argument installed atop the completed eighty-five-foot for the preservation of the remaining structures. tower, tended by lightkeepers who for years Alone in the Night successfully dispels some endured long night watches, food shortages and popular myths about lightkeeping, recognizing 76 The Northern Mariner that it was not a job for romantic dreamers or The video provides an impressionistic picture that those who were "going to write a book." Early probably is best viewed beforehand. keepers saw face-to-face the survivors and vic• Each chapter of the book is devoted to an tims of shipwrecks, and endured an administra• area of the Bay and contains many sketch maps, tion that was willing to provide a host of rules all of them cross-referenced to the appropriate and regulations but no real training or logistical navigational charts. The history of each place support. Yet the book also acknowledges the marked on a map is told concisely, with emphasis romance inherent in some aspects of the job — on human interest; the back cover promises isolation, heroic rescues, and the incredible "shipwrecks, ghost towns, shattered dreams," and, beauty of many lighthouse sites. The video's mix albeit briefly, this volume has them all. The of aerial, underwater and sea-level photography numerous black-and-white pictures here are well accompanied by an evocative soundtrack creates selected and help attune the reader to the past. some powerful images. Striking colour cinema• Many are familiar, but like the text, they probably tography contrasts with old 8 mm footage, and will be new to the audience for which the book is through careful fades the viewer is transported intended. One of the authors has known Georgian from past to present, from well-maintained light• Bay during a lifetime of summer vacations and houses to today's derelict towers and empty both have travelled it by boat, giving them a foundations. feeling for the region as well as opportunities to Alone in the Night presents an immense search out anecdotes such as the one of Grandma amount of information in an informative and Whalen, who started living in a tent on an island engaging manner. Both the book and video during the hay-fever season, and over the years provide a concerned and thoughtful commentary developed the location into a booming summer on a service and way of life that have all but hotel — which, like most summer hotels, no disappeared in Canada. From the impressive longer exists. They also have included pres• limestone "Imperial" towers to the squat wooden ent-day directions to historic places, warning sentinels on pierheads and rocky islets, all of small craft about specific navigational hazards or Georgian Bay's lighthouses and their keepers landing parties about dangerous overgrowths of played a crucial role in the economy and develop• poison ivy. Altogether the book is a well-orga• ment of a young nation. Today their numbers are nized, useful Baedeker to the historical places of dwindling, and in telling their stories, Alone in Georgian Bay, particularly for visitors who come the Night has preserved important elements of by water or have access to a boat. If one's interest Canadian marine heritage that otherwise might in some specific place or event is sparked by the have been lost to time and progress. short treatment of it here, a wide range of material for further reading is listed in the bibliography. Chris Mills One wishes that the video were equally well Dryad Point, British Columbia organized. It neither follows the geographical pattern of the book nor fully develops chronologi• Russell Floren and Andrea Gutsche; ed. Barbara cally. It begins and ends with an actor somewhat Chisholm. Ghosts of the Bay: A Guide to the resembling Benjamin Franklin with his high History of Georgian Bay. Toronto: Lynx Images, forehead and nose-perched spectacles but who 1994 [P.O. Box 5961, Station A, Toronto, ON pauses to caress a late-nineteenth-century photo• M5W 1P4]. Book: xxiv + 303 pp., illustrations, graph of a wife or daughter while writing a poetic photographs, maps, selected bibliography, index; description of the Bay. Otherwise it wanders. Its video: 90 minutes. Cdn $49.95, US $44.95, best part tells the history of Georgian Bay log• paperback and video together (video alone, Cdn ging; clips of historical black-and-white movies $29.95); ISBN 0-9698427-3-2. are well blended with old still photos. Nearly as good is its account of commercial fishing. The Ghosts of the Bay are two complementary travel most memorable effect in the whole tape begins guides to Georgian Bay which can be used as a with a modern video shot of a now-empty land• set or bought separately. The book is of conve• scape on the Bustard Islands and then gradually nient pocket size and can be taken along readily. superimposes on it a black-and white photo of the Book Reviews 11 old fishing station there with people, boats, and behemoth constituted in 1926 by the merging of buildings that fit exactly. Norfolk, Portsmouth and Newport News was an Possibly we expect too much from presenta• enticing prospect. In fact it is nothing of the kind: tions such as this because we regularly see highly hazy memory of those basic facts had to be professional computer-generated television confirmed from the Funk & Wagnall which commercials. But here the animations, such as clutters my study. Clearly if the formation of the that representing the foundering of the steamer port authority is not mentioned, then neither are Asia, are amateurish to the point of embarrass• the reasons for it: there is nothing whatsoever ment. The production allows itself a certain about the operation, funding or management of artistic license. At times the still pictures dis• the civilian port facilities. Without local knowl• played bear only tangentially on what the voice- edge it would be possible to read at least half the over is saying. While, for instance, a retired book before realising that Hampton Roads is not fisherman tells about cutting winter ice from the simply the name of a channel, as shown on the Bay for refrigeration at the remote Bustards, the useful general map of Chesapeake Bay. photograph shown is of earlier ice-cutting at Naval matters receive better treatment, but well-settled Collingwood. While the video's even here we find two problems. The approach is narrator speaks of the annual gifts to the Indians anecdotal, which inevitably brings about patchy at Present Island, we see a drawing of Indians of coverage, and, particularly in the early part of the a different time at Coldwater. When we are given book, some stories are arranged biographically old still pictures of a vessel, told about its wreck, rather than thematically, leading to unhappy and then without further ado are shown good chronological athletics. There is an underlying modern footage of underwater wreckage, a strong moral agenda as well: the author seems almost to question arises as to whether the wreck that we glory in the War of Independence, as in Union see is the wreck that was described. victories in the Civil War, but to become rather The two efforts reviewed here are much pacifist in the age of rocketry and nuclear weap• different in usefulness. The video is an entertain• ons. This is not just a question of war being all ing preliminary to a visit, but a viewer should not right when the blood is well dried: it is based on expect accurate detail. The book can safely be the old idea of justice in war (as if there were ever carried as a guide to the Bay. any such thing) and it leads to the omission of any account of the Spanish-American War. Now James P. Barry Americans may not feel proud of that war, but it Columbus, Ohio was the first in which armoured steam warships traded explosive shells from rifled breech-loading John Frye. Hampton Roads and Four Centuries guns, and as such it was important. Instead we get as a World's Seaport. Lewiston, NY, Queenston, an account of America's well-intentioned but Ont. and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996. ineffectual and irrelevant attempts to deal with 390 pp., maps, photographs, bibliography, index. North African piracy. US $99.95, cloth; ISBN 0-7734-9064-7 or 0- A block of chapters entitled "Ships and 88946-099-X. Shipping" promises better things, and chapters on pilotage and coal exporting do deliver some, yet Reviewers for The Northern Mariner/Le Marin there is still no overview of what the Port of du Nord are sent a style sheet of advice as to how Hampton Roads, or its predecessor bodies, were they should go about the job, one canon of which really about. Earlier chapters have told us quite a is that the purpose of the book must be stated. In lot about railway development and the tobacco the case of this book, which is by turns engaging trade and a bit about forest products, but it never and infuriating, it is exceptionally difficult to comes together. There is a lengthy section about judge where its objectives, or target readership, the Leviathan and the United States, but these are lie. included because the former was refitted and the The economic, technical and business histo• latter built in Hampton Roads. Interesting, but riography of American ports is slim, and a sub• while shipbuilding and the provision of port stantial book promising four centuries of the services often exist close together, there is no 78 The Northern Mariner

necessary reason why they must. In many places J.H. Matthews' Cardiff records and E.A. Lewis' where they did, one function was incomparably Welsh Ports Books. 1550-1603. Chappell does, more important than the other: compare, for however, lapse at times, attempting on one occa• example, Sunderland and Hull. These two ships sion to justify a possible Viking presence at tell us nothing about the Port of Hampton Roads. Cardiff with a passage taken from the City guide The book is not without merit. It is well book for 1939! produced and bound, though there are occasional Such minor quibbles do little to detract from errors, (such as reversing photos 8 and 9) and this remarkable narrative history, tracing maritime there are some well-chosen illustrations. The activity at Cardiff from prehistoric times to the writing is often lively and always committed. The eve of World War II. Prior to the development of author has done a great deal of work with a wide the iron industry in South Wales from the mid- variety of secondary and primary sources. That eighteenth century onwards, the port of Cardiff brings us back to the central problem: to whom is was of little economic consequence, being totally the book addressed? It is something more than a overshadowed by nearby Bristol, for many centu• non-specialist "feel good" local history for the ries the economic capital of the area. Chappell is upper-middle-classes resident around Chesapeake nevertheless meticulous in the way in which he Bay, but I cannot imagine that readers of this brings together scraps of information from nu• journal would find it worth buying even when merous sources to create a convincing account of remaindered. Had I not been on a longish train the maritime associations of medieval and early journey, I might not have even read it through to modern Cardiff. Particularly illuminating are his the end. accounts of piracy and smuggling, which show how far-removed from reality are the stock im• Adrian Jarvis ages of rum and 'pieces of eight.' A favourite Liverpool, England target of some Bristol Channel pirates were ships returning from Newfoundland laden with salt cod, Edgar L. Chappell. History of the Port of Cardiff. whilst he amazingly succeeds in tracing the Cardiff, 1939; reprint, Cardiff: Merton Priory activities of one Welsh seaborne brigand who Press, 1994. 135 pp., photographs, illustrations, rejoiced in the name of'Jones the pirate'!! index. £14.95, cloth; ISBN 1-898937-01-X. Cardiff s spectacular transformation into a major world port began in the 1790s with the This is a welcome re-print of the first serious construction of the Glamorganshire Canal to the attempt to trace the history of Cardiff as a port, ironworks of Merthyr Tydfil. Chappell provides published in 1939 to celebrate the centenary of us with a detailed yet lucid account of subsequent the opening of the Bute West Dock. To this day, developments during the nineteenth century, it remains the only comprehensive published charting the opening of new docks and their account of Cardiff s maritime history, and has associated railway systems, and explaining the stood the test of time remarkably well. Its author, gradual displacement of iron production by the Edgar Leyshon Chappell, was a teacher by pro• export of steam coal as the industrial bedrock of fession, but his committed Socialist views led him southeast Wales. He also notes the effect of into local government in Cardiff, where he was an competing dock facilities at Penarth and, most ardent advocate of improved town planning and especially, Barry, upon the fortunes of the port of social reform, particularly the so-called "garden Cardiff in the latter half of the century. suburb" movement. 1913 was the peak year for coal exports from Chappell was also an enthusiastic local the South Wales ports. Writing a quarter of a historian who, in addition to the History of the century after this economic pinnacle, Chappell Port of Cardiff, also wrote a couple of well- was only too aware of the decline in Cardiff's researched volumes on the history of the coal trade, noting that in 1938, the total tonnage Melingriffith and Whitchurch areas of Cardiff in handled at the port was but 48 per cent of the which he lived. All these books were — and still figure for 1913. Whilst praising the efforts of the are — notable for their thorough research taken Great Western Railway (owners of most South chiefly from published primary sources such as Wales ports at that time) to diversify trade, the Book Reviews 79

History of the Port of Cardiffoffers virtually no history — but during the years of this construction analysis of the reasons for this decline, and this is the Board's fortunes fell into a slump. probably the major weakness of the volume for Passage of the Mersey Docks and Harbour the present-day reader. This should not detract, Act 1971, which transformed the Board into the however, from the value of his remarkable pio• Company and prescribed the framework for the neering work; it is still unquestionably the best modernization of its capital structure, therefore general introduction to the history of this remark• marked more than merely a formal or legalistic able port — which today imports coal! change. The Port of Liverpool was as near to terminal closure in the winter of 1970-71 as at David Jenkins any time in its 250-year history. The 1971 Act Cardiff. Wales can be seen as a turning point and, though the Company was effectively on a life-support system Anthony Lynch. Weathering the Storm: The for many years thereafter, it emerged in the 1980s Mersey Docks Financial Crisis 1970-74. Liver• as a thriving and self-confident business. pool: Liverpool University Press, 1994. x + 144 The 1971 Act was highly controversial at the pp., photographs, tables, notes and sources, time. Events moved so fast as to blur the wider chronology, index. £18.50, cloth; ISBN 0-85323- view. Now that over twenty years have passed, it 419-1; £9.50, paper; ISBN 0-85323-429-9. is appropriate to try to give a balanced account of the events of 1970 to 1974, and that is what The winter of 1970-71 was probably the darkest Lynch attempts to do in Weathering the Storm. hour in the history of the Port of Liverpool, at The book is not, however, a general history of least in peace time. The "Container Revolution" — Mersey Docks, even in respect of the period the technological change in the method of the 1970-74, with which it is mainly concerned. It carriage of goods by sea from break-bulk to deals only with the financial crisis and its resolu• transportation in containers — was having a major tion, and that largely from a political and legal impact on the size and design of ships, the layout viewpoint. Such important topics as the construc• of port facilities, and the patterns of sea trade. The tion of the Royal Seaforth Dock or the turbulent Liverpool docks had been built mainly in the labour relations of the period are touched on only nineteenth century for the general cargo ships of insofar as they impinged on the financial crisis. that time and, though they had undergone a Lynch has also avoided making any explicit continuous process of adaptation and moderniza• evaluation of the causes that were at the root of tion, the port facilities still consisted essentially of the crisis and the appropriateness of the steps that a line of finger docks with narrow quays backed were taken to resolve it. by transit sheds designed for the temporary I must confess that I greatly enjoyed the storage of relatively small consignments of book, Generally it is well written and informative. general cargo. These physical structures were Lynch has, in many respects, achieved his objec• quite unsuitable for containers. tive. However, given the political and legal Moreover, the constitution of the Mersey perspective taken by Lynch, the book is quite Docks and Harbour Board and its capital structure technical in places — as in its discussion of bank• were still based largely on the concepts embodied ruptcy law in the United Kingdom — and will in the Acts of Parliament of 1857 and 1858 that therefore be of greater interest to the accounting, established the Board. These legal and financial business or legal historian than to the maritime structures were likewise unsuited to deal with the historian or general reader. While Lynch's deci• rapidly changing situation of the last three de• sion not to assess the causes of the crisis that cades of the twentieth century, just as the port confronted the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board industry's labour-relations arrangements were and the measures that were taken to resolve it is ill-equipped to adjust to the new technology. undoubtedly a prudent one, some readers will feel The Board had started to tackle the physical that Lynch's account is consequently incomplete. constraints by the construction of the new con• tainer and bulk-cargo facilities at Seaforth — the G. Edward Reed largest and most costly development in the Port's Ottawa, Ontario 80 The Northern Mariner

Reinhard Spindler. New York und der amerikan- York with India as its stated destination or India ische Indienhandel (1784-1812). "Beitrâge zur as its verifiable point of departure, Spindler Siidasienforschung," Band 161; Stuttgart: Franz weaves a detailed and intricate tapestry. Space Steiner Verlag, 1994. xv + 601 pp., tables, fig• does not allow the reviewer to do more than ures, appendices, sources, indices, maps. DM/sFr mention some of the strands of detail that will 198, soft binding; ISBN 3-515-06583-0. intrigue other historians of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century maritime trade. There is, for Spindler's book is an exhaustive account of "New example, rich prosopographical data here on the York and the American Trade with India (1784- merchants and financiers in the trade, on William 1812)," based upon meticulous research using Duer, John Jacob Astor, and hosts of others. primary sources in the New York Historical There is extensive description, cleverly pieced Society, the New York Public Library, and the together from disparate sources, of the intricate US National Archives. It is an important addition patterns of transoceanic trade and the workings of to our knowledge about the origins of United transnational markets. The India trade with New States trade with Asia, especially since commerce York was not simply a bilateral one but was with India has long been neglected in favor of the linked with the trades to China, Southeast Asia, trade with China. Spindler gives us an equivalent Europe, and even Latin America. The book (partial only in so far as he covers "just" New includes voluminous descriptions of the goods York) to Louis Dermigny's magisterial work on imported from India, and reveals the depth of the eighteenth-century Canton trade; in other words, New York market for such goods. (One telling Spindler's achievement is impressive indeed! example is given on pp. 386-7: in 1809, New Spindler's initial goal is to revise the view, Yorkers imported Indian textiles both directly held by Holden Furber as well as by G. Bhagat, from India and via England.) that early American trade with India was almost The book's only major drawback is a non- exclusively a New England affair. Spindler shows scholarly one: its price. Few libraries in the era of conclusively that New York also played a leading university budget reductions, and even fewer role. His detailed use of merchants' letter- and individuals, will be able to afford this important account-books, price currents, and marine listings work. Given the high price and the fact that most in newspapers amply offsets the general lack in researchers on United States and Asian trade do New York archives of either ships' logs or cus• not read German, I urge Spindler to summarize toms records (the New England bias of earlier his key findings in an English- or French-lan• researchers stemmed from their reliance on the guage journal. In any event, New York und der latter sources, which are widely available in amerikanische Indienhandel (1784-1812) de• Salem and Boston archives). He notes too that serves the widest audience possible among mari• during this period Calcutta replaced Bombay and time and economic historians. Madras as the main trading centre for New York ships. The book also documents that many of the Daniel A. Rabuzzi Indian cargoes arriving in New York were owned Decorah, Iowa by merchants from other American seaports (Philadelphia figured largely, besides the New Sinnapah Arasaratnam. Maritime Commerce and Englanders), and that a thriving group of commis• English Power: Southeast India 1750-1800. sion agents sprang up in New York to handle South Asian Publication Series; Aldershot, these goods. And, though hampered by the lack Hamps. & Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1996. x + of statistics, the book also explores the United 326 pp., maps, glossary, bibliography, index. US States coastal trade in Indian commodities. $72.95, cloth; ISBN 0-86078-610-2. The book is a mine of valuable data not only for the chronology, composition, and mechanics He has long been a valued colleague and friend. of the New York end of the trade, but for Last year I had the pleasure of co-editing a fest• American-European-Asian trade in this period schrift in his honour: M.N. Pearson and I. Bruce more generally. By describing in order the voyage Watson (eds.), Asia and Europe: Commerce, of every single vessel that sailed from or to New Colonialism and Cultures: Essays in Honour of Book Reviews 81

Sinnappah Arasaratnam in the journal South Asia events in India, in England machine-made cloth [Special Issue], vol. XIX, November 1996. Read• was being produced with greater and greater ers of this review may want to take my obvious efficiency. By the end of the story, in 1800, the partiality into account as they read what follows. EIC had done away with all European competi• Arasaratnam has been very productive over tors, and all intermediaries between the weavers the last decade or so. He provided a broad over• and themselves as the sole purchasers. Conse• view on maritime India in the seventeenth century quently, the position of the weavers was also (1994). He also published many articles, some of greatly reduced. which are now conveniently collected in two The last three chapters of the book are more volumes put out by Variorum. The present work thematic. There is first a survey of long distance constitutes the second chapter in the story, for it and coastal trade, and then of merchants, entre• follows on directly from his Merchants, Compa• preneurs and intermediaries. Both of these chap• nies and Commerce on the Coromandel Coast, ters use some data from the previous, chronologi• 1650-1740 (1986). That study showed the resil• cal, chapters, but they enable the author to draw ience of Indian maritime and commercial groups out some broader themes. The chapter on mer• faced with competition from Europeans. The chants shows what a varied group this was at the book under review details the process by which time, and also how the EIC was able to virtually British commercial and political power began to eliminate competition. Indian merchants in partic• be felt on the Coromandel coast, which had the ular suffered from a confinement of the space in momentous and melancholy consequences we all which they could operate, and ended up losing know in the succeeding decades. Here then is a their autonomy, and becoming instead intermedi• case study of the beginnings of underdevelop• aries between the producers and the EIC: some of ment, of the undercutting of local industry, and of these dubashes (literally "two languages," a go- the consequences of an extension of power by a between or intermediary) nevertheless did very newly industrialising and militarily dominant well indeed in this parasitic role. England. Arasaratnam's study thus complements Overall this book has much more to do with very nicely comparable studies of other areas of the land than the sea. It should be seen as an out• India which felt the effects of British imperialism standing detailed analysis of the expansion of early on, notably Bengal. British power in its period and an expert disentan• The first six chapters of this book are broadly gling of the consequences of this expansion on chronological. They take account of the various the economy and society of this important region political and military events of the time: troubles in India. Do not be put off by the detail, for this is with the Nizam, the Nawab, and Tipu Sultan. a case study of an absolutely fundamental and This is all familiar enough. What is new is the momentous process, that is the rise of the "west" very detailed depiction of what the extension of to dominance, and the beginnings of the creation British rule meant on the ground, that is for of a rich world and a poor world. weavers, brokers, merchants and traders. The effects were catastrophic. The English were M.N. Pearson concerned to cut out competition from other Lennox Head, NSW, Australia purchasers of cloth, whether they be Indian or European. In the 1770s the English East India Phyllis Forbes Kerr (comp. & ed.). Letters From Company began to set up direct relations with the China: The Canton-Boston Correspondence of actual producers of cloth, the weavers. Middle Robert Bennet Forbes, 1838-1840. Mystic, CT: men were cut out, and so the Indian version of the Mystic Seaport Museum, 1996. 317 pp., illustra• "putting out" system was undercut as the EIC got tions (b+w, colour), figures, bibliography, appen• closer to controlling and subordinating the weav• dices (incl. maps), index. US $39.95, cloth; ISBN ers. There was vigorous opposition from both the 0-913372-77-3. weavers and other would-be purchasers. How• ever, as the area ruled or controlled by the EIC As a young man during the quarter-century expanded, more and more coercion, some of it leading up to Britain's imposition of the Treaty physical, was applied. Hand in hand with these system on the Chinese empire, Robert Bennet 82 The Northern Mariner

Forbes (1804-1889) was an important participant weight to the evidence his correspondence sup• in most aspects of America's Canton trade. He plies to students of the American China trade, rose from cabin boy to captain, was among the while it provides an important neutral commen• American pioneers in smuggling opium into tary on Britain's road to the First Opium War. forbidden coastal areas of China, and successfully Kerr's introductory essays give the lay reader (and profitably) commanded an opium receiving an adequate background in which to place Forbes' ship at Lintin before returning home a wealthy correspondence. Her description of the "Canton man in 1832. After losing this fortune, he re• System" is competent and her assessment of the turned to Canton in 1838 as head of the house of place of opium in American trade with China is Russell & Co., the largest American firm in the refreshingly honest, although she only hints at the China trade and a major participant in the illicit full extent of its financial significance and the opium business, just as the Chinese authorities true scope of the involvement by Yankee mer• were beginning to crack down on the drug trade. chants in this commerce. The two appended Forbes' correspondence was rediscovered articles from The Chinese Repository round out when his home at Milton, Massachusetts was her carefully considered presentation. Only the transformed into a museum in the 1960s. In 1969, index is a disappointment. the Massachusetts Historical Society catalogued Mystic Seaport presents Kerr's edition beau• both this and additional donated family materials tifully. The publishers have taken advantage of and copied the entire collection onto microfilm. the rich resources of pertinent art available in Scholars interested in the development of Ameri• New England to incorporate a wonderful array of can trade with China have therefore had ready illustrations by both western and western-influ• access to this important correspondence for some enced Chinese artists that effectively enhance the time. Now, Phyllis Forbes Kerr has transcribed text. Furthermore, their reproduction quality is and edited the portion of Forbes' correspondence significantly better than in some of Mystic's that covers his second foray to Canton. recent publications. That experience encompassed a dramatic These features may possibly provide a clue period in the history of western trade with China. to the thinking behind Mystic's decision to pub• Within two months of his arrival, Imperial Com• lish this book. All the meat, Forbes' correspon• missioner Lin arrived and launched the first dence and The Chinese Repository articles, are serious attempt since the early 1820s to enforce easily accessible on microfilm. The history of the government prohibitions on the importation of American China trade, however, still strongly opium. Lin succeeded in forcing the merchants to fascinates a wider public. The trade was exotic, disgorge a huge quantity of opium (as much as and could be unpredictable, dangerous, and half the annual Indian crop) for destruction. By profitable. Letters From China makes an impor• the time Forbes, a wealthy man again, departed tant resource available in a very attractive pack• Canton in May 1840, British and Chinese war• age to a broader readership. ships had clashed violently and full-scale hostili• ties were imminent — hostilities that would lead to Paul E. Fontenoy the overthrow of the "Canton System," the impo• Beaufort, North Carolina sition of western-style treaty arrangements on the empire, and the opening of further Chinese ports Maine Maritime Museum. Meiji Japan: A Sailor's to outside trade. Visit. With A History of the Case-Oil Trade. Bath: Forbes' correspondence is a valuable schol• Maine Maritime Museum, 1996. 48 pp., photo• arly resource. It provides vivid descriptions of the graphs, illustrations (b+w, colour). US $14.95 unfolding of these dramatic events, particularly of +$2.25 p+h (USA & Canada); US $20, postage conditions within the Canton factories while they included (other destinations), paper. were blockaded by the Chinese authorities. It allows us to comprehend better the paradigm Two authors are linked by a common theme in within which western merchants operated and this small but compact book which introduces the especially their attitude towards opium as a trade earliest beginnings of the "case oil trade" to the commodity. Forbes' commercial status adds Far East, to the final development of the bulk oil Book Reviews 83

deep sea tanker. being built. This is the point where Robert L. The first portion of the book, including Webb, Curator of the Maine Maritime Museum, nineteen pages, was prepared by Frederic A. picks up the theme of "case oil" and carries it on Sharf and is devoted to a short review of the into the 1890s and early years of the twentieth career of Captain Melville B. Cook. Specifically century. Webb has access to the newly docu• it presents a review of the compendium of essays mented and accessible Sewall papers, from which Cook wrote during the course of the two voyages, numerous examples of voyages of the Sewall between the years July 1887 and September 1889, ships of wood - and later of steel — are extracted. to Japan in the Downeaster St. James. Cook spent Over a hundred end notes include not only the a great deal of time travelling within a limited pertinent facts that come from the Maine Mari• radius of each port in Japan in which the St. time Museum archives, repository of the Sewall James was discharging case oil and loading papers, but also serve as an enlarged bibliography homeward cargo, not at all neglecting ship's of more source material. Many of the books business or its accounts, but taking full advantage Webb cites are well-known in the maritime of the lures of learning all he could of this chang• history trade, but he also delves into publications ing Japanese culture, its people and customs. and industrial reports of the burgeoning American The door admitting Western trade and recog• petroleum industry. nition had been pried open over thirty years From the beginning the Standard Oil Com• before by Commodore Matthew Perry of the US pany dominated the scene. At first it was the Navy, so by the time Captain Cook and his family Standard Oil's policy that the company was came to Japan, some travel books had been responsible only to produce the five-gallon cans published, from which this Maine shipmaster of kerosene — two cans per case (hence "case oil") gleaned much of his early education and guid• at the loading port, but it was thereafter the ance. He referred to them as he compiled his own shipowner's chore to deal with ship brokers, notes, and wrote his own manuscripts for ultimate charting agents and the importers at the ports of distribution to friends. destination. Webb describes the commerce agents Frederic A. Scharf provides a good general of the early trade which is a welcome education, background of what the early travel books too often neglected in many maritime historical amounted to, and he makes the point that "Cap• books. Eventually Standard Oil saw the need, in tain Cook was the consummate tourist." Some the face of competition from Dutch East Indies detail is provided as to the business of the St. Oil, to control the total costs of sales, transporta• James' two voyages to the ports of Yokohama tion and distribution of its product, all of which and Kobe, so that we do indeed see what the still centred upon the practice of shipping kero• beginnings of the enormous Far East case oil sene, still in five-gallon tins, two to the case. trade were and what it later became. Sailing ships by the dozens and scores were The limitations of travel within Japan were thus charted for the very long haul from the imposed by the Japanese government to "treaty United States to the Far East. As the aging wood• ports" only, but Cook managed very well to get en Downeasters wore out in the service, they were around with permits to see a great deal of the replaced by steel square riggers emerging from cities and countryside adjacent to the ports of British, German and American shipyards, all Yokohama and Kobe. Tourist hotels, living competing for case oil cargoes. conditions and trains were already stamped by Compressed into only twenty-two pages of Western style and Scharf preserves the atmo• text, this story of carrying case oil to the Orient is sphere of the 1880s as experienced by visiting written in a clear and appealing manner. The tale shipmasters and Americans as well as Europeans of case oil for the lamps of China and Japan who were widening the door to the island empire. comes to an end with the growth of tank farms in But it was the thirst for efficiently burning the Oriental ports and the inevitable construction oil, and plenty of it, which opened Japan to of bulk oil tankers. By 1914, the case oil trade necessary imports of kerosene from the United was nearly finished, despite a few wartime stimu• States Atlantic coast ports of Philadelphia, Brook• lated voyages by sail through the Panama Canal lyn and adjacent waterways where refineries were and from the newly developed California oil 84 The Northern Mariner fields. The sailing ships went into other trades, had done before him, for Amsterdam. Originally those that came through that war, and only two intending to settle in the West Indies (Liibeck's continued sailing into the years of World War II, horizons did not stretch any farther than that), he Daylight and Lawhill. changed his mind and travelled to the Dutch East The book is supplied with large coloured Indies. From July 1818 to February 1819 he contemporary Japanese prints from Cook's time, resided in Batavia. He was unsuccessful in gain• a few sketches, and the pertinent photos of cases ing a permanent position in a counting house, of kerosene being stacked, hauled, stowed and however, and after a short stint in the government moved by hand labour. The absence of maps is a finance department returned to Holland. minor drawback to the book. Sailing ship track In 1820 Cordua, following his original charts showing the various routes followed by the intentions, travelled to the Dutch colony of Suri• case oil carriers would have given the reader a nam and established himself as merchant and better perspective of what the longest routes were. agent at its capital, Paramaribo. With, from 1824, It must be said, however, that the final, definitive a succession of partners he maintained this busi• history of the case oil trade, as it was known in ness until 1840. He overcame the losses caused the sailing ship era, must yet be done. Both by the great fire of Paramaribo in 1821 and authors, Scharf and Webb, have provided a good branched out from the Amsterdam-Surinam trade introduction. into other areas in the Caribbean and in the mid- 1830s also Madeira and Morocco. There, once Harold D. Huycke again, he suffered grievous losses as his ship went Edmonds, Washington down off Mogador. After the closure of the firm in Surinam he travelled through the Pacific Ocean Theodor Cordua; Ursula Feldkamp (ed.). Von and in 1841 settled in California. He made a Mecklenburg nach Ubersee: Mitteilungen aus spectacular rise to wealth on his large estate New meinem Leben als Kaufmann und Reeder 1796 Mecklenburg but, ironically, was ruined during bis 1857. Hamburg: Ernst Kabel Verlag for the the gold rushes that dramatically changed the Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum. 239 pp., maps, fortunes of that state. In vain he tried to resurrect illustrations, photographs, appendices, chronol• his fortunes over the next years until he finally ogy, suggested reading, glossary, index. DM 34, returned to Germany in 1856. He had just fin• cloth; ISBN 3-8225-0384-3. ished writing his reminiscences, ostensibly for publication, when he died. The partnership between the German National Von Mecklenburg nach Ubersee belongs Maritime Museum at Bremerhaven and the Ham• with the higher quality merchant travelogues and burg publishing company Ernst Kabel is a major memoirs like those of Meijen (1834), Duhaut-Cil- force in maintaining the high visibility of mari• ly (1835), Boelen (1835-36), Moerenhout (1837) time history with the general public in at least and Ida Pfeifer (1852), which provide important northern Germany. This book, containing the alternative perspectives from the far more numer• memoirs of the Mecklenburg merchant Theodor ous accounts rendered by naval officers and Cordua, introduced and presented by Ursula missionaries dealing with the non-European Feldkamp, is the latest in a long and successful Atlantic and Pacific worlds. Cordua wrote not series of monographs and edited diaries or remi• only from memory but used fragments of diary niscences. entries, business ledgers and journals, and many Cordua was born in a well-to-do landed letters he had sent to his relatives in Germany. He family near the Mecklenburg town of Laage, not was a sharp observer and wrote in good style. His far from the independent Hanseatic city of account contains many passages with vivid and Liibeck. He grew up during the Napoleonic age significant information. Ultimately, it will depend and, in contrast to his family, made it his life's somewhat on the location and specific interest of desire to go abroad and make his fortune in the reader where he or she will mine the largest maritime trade. He insisted on gaining a commer• nuggets: the Chinese as the richest merchants in cial training and with some financial support from Batavia, the Surinam trade with Amsterdam or the his father in 1817 set out, as so many Germans Paramaribo slave trade, the growing presence of Book Reviews 85

German merchants, Cordua's career in Mexican Kenneth M. Hay and Joy Roberts. The Sea Voy• California, or the conditions of the Hawaiian ages of Edward Beck in the 1820s. Bishop Auck• Islands in 1841 and 1852. Many readers will be land, England: Pentland Press, 1996. xiv + 221 struck by Cordua's decision to adopt the citizen• pp., glossary. £15, cloth; ISBN 1-85821-435-1. ship of Rostock in 1832 in order to bring a ship he probably had chartered under the Mecklenburg Edward Beck informs his reader very early why flag and thus avoid the embargo of the Powers he went to sea. It was to "see foreign lands and against the Netherlands. people." (p. 4) Born in 1803, he was apprenticed Cordua's reminiscences demonstrate both the out at age 16 as a cabin boy to Captain Moyse, a strengths and weaknesses of the genre. As the fellow member of his parents' Quaker commu• leitmotiv of the book is his career, the individual nity. For four years he sailed aboard the themes are discussed from his viewpoint: illumi• Constantia, a coastal vessel of several hundred nating and often adding another window on the tons and a crew of eleven, freighting goods subject but hardly ever amounting to a compre• between several ports in southern England and hensive view or a definitive analysis. Coming Ireland. By 1823 he had grown tired of coastal from the opposite angle, the same applies to the voyaging and, with the help of his parents, he information he supplies about commercial mat• freed himself from his commitments to Moyse. ters: these are often interesting and otherwise Eager to see more of the world and to "get more difficult to gather, but ultimately he does not sea time," (p. 29), he joined the Lady Frances, reveal how the business really worked or where Robert Barry, captain, a vessel that carried timber and how he set his entrepreneurial priorities and between North America and northern England. reaped his best rewards. For the next two years he sailed between Quebec Feldkamp's brief biographical sketch of and Sunderland in England. Then, at age 22, he Cordua is useful but tantalizingly succinct, espe• signed on as third mate of the ship Woodford, cially about the dynamics of his personal life Alfred Chapman, commander, on a voyage to (when he left Surinam, he did not take his black India. The remainder of Beck's sea career was de facto wife and six children with him, yet spent on such East Indies voyages. Over time he looked after the education of his children in was promoted to chief mate and very briefly at Europe). More problematic is that she has not the end of his career he was made master of an provided any annotation to the reminiscences, East Indies vessel. However, the appointment preferring to let the text speak for itself. Unfortu• lasted only four days when the position was nately, texts do not speak for themselves and it is bought out from under him. Deeply disappointed historians who have the task to give them mean• by this event, he retired. We are not informed at ing. Thus there is no historical context in which what date or age this occurred, but we do learn to understand and evaluate Cordua's ambitions, from the editor that he was already living ashore experiences, achievements and historical signifi• by the time he married at age 34. cance. Nor is there an apparatus to identify indi• There is much in this biography to appeal to vidual persons, places and issues, to draw the a variety of interests. Beck's writing is intelligent, reader's attention to the correct spelling of names descriptive and open. He offers an excellent that Cordua rendered idiosyncratically (King account of life at sea and the ports he visited. His Kamehameha I of Hawaii features as Keamamea), portrayal of the difficulties experienced on an or to indicate from what source Cordua may have 1824 voyage from Quebec to Sunderland is parti• gathered his information. The transcription of the cularly vivid. For weeks after rounding Scotland, handwritten original seems, on the whole, to have they met with contrary winds and the reader feels been done competently, but a few errors have with Beck the frustration and irritation of being so remained: Helvoetfluys should be Helvoetsluys close to port but being daily denied. (p. 72), and Silka should be Sitka (the capital of One great value of Beck's biography is its Russian Alaska, p. 150). relevance to many of the more important issues currently debated by maritime historians. Some Frank Broeze historians have argued that seamen came from the Nedlands, Western Australia ranks of the dispossessed who created their own 86 The Northern Mariner distinctive culture in which relations with those in deeply interested in the social lives of seaman, I authority were defined by conflict (Rediker, was disappointed that both his early years and his Lemisch, Fingard). Others view seamen as "mere• later life were completely overlooked. ly landsmen who got wet," in which going to sea Despite this shortcoming, the journal is a was merely a stage in their young lives before good read for the general audience and contrib• they settled ashore (Alexander, Morison). Some utes much to the current debate within maritime maintain that promotion to the quarter deck was history, particularly as it relates to the first half of limited to those who had the proper connections the nineteenth century. with the wealthy (Davis, Rediker); others argue that promotion was opened to anyone with ability Vincent Walsh and drive (Morison, Sager). Beck's journal chal• St. John's, Newfoundland lenges and supports many of these positions. He addresses class distinctions, mariners' relations Gordon Jackson and David M. Williams (eds.). ashore, their relations with their officers, and their Shipping, Technology and Imperialism: Papers relations among themselves. Presented to the Third British-Dutch Maritime In Beck's world mariners became "beings of Conference. Aldershot, Hants. & Brookfield, VT: a particular class." (p. 28) On occasion during his Scolar Press, 1996. xiv + 285 pp., tables, figures, East Indies voyages they even suffered the lash, photographs, maps, illustrations, select bibliogra• (pp. 169,201) Yet relations between the crew and phy, index. £45, cloth; ISBN 1-85928-344-6. masters of various vessels were just as frequently defined by friendship and loyalty. On board the Books that are the products of conferences sel• Lady Francis, for example, lessons in navigation dom satisfy their readers. Titles often do not were offered every evening by the captain and adequately subsume their varied content. Content mate. He considered the captain a pleasant, agree• is uneven, some of it familiar and derivative, able man, and was ready to "accompany my some of it (often not enough) new and original. worthy Captain to any part of this world." (p. 83) How does this work, made up of twelve chapters In discussing mariners' behaviour ashore in and an introduction which originated with a Quebec, he complained that there was scarcely a conference held in 1993, measure up? night when they were not drinking, fighting, and Gordon Jackson's introduction attempts to making a disturbance. Yet he considered his fel• integrate the contributions in a discussion of the low crew members on his trans-Atlantic voyages role of shipping in imperialism, yet less than half "to be a very decent set of men." (p. 48). Signing of them deal with that theme in any systematic on as third mate on his first voyage to India, he way. Even less of an attempt is made to deal with expected those in the forecastle to be "drunk and ships as tools of empire. Only one contributor vile." Instead, they behaved with "the greatest cites the works of Daniel Headrick, the essential propriety." (p. 126). Beck's descriptions of starting point on this subject. seamen's varied relations with authority and with For the most part, contributions on British one another emphasizes the individual and com• shipping and shipbuilding cover familiar ground plex behaviour of early nineteenth-century mari• and summarize previous work on Clyde ship• ners, and of mariners of any age, for that matter. builders and Liverpool shippers operating in West By so doing, he cut through many of the divisions Africa. One under-studied aspect of the British separating the positions of maritime historians shipping experience is addressed by Conrad and for this reason alone his journal is of value. Dixon in an analysis of the battle for status by The most pronounced weakness of the book merchant and naval ship engineers in the nine• lies not in Beck's memories but in the introduc• teenth and twentieth centuries. But from the tion. The journal covers only his years at sea. The perspective of the book's title he might have used editors, one of whom is Beck's direct descendent, his considerable knowledge to probe the essential fail to inform us about the mariner's earlier years role of maritime engineers in shipping imperial• or later life. As a reader, I expected them to ism, a role hinted at in reference to crucial boiler research his life as much as is reasonably possible repair on a stream during the river wars in Egypt. and to inform the reader of their efforts. Being Another useful piece on British naval historiogra- Book Reviews 87 phy by Andrew Lambert, a historiography to on Dutch practice. He concludes that efforts which he has himself made a contribution, aimed at preventing desertion as well as those stresses the adaptiveness of Admiralty officials improving the certification of officers was belat• and innovative elements in naval ship design and edly introduced and fell short of developments deployment in the period 1815-1854. abroad. Frank Broeze explains the reasons for and The new and most interesting work in the the results of the German takeover of the volume concerns the Dutch shipping experience. Holland-America Line, 1902-17. Some of it may be known already in Dutch stud• The book includes useful maps of the Clyde ies but is usefully made accessible to English- and its surrounding regions and of the Dutch East reading audiences. Though unnecessarily laden Indies. It also features a goodly number of illus• with a theoretical concept, referred to as a socio- trations of ship and persons which, unfortunately, technological system, Joseph à Campo's study of are reproduced on soft paper with indifferent the packet service which the Dutch operated in resolution. colonial Indonesia during 1850-1914 is very To return to the question posed at the outset illuminating. That service, run by three privately- of this review, this work is representative of owned companies, is shown to be intricately and published conference proceedings. It does not intimately bound up with the colonial state. The stick sufficiently to its theme and it rehashes Koniklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij, the last of several familiar subjects. Nonetheless it does the three companies, was inclined to identify contain valuable work on Dutch maritime practice more closely with government policies and the that also highlights influences from or compari• perceived nationalist interest than comparable son with the British experience. British firms. Anita van Dissel, covering the same period, provides useful quantitative data on ships Robert Kubicek and personnel of the Dutch navy operating in Vancouver, British Columbia colonial Indonesia. She estimated, for example, that eighteen warships and auxiliaries of the Heide Gerstenberger and Ulrich Welke. Vom forty-six vessels in the Dutch naval fleet were Wind zum Dampf: Sozialgeschichte der deutschen operating in the areas in 1910. European and Handelsschiffahrt im Zeitalter der Industrialisier- indigenous personnel manning the Dutch East ung. Munster: Verlag Westfalisches Dampfboot, Indies operation was more than 3,000. These 1996. 267 pp., illustrations, photographs, figures, calculations are part of an extensive set of time notes, bibliography, index. DM 98, cloth; ISBN series. 3-929586-85-1. Through a detailed account of the building, costs, specifications and operational life of the SS This monograph is one of the results of a long- Smit, launched in 1884 which fatally grounded in term research project of the University of Bre• 1898 off Korea, Abram Belder provides illumi• men, with financial support by the Deutsche nating insights into its builder/owner's entrepre• Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research neurial style. Jan Dirkzwager provides a carefully Foundation). Supported by nearly 1,300 footnotes researched case study into the transfer of mercan• — many citing unpublished sources — and a tile marine technology from Britain to Dutch bibliography of nearly 300 titles, the text clearly shipyards. The work in the 1860s of Bruno reveals the academic standard of this study. The Johannes Tideman using models to predict the goal of the authors was a social history of life on speed and power of ships is the centrepiece of the board German merchantmen between the last study. It suggests there may well have been a decades of the eighteenth and the beginning of two-way traffic in the transfer of information the twentieth century. This has seldom before between the two countries. Peter Schuman also been researched, in part because of the lack of deals in transfers between the two countries. He sources. The authors therefore had to make use of summarizes the mercantile law produced in other records as well, particularly in the chapters Britain to improve the efficiency and safety of about steam ships, where both naval and British ship operations and the performance of their sources were used. officers and seamen. He then sets out its influence At the end of the eighteenth century ships 88 The Northern Mariner

were either owned by the captain or he was at different labour organisation. As steam engines least a part owner. The crew which signed on were first installed, in most cases, in naval ves• only for one journey usually hailed from the same sels, private owners adopted the military hierar• district. Between the comparatively short trips chy in the engine room when they started making they were able to stay in contact with their peo• use of steam as well. And despite the fact that the ple. This was particularly true in winter time, steam engine provided the ship with its means of when all shipping was stopped by weather condi• propulsion, the engine crew was regarded as tions and legal regulations. The hierarchy on inferior to the deck crew. This applied to the board was based more on personal experience and engineers as well, even though they had to repair social tradition than on formal education. Since and improve the unreliable early engines fre• members of the crew were allowed to transport a quently. It took some time until the duties of certain amount of cargo for their own benefit — engineers, stokers and coal trimmers and their indeed, this was an essential part of their income necessary formal educations were defined. — the ship's organisation had more the character Throughout, the authors provide a vivid picture of of a joint enterprise. Accordingly, the crew mem• the life on board of steamers, one of them having bers had certain rights. For instance, they could worked as a ship's engineer himself. Steamers object against a change in destination if they had needed a larger amount of capital, with the result signed on for a particular one, or they could that share ownership in a vessel gave away to object against working the cargo. Of course the share-holding companies. In turn, this reduced the captain could charge crew members upon their captain's position to that of an employee. return to their home port if they had misbehaved, In the course of their study the authors but he was not required to do so if he had for• discuss several important and interesting aspects given them. It is interesting to note that running which are beyond the scope of this review. Other away was only regarded as a crime if the sailor theories will probably need further discussion, had received pay in advance. such as the definition of a sailing ship as well as This traditional system was no longer practi• the work in the engine room as a kinematic chain cable when transatlantic voyages began after the in the sense defined by Franz Reuleaux. There are end of the Napoleonic wars, and began to change, also a few minor mistakes. Thus, Heinrich Hauser albeit slowly, not suddenly. Due to longer pas• did not sail on Pamir as passenger in the 1950s, sages, contact with home was lost. Decrees led to but in 1930. Nevertheless, the book is highly sharply defined divisions between officers and the recommended, and one can hope that it will crew. The compulsory visits to navigation schools stimulate further research in this field. to obtain a mate's or master's ticket made a rise in hierarchy through experience alone impossible. Timm Weski At the end of this process the whole ship's com• Miinchen, Germany pany from the captain down to the cabin boy was divided into clearly defined groups, just as in a Peter Schuman. Tussen vlag en voorschip. Een man of war. Moreover, the transition to this form eeuw wettelyke en maatschappelijke emancipatie of organisation also gave the captain absolute van zeevarenden ter Nederlandse koopvaardij power, so that any kind of disobedience was now 1838-1940. Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, regarded as mutiny which had to be punished. 1995. 304 pp., figures, tables, maps, photographs, The same applied to running away from the ship, appendices, bibliography, notes, indices. / 46, - now called desertion. The authors discuss at some /920 Bfr, cloth; ISBN 90-6707-392-X. length on the degree to which these changes were provoked or influenced by legislation. Such After the Dutch Golden Age Holland no longer changes in the social and working relationship on ruled the waves. Decay had set in, as the Dutch board also occurred on small coastal vessels, lost their maritime power to Britain. At home the though shiphandling itself changed little from the Southern Netherlands broke away from the North eighteenth into the nineteenth century. to form the state of Belgium (1830). This was one These developments coincided partially with of the more compelling reasons why the Dutch the introduction of steamers with their profoundly decided to write a new Commercial Code, one Book Reviews 89 free from "Southern influences." The new mari• contributed most to the social emancipation of time regulations remained virtually unchanged till seafarers, but according to the chairman of the 1937 when the Seamen's Act of 1930 came into American union, Mr. Andrew Furuseth, who force. These regulations provide the essential visited The Netherlands in 1908 to prepare for an question which the author attempts to answer in international strike, the Dutch workmen were this book: why did it take almost one century to "beautifully unconscious." Even after the Interna• revise the regulations of 1838? In his quest to find tional Labour Organisation [ILO] was established an answer, Peter Schuman discusses Dutch ship• as a direct result of the Treaty of Versailles in ping policy, maritime labour legislation, Seamen's 1919, it was the. British who had the most influ• unions and Maritime Conferences of the Interna• ence on the Maritime Conferences of the ILO. In tional Labour Organisations. The picture he contrast, the voice of the Dutch representatives paints through his discussion is a bleak one. was a silent one. On more than one occasion these Under the influence of the Industrial Revolu• representatives lacked initiative, were blissfully tion the world of transport changed profoundly, unaware of procedural formalities or had no with new ships, new kind of jobs, new legislation knowledge of the French or English language. and the rise of unions. Unlike neighbouring Author Peter Schuman is thorough as he countries and the United States, the Dutch consid• develops his discussion, although he does miss a ered labour-related maritime law as a low priority minor point. For instance, readers will notice that issue because merchant shipping had a limited Schuman uses one word for desertion [desertie]; economic significance in the national economy. the more commonly used word for absence Even in the twentieth century Dutch maritime law without leave from a merchant vessel, drossen, is was still influenced by a sixteenth-century decree not mentioned. Instead of page-sized tables, it issued by Philips II of Spain. The Dutch only might have been wise to employ more graphics. began to clean up their act when Dutch vessels in Yet it should also be said that some of the graph• the UK were confronted with the Seamen's Act of ics that are employed are not well presented. 1915, which was more demanding on the quality Schuman's account of his sources and his bibliog• of ships than Dutch laws. From having been raphy are, however, exemplary, and excellent use maritime leaders, the Dutch were now followers. is made of footnotes. For them the UK in particular was the master. Overall, this is a good book, well written. Moreover, within the Dutch government, the Schuman's own research on the background of Department of Economic Affairs, which favoured seamen and the question as to who was to become the employers' point of view, collided on an an officer and who was destined to become a almost regular basis with the pro-employee sailor, really adds something extra to the book. Justice Department. The introduction of laws was Although the book includes a good English sum• therefore delayed whenever the economy de• mary, it is a pity that the whole book is not avail• manded it. This political expediency was only able in English. So many more people might have abandoned in the 1930s. enjoyed it. Yet the Dutch government was not the only conservative element in the process. Well into the Jacob-Bart Hak second half of the nineteenth century, Dutch The Hague, The Netherlands shipping companies clung to the use of sailing vessels — in particular on the Dutch East Indies John Armstrong (ed.). Coastal and Short Sea route — while in the rest of the world steam Shipping. "Studies in Transport History;" Alder- powered vessels became common. This, in turn, shot, Hants. & Brookfield, VT: Scolar Press, contributed to a slower rate of labour organization 1996. xxiv + 177 pp., tables, figures, maps, and working class consciousness among Dutch illustrations. US $59.95, cloth; ISBN 1-85928- seamen. The first union of sailors was not estab• 301-2. lished until 1893, the initiative coming from a Norwegian chaplain and his wife who worked in Coastal shipping is one of the maritime sectors Rotterdam, one of The Netherlands major ports. most neglected by scholars. Even in Great Brit• Elsewhere, unions of sailors and stokers had ain, where coastal traffic has played an especially 90 The Northern Mariner

important role in economic development, very body of work, some of which has appeared in little serious scholarship has appeared. Indeed, a journals with even smaller circulations than the recent comprehensive bibliography published in JTH. That would be a volume worth owning, and the International Journal of Maritime History on I for one would be at the head of the queue to the history of the British coasting trade included purchase a copy. only 295 items. Of these, a substantial number of I wonder if Scolar Press pays finders' fees? the more scholarly contributions first appeared in the Journal of Transport History. This volume Lewis R. Fischer brings together eleven essays that were first St. John's, Newfoundland published in the JTH over the past forty years as part of an ambitious eight-volume "Studies in Catherine Petroski. A Bride's Passage: Susan Transport History" reprint series inaugurated by Hathorn's Year Under Sail. Boston: Northeastern Scolar Press. University Press, 1997. xviii + 283 pp., maps, That the JTH has carried a high proportion of tables, illustrations, appendices, notes, bibliogra• the scholarship on the British coastal trade re• phy, index. US $15.95, paper; ISBN 1-55553- dounds to its credit. But it also is in a sense a 297-7. curse, since it seems on the surface to justify a collection of this length. Yet a careful reading of For anybody interested in the social history of the contents calls this judgement into question. seafaring Susan Hathorn's diary is fascinating, Indeed, I would argue that only five of the articles telling as it does the story of her honeymoon deserve to be anthologized: John Chartes' essay voyage from Savannah via the West Indies to• on Wiggins Key; Simon Ville's seminal work on wards London and back to Savannah via Cardiff. wages and profitability in coastal trade during the Almost every detail of her daily life on board is Napoleonic wars; Freda Harcourt's paper on Irish vividly recorded. Catherine Petroski had meticu• steam shipping; and two splendid articles by the lously researched and commented on Susan's life, dean of coastal scholarship, John Armstrong. In her background and the environment in which she fact, the inclusion of Armstrong's essays — one on grew up. freight-pricing policy before World War I and the Susan's family, the Lennans, were farmers on other on the role of coastal shipping in UK trans• the opposite bank of the Kennebec river to the port — provide the best rationale I can think of for Hathorns. Although the Lennan family land- purchasing this collection. But the corollary, of holdings were steadily declining, Susan had an course, is that more than half the essays are either excellent education at Mount Holyoke Seminary badly dated (in approach, if not in years) or just and before her marriage at the age of twenty-five plain weak. The only essay on which there might she taught school in Richmond, Maine. The be room for some substantial disagreement is Hathorn family, also from a farming background, Derek Aldcroft's "The Eclipse of Coastal Ship• was on the way up, acquiring real estate in Rich• ping, 1913-21," which was an important enough mond and operating a small shipyard. By 1855, piece when it first appeared in 1963 but which the year of.the eldest son's marriage to Susan has been superseded by more recent work. Lennan, they had built three brigs and the barque The idea behind this series — as with all of J.J. Hathorn. To the Lennans it must have Scolar's many reprint series — is to collect essays seemed that their daughter had made a very that a reasonable university library ought to own satisfactory match. Jode Hathorn, aged twenty- but which, for one reason or another, might not two, was about to take the J.J. Hathorn to sea as have. Since the Journal of Transport History is captain for the first time. not as widely held as it ought to be, there is a Susan quickly adapted herself to life at sea. persuasive argument for this series. And on She was a hardworking captain's wife and there balance, this particular anthology probably ought are no grumbles in the diary about the often to find a place on the shelves of at least specialist uncomfortable conditions in which she found repositories. But a better idea for an anthology on herself. She learned to note the vessel's position, coastal shipping would be to collect in one place she washed and ironed, she cleaned the state• all of John Armstrong's increasingly impressive room, she slaughtered bedbugs and cockroaches, Book Reviews 91 she sewed obsessively, she nursed the injured her second marriage. She died in 1906. second mate, she audited the ship's accounts. She The book has a very serviceable index. It is was intelligent and made constant notes not only a pity that this scholarly work has been produced on the vessel's position but about seamanship — with a flimsy cover and that the well-chosen "we beat back and forth for a while, then hove illustrations are so inadequately reproduced. to." (p.121) For relaxation, Susan enjoyed reading — Sir Walter Scott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ann Giffard Thomas Moore, Shelley and Byron — a pleasure Cornwall, England she shared with her husband. Jode also played the accordion. Peter Way. Common Labour: Workers and the Petroski's researches have included much Digging of North American Canals 1780-1860. information about the London streets around New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Elizabeth Bragge's lodging house in America xvii + 304 pp., map, tables, index. US $24.95, Square where the Hathorns stayed for sixteen cloth; ISBN 0-521-44033-5. days. Susan described the other guest, the card games, the shopping, the visits to Madame Tus- In most of the areas that count, this is a very good saud's, the Crystal Palace, St. Paul's, the Tower of book — it won the Organization of American London, the Thames Tunnel, and the Crimean Historians' Frederick Jackson Turner Award. War medal ceremony. Peter Way has skilfully and artfully drawn a Susan's diary is so interesting that I should broad picture of the life of the labourers who dug have liked to have read the whole of it rather than the canals of North America before 1860. He has edited excerpts. Perhaps the novelist takes over coped with the problems inherent in a study too often from the historian. The book is sensibly which covers a large territory, different political divided into monthly chapters. Thus an introduc• jurisdictions and, most important, a work force tion containing the research material for each which left few written records behind it. That he month followed by the full diary entries would has produced such a fine book despite these have avoided repetition. Also, although Susan problems is a tribute to both his scholarship and never makes this solecism, the editor refers to the his imagination. vessel as "it." Way necessarily paints with a broad stroke The J.J. Hathorn sailed light to Cardiff, as he discusses workers on waterways from the where there was much socialising with other American South to the Province of Canada. He Maine captains while she loaded iron for Savan• succeeds, nonetheless, in giving a convincing nah. Since March Susan had been pregnant but it account of work practices, labour relations, and was only after the return home in September that community life among the navvies. Way sees she started sewing an extensive layette for the canal labourers as especially worthy of study baby. because they illustrate important changes in the The book ends in a series of tragedies per• economy and in work. Most working class history haps as typical of the time as AIDS in the present has concentrated on skilled labour. The standard — the baby was born in November but by then account is of a transition, during the nineteenth Jode had sailed off again in the J.J. Hathorn. His century, from artisan to worker during which gravestone in Richmond records his death at people struggled against "de-skilling" and for Trinidad de Cuba on 8 May 1856, aged 23 years control over their work. Way points out that this 5 months. No amount of research can recover the picture is distorted because it portrays only a circumstances. He never saw his daughter Jose• minority of the working class. Like canal navvies, phine who died two years later. The J.J Hathorn most labourers had few skills to lose and no was lost with all her people on a passage from power to be eroded. That truth coloured their Liverpool towards Havana in 1861. Jode's youn• relationships with employers, in which workers ger brother Jefferson, aged twenty, had signed on were severely disadvantaged almost all the time, as mate. Susan returned to teaching. In 1865 she and their culture, which Way sees as one shaped was married to a widower, Dr. Abial Libby and out of alienation than of sense of community. brought up a step-daughter and three children of This is a useful counterweight to the artisan- 92 The Northern Mariner to-worker thesis and to idealistic accounts of er violence on the canals was related to economic working class culture. It can lead at times to an conditions in significant measure but it was also undervaluation of worker resistance, however. influenced by more general social factors in Way does discuss strikes but only rather briefly. British North America which generated bloody He more often describes labourers as people acted conflict far from the banks of the canals. upon than as people acting on their own initiative. Peter Way's general sketch has its shortcom• A small matter illustrates this well. During the ings. They cannot obscure the great strengths of 1840s, canal labourers often came into Montreal the account, however. That the book is written in to fight for the Reformers during provincial and colourful and often powerful prose only increases municipal elections. Way talks about the riots its appeal. There may not be much here for spe• which resulted from one such intervention in cialists in maritime history but it is worth a read 1844. The navvies, he contends, were dupes of for anyone even mildly interested in the history of the politicians, risking their lives for small bribes; working people. they had no real stake in the elections, since few of them had the vote. Perhaps so. What this may Michael S. Cross overlook, however, is that politics in that period Halifax, Nova Scotia was much more than just voting. People of all sorts participated in many ways, including by Willem F.J. Morzer Bruyns. Elements of Naviga• election brawling. The navvies may indeed have tion in the Collection of The Mariners ' Museum. had a stake, recognizing differing social and Newport News, VA: The Mariners' Museum, economic programmes between the parties, 1996. 77 pp., illustrations, photographs, selected programmes which affected the lives of navvies bibliography, index. US $12.95, paper; ISBN 0- as much as anyone else. They were not alone in 917376-45-5. waging politics by riot since other groups, such as the sailors who burned Quebec's customs house Willem F.J. Môrzer Bruyns is senior curator of several years later, adopted the same tactics. Amsterdam's Scheepvaartmuseum and is a re• This speaks of a fundamental deficiency of nowned authority on early navigating instru• Way's broad brush approach. One of his central ments. In 1995, The Mariners' Museum of New• theses is that canal labour was caught up in an port News, Virginia, engaged his services for inexorable process of change, in the emergence of three months as its first Huntington Fellow to an industrial capitalism which knew no bound• provide an analysis of the Museum's collection of aries of place or religion or ethnicity. The process navigational instruments. As a result, what had worked itself out almost identically in the Ameri• been a collection of unknown quality has become can Deep South and in French Canada. There is one of international stature through the applica• much to this, of course, and that justifies Way's tion of his knowledge. This book is the result of decision to discuss North American canal work in his contribution to The Mariners' Museum. its totality. There is something lost, though. Local The "deep and awe-filling mystery" behind context does count. It is apparent that the state the ancient navigator's ability to find his destina• played a more prominent role in British North tion is revealed in this book. Elements of Naviga• America than it did in most parts of the United tion steps through history in the development of States and that influenced labour relations. It is the various aspects of navigation, quickly at first, equally apparent that some things which Way from Egyptian times to the start of European ascribes to pure economics sprang from other expansion, then more slowly as it concentrates on sources. He notes that an unusually high propor• the period from 1700 to World War I, the era best tion of violent episodes on canals took place in addressed at The Mariners' Museum. Beyond the Canada. This he explains by the fact that Cana• daily habits of the sun, Polaris and prevailing dian canal building took place mostly after the winds, the first navigational tools were a free- depression of 1837, when wages fell and working floating lodestone to give direction and a pole or conditions worsened. This is true but what it does lead-line to provide depth. Ocean navigation re• not account for is the very high incidence of sulted in the development of the quadrant, astro• violence in Canada generally in the 1840s. Work• labe and cross-staff for the determination of Book Reviews 93 latitude, starting about 1460. The mechanical cal• Peter Whitfield. The Charting of the Oceans: Ten culation of dead reckoning provided an update to Centuries of Maritime Maps. London: The British one's position. The book discusses the develop• Library and San Francisco: Pomegranate Art- ment of the log and magnetic compass from books, 1996. 136 pp., illustrations (colour, b+w), simple devices to more sophisticated tools. Mari• bibliography, index. £20, cloth; ISBN 0-7649- ners of old sailed by previous routes as laid out in 0009-9. "rutters" (equivalent to sailing directions or pilots). Charts were originally a rarity but devel• Peter Whitfield's latest work is a historical and oped over time from hand drawn originals to visual overview of ocean chart-making over ten engraved printings. Mathematics and the inven• centuries. The book is not designed to reveal or tion of logarithms aided the mariner. The last ele• put forth any new ideas or theories on the subject ment of determining one's position, longitude, is of ocean map making but introduces us instead to examined by describing the various methods; the the history of this fascinating area of cartography. eclipses of Jupiter's moons, magnetic variation as During the early 1990s we were flooded with a function of longitude, lunar distances, and final• an impressive number of large cartographic books ly the chronometer. The establishment of astrono• coinciding with, or promoting the 500th anniver• mical observatories and the provision of time sig• sary of Columbus's New World encounter. Since nals in ports are all mentioned. Navigation is not then the number of more or less similar books has without knowing one's depth and Bruyns has not fallen to a trickle. When I first received this book, forgotten that aspect for he also treats the mea• I expected it to be in the same vein as these earlier surement of depth as an element of navigation. works. This was a mistake since this is a much By 1911, when radio direction finding came more scholarly book, thorough and truly histori• into the arsenal of tools available to the navigator, cal in its approach of the subject. the author claims that navigation had no major The cartographic and graphical illustrations innovations until the advent of radar in the 1940s. scattered throughout its pages are superb. Many I beg to differ on that point, because the gyrocom• famous maps from diverse sources are gathered pass was developed shortly before World War I here; the reproductions are certainly not restricted and acoustic depth measurement was developed to unique documents from the British Library but during and after that Great War. include famous pieces from collections through• The book is well written, seems to be factu• out Europe and America. Yet the illustrations do ally correct from the checking I can do, and not follow the flow of the adjacent text, and some carries a slight bias towards Dutch and American may find this a distraction or a source of frustra• examples, though this is understandable given the tion. It should however be understood that this author's nationality and publisher. Pages from old work has a dual function: on one level it is a his• books, sections of charts and photographs of old torical discourse; on another, it is a graphical instruments are excellently reproduced, in part grouping of related cartographic works. The book due to the high quality of paper used. is therefore both a serious dissertation on the evo• The book is typical of, and ideal for, museum lution of ocean cartography and navigation, and bookstores that tend to strive to provide concise a collection of beautiful maritime charts and facts in an informative way. The real aficionado illustrations to be enjoyed. All maps have their will have to research other books, a sampling of sources indicated for clarity and reference and are which are provided in the bibliography. I was accompanied by appropriate and informative able to find The Mariners' Museum on the Inter• explanations. Major and minor landmarks of net at http://www.mariner. org where contact can maritime chart making such as the Pisan chart, the be made for the purchase of the book. The Mu• Juan de la Cosa world map, maps by Ribero, seum has a library to support research, and the Maggiolo, are mentioned and presented in their Museum itself is well worth the visit. I know, I've historical context. Whitfield clearly explains the been there; 1 would go back. true historical or cartographic value of each and points out the differences between the decorative David Gray world maps, the fantasy-maps and truly func• Ottawa, Ontario tional navigational charts. 94 777e Northern Mariner

After discussing the nature of navigation and voyaging around the world was a rather more before the advent of cartography, the author gives rare adventure them it is today. And though many us a historical account of the evolution of mari• today are quietly ploughing the world's oceans time chart-making in relation to major political, and seas in search of adventure of freedom or historical events and scientific and mathematical whatever, the headlines often capture the spon• discoveries. As the evolution of chart-making is sored racing crews or individuals squeezing intertwined with the histories of kingdoms and computerized hulls through God's oceans in empires as well as major figures of cartography, search for more speed. a major overview of European history and events Donald Starr and his crew of eight "pilgrims" is particularly valuable to illustrate the motives sailed with the ebb tide from Boston Harbor on and significance of many maps. In this respect, the day of the summer solstice 1932. Pilgrim was Whitfield presents with ease and clarity major designed by the famous American designer, John historical events that left their direct or indirect Alden and built in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. mark on the evolution of navigational chart Rigged as a schooner she nonetheless carried a making. Nor does the historical overview stop yard and squaresail and set a "raffee," a small with the accurate charts of the nineteenth century. triangular sail set between the yard and the fore• Whitfield continues with a brief account of mast head ("moonrakers" or "kites" on square- twentieth-century nautical charting advances. rigged ships). A number of well-known figures He also offers us something more than just a attended her launching, including Warwick history of chart making. He manages as well to Tompkins (of Wander Bird fame) and Sterling give us some understanding about the difficulties Hayden who, before becoming an actor, was a navigators experienced and their relationships Gloucester schoonerman sailing on the great rival with the cartographers of different eras. And of Bluenose, the Gertrude L. Thebaud and later though his book is based largely on the evolution on Irving Johnson's Yankee as first mate. His own of European navigation and chart making, it also account of a circumnavigation aboard Wanderer touches briefly upon navigation and chart making written years later is a classic tale of the sea. in other civilizations. Whitfield does however Donald Starr was a cruising man, stated argue that the nautical cartographic experience is Rousmaniere in his introduction, and Pilgrim is mostly European centered. Starr's faithfully recorded narrative of an unhur• There are no footnotes, but the work is ried cruise from Boston south to Panama on indexed and includes a short bibliography of through the Panama Canal toward the beckoning similar works for further study and reference. islands of the South Pacific. Chapter 14 is titled "Timor Laut, the Banda Islands and Komodo." Marc Cormier The log entry for September 12, 12:10 pm reads: Toronto, Ontario "Sighted Timor Laut or Yamdena Island in the Tenimber Group ahead. Apparently we have been Donald C. Starr. The Schooner Pilgrim's Prog• set a little to the south. Stowed light mainsail & ress: A Voyage Around the World 1932-1934. raffee & straightened things up." This chapter is Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum and Salem, particularly engaging. The Bandas, then under MA: Peabody Essex Museum, 1996. xi + 371 pp., Dutch administration, were famous for the nut• illustrations, photographs, end-maps, glossary, meg trade as early as the sixteenth century and short bibliography, editor's notes. US $19.95, William Bligh and his eighteen men landed at cloth; ISBN 0-913372-79-X. Kupang on the southern coast of Timor following the mutiny and a remarkable open-boat journey of An introduction to this narrative of a voyage 3,600 miles. These latitudes mark roughly the around the world by the renowned sailor and halfway point in the voyage. They search for the author John Rousmaniere (Fastnet, Force 10) fierce Komodo dragon on Komodo Island before should be sufficient recommendation for this sailing on to Bali and the Dutch East Indies engaging book of a voyage in those far off days (Indonesia) then Singapore, Jakarta, Malacca, when, despite the looming clouds of war (to use Penang, Nicobar Islands and on to Colombo, the cliché), life passed at a more leisurely pace Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Once across the Indian Book Reviews 95

Ocean they entered the Red Sea where they And the end-papers provide a track of Pilgrim encountered fierce winds as the German steamer around the world. Appendices A, B, and C deal Resolute passes, "which was flying the Hitler flag with, respectively, "The Crew of the Schooner on the jack staff forward." Into the Mediterranean Pilgrim," "The Making of a Schooner" and "The winter gales bedevil Pilgrim as she surges west• Pilgrim's Leak." The latter was never completely ward between ports in the eastern and western cured despite four months of intensive investiga• Mediterranean like a horse galloping for home. tion in various yards in Panama and which in• On 5 July 1934 Pilgrim drops anchor in Boston volved removing her copper sheathing no less Harbor, the end of a voyage which Starr de• than twice, and moving from one yard on the scribed as "some 28,500 miles of days and nights Caribbean side to another on the Pacific side to afloat with good companions, threading the attempt yet again another assault on the source of channels and ports of strange and friendly waters the leak! Pilgrim was sold and in one of her later and lands with no disasters to mar the recollec• lives was featured in the August 1937 issue of tion." (p. v) One might add that the companions The National Geographic. included, at various times, a menagerie of a As the stock broker would say, this is recom• monkey, white rats, a sloth, coati mundi, a tor• mended as a "buy." And by the way, if you don't toise, a cockatoo and four cats. And except for a know where Hiva Oa is — Robert Louis Steven• four-month delay in Panama trying to discover son called this the "Man Eating Island" — or if the source of a serious leak which had developed you get muddled between the Tuomotus, Tahiti in the Gulf Stream, and the usual engine repairs and Tonga, then perhaps you should arm yourself and maintenance, the passages wend their way with an atlas and enjoy Pilgrim's progress as she amiably unhurried and unflustered. weaves her passage through a time, and places, I do not think this book and the voyage it that we will never see quite the same again. recounts would have had half the appeal if it were written about a modern-day cruise. At the risk of Geoffrey H. Farmer sounding bad tempered, it would have been filled St. John's, Newfoundland with glossy photos of places now available by the next charter flight, filled with laments for the Octavian Bounegru and Mihail Zahariade; ed. once uncluttered places now available by the Gocha R. Tsetskhladze. Les Forces Navales du natives, and Pilgrim would be adorned with every Bas Danube et de la Mer Noire aux Ier - Vf technological aid imaginable: there would be no Siècles. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1996. xii + 124 sense of discovery; of distance away! Nostalgia is pp., maps, illustrations, index. £18, US $33, your companion as you board Pilgrim and therein paper; ISBN 1-900188-17-1. Distributed in North lies much of its charm. America by The David Brown Book Company, Donald Starr writes simply, but manages on Oakville, CT. occasions to let fly some stratospheric hyperbole: in Nuku' alofa (Tonga) he exclaims, "We were In the last years of the Republic there is a brief soon enmeshed in the cordial tentacles of the preliminary to the subject of the admirable book social octopus." (p. 180) And we may be excused of Drs. Bounegru and Zahariade. Appian records if the occasion that prompted this outburst leaves that in the war against Mithridates, Marcus, the us baffled: "It is appalling to think of the number brother of the Roman commander Licinius Lucul- of gross misconceptions of pure fact-finding lus invaded the Moesi. Entering the river (the lodgement in the human mind against which not Ister/Danube) where six Greek cities "...are neigh• even such tangible and verifiable means of refuta• bours to the Moesi he took away from [one] tion can be brought as the registered identity of a Apollonia the big [statue of] Apollo which is set 73-ton schooner." (p. 371) But these idiosyncra• up on the Palatine Hill." Later (35 BC) Octavian sies serve only to spice his prose (he was an approached Moesia from the opposite direction attorney), along with log entries and the excerpts following his invasion of Illyria. Pushing inland from the personal journal of "Hod," the chief through Pannonia, "not yet," Appian says, "under engineer. The book includes a glossary "with Roman rule," to Siscia, the city of the Segestani arcane words and terms unique to a schooner." on the river Save, he wished to acquire it, "intend- 96 The Northern Mariner ing to use it as a supply base against the Dacians ships on the altars and funerary columns found in and the Bastarnae on the further shore of the the Danube delta, the new archaeological material Danube/Ister, into which the Save flows." Appian has enabled the authors to put together a unique adds that Octavian had ships on the Save which traité d'ensemble of the Classis Flavia Moesica. were intended to bring victuals to him on the The gratitude of at least one reader may be re• Danube. Dio describes Octavian's siege of Siscia corded for making accessible in the French lan• "which had strong walls but relied chiefly on two guage the substance of so much material pub• navigable rivers the Colops which flows round its lished in the languages of eastern Europe. walls and the Save into which the Colops flows. The authors do not claim to be pioneers, Caesar (Octavian) acquired boats built by his recognising the valuable work that has already local allies; and bringing them down the Ister into been done, even as long as more than three centu• the Savus, and up the Savus into the Colops, he ries ago by J. Scheffer in his Militia Navalium, attacked the enemy with footsoldiers and boats at forgotten but not entirely out of date. They men• the same time and had some naval engagements tion O. Fiebiger's article in RE under classis as for on the river, the barbarians building boats of a long time the sole attempt to face the problems single logs." The Pannonians surrendered. of their subject and also a special chapter in C.G. It seems then that as early as the Mithridatic Starr's The Roman Imperial Navy (1941) as war Rome was interested in Moesia as a future necessary reading for such as now face these frontier province, and that not long after Octavian problems. They mention favourably more recent saw Pannonia and the Danube in a similar light. writers thereon such as D. Kienast, Em. Condur- However it was not until 10 AD that Roman achi, A. Aricescu, M. Reddé and O. Hockmann. naval units were posted on the Danube. In the Five chapters follow the Introduction: pp.7- meantime Augustus had established a permanent 28, "Classis et limes du Bas Danube et de la Mer navy with its two main fleets, at Misenum and Noire"; pp. 29-43, "Structure de la Flotte"; pp. 45- Ravenna, the Ravenna fleet providing riverine 72, "Type de Navires"; pp. 73-90, "Ports et and maritime support for legions manning the Aménagements Portuaires"; pp. 91-113, "L'activi• eastern frontier. The epigraphy of the early em• té de la Flotte aux Ier-Vle Siècles apr. J.C." pire attributed four liburnians, twenty-three The book is most useful in bringing up to triremes, five quadriremes and two quinqueremes date, and in adding details of, the picture of the to the Ravenna home fleet and to the eastern fleet's operations in support, with military aid and provinces six liburnians to Alexandria, two to supplies, of the imperial legions defending a very Syria and two to Moesia. wide frontier, from the province of Pannonia to Drs. Bounegru and Zahariade see the cre• the boundary of Syria, against constant pressure ation of the Moesian fleet first (20 BC-10 AD) as from a number of barbarian nations. The authors accompanying the transformation of the Danube detect "phases successives de reorganisation" into a frontier, and then as an accompaniment to from the Aurelian pattern (161-180 AD) to the formation of Pannonia and Moesia as imperial Diocletian and the tetrarchy (284- 304) and then provinces, the fleet then either under praetorian to the later modifications by Constantine. Their command from Ravenna or under provincial conclusion is that Ravenna continually appointed authority. There is evidence of inscriptions that the praefectus of the Moesian fleet, decided the the names Classis Flavia Moesia (and Classis number and type of the ships and inspected the Flavia Pannonica) were adopted during or after troops and the ports, while the remaining matters the reign of Vespasian, possibly under Domitian. directly concerning the life of the province, the The authors in their Introduction underline building and maintenance of the port facilities, the importance of the recent excavations in the the recruitment of the manpower required, vict• ports of the lower Danube and in the Crimea, ualling, immediate intervention when and where revealing inter alia bricks with the stamp of the danger threatened, transport of troops and sup• Classis Flavia Moesica and of the praetorian plies, were set on foot by the provincial authority Classis Ravennatis, Added to the literary evi• and the fleet commander in collaboration with dence and to the iconography provided by Tra• legates of the legions. The latter might then find jan's Column and representations of merchant themselves in command of small naval squad- Book Reviews 97 rons. The command post of the whole Moesian Prista and Pristis and in the map captions fleet was Noviodunum, close to the Danube Sexaginta Pristis and Sexaginti Prista. Delta, but it appears that it was neither efficient The maps present problems. There are two nor convenient to keep the whole fleet there, opposite page 1 which are repeated larger on when not in action, and squadrons were accord• pages 89 and 90. Map 1 had the caption "Ports et ingly kept at various ports upstream. bases de la flotte (Classis Flavia Moesica) au Bas The warships of the Moesian fleet were Danube et à la Mer Noire aux 1 -III siècles" fol• exclusively liburnians, like Mucianus' Black Sea lowed by a list of the ports and bases. The caption fleet of 69 AD and Trajan's first Dacian fleet in of Map 2 is similar but centuries are IV-VI and 101-102 AD, apart from the emperor's flagship. the list of ports and bases is different. In both The fact that epigraphy only records two moesian maps the ports and bases are given the marks liburnians is no clue to the strength of the fleet either of "supposé" or of "attesté." In Map 1 there which must have been great considering the area are three places numbered 14, 15 and 16 marked of patrol. The names of the two recorded libur• as "supposé" but not named in the caption list, nians, Armata and Sagitftja indicate their charac• though the places are Istria, Tomi and Callatis teristics. Ships which were "armed" were those and they are mentioned in the text, the first very equipped with a ram. The name Sagitta indicates often (see index). The last name in the place list qualities of light weight, speed and sharpness. in the caption of Map 1 is Halmyris which ap• There is no need to suppose (as the authors do) pears in the list of bases on p.l 1 as Murighiol but that maritime differed from riverine liburnians. In is only identified as Halmyris on p.36. In Map 2 47 AD Corbulo brought his triremes up the Rhine there is a place numbered 16 (in fact Odessus through the main channels and the smaller p.82) but not named in the caption. The river Olt liburnians by a shorter route through creeks and mentioned (p.25) as the eastern boundary of the canals; such ships clearly had shallow enough original Moesia Superior is shown but not named draft to be safe on the Danube. The rest of the in the maps. Singidunum (modern Belgrade) is fleet consisted of "round ships," horse transports also mentioned (p.25) as a port for the fleet but is and other onerariae as shown on Trajan's column. not named on the maps although covered by The liburnian ship-name Armata and the them. Charax, which is mentioned six times in the name of the Danube ports, Pristes Sexaginta text and in the subject of Fig.29, does not appear meaning "sixty liburnians armed with rams" in the map (Fig. 25) of the Crimea where it is said imply that there were liburnians without rams. to be. (p. 2) These omissions do not diminish the These were probably the type of ship called value of the book but they cause the reader frus• lusoriae which are known on the Danube and also tration which may be avoided in a future edition. on the Rhine. They are probably lembi/liburnae Withholding comment from the generalisa• which are light, fast (but not sharp), suitable for tion on page 47 is more difficult: "les navires de fleet communication, reconnaissance, and troop guerre se distinguaient par le nombre de rangs de transport. Another port name, Ratiaria, appears to rames et de raneurs étant donc monères, dières, have been adopted for the similar reason that it trières, tétrères, pentères, hexères et ainsi de indicates the shipping accommodated there, in suite." There in no evidence in antiquity for war• this case rates, rafts, which were used for the ships of only one rank (or file) of oars and oars• construction of river bridges. men nor is there evidence of more than three The many misprints are trivial and do not ranks (or files) of oars. The oars in ships of high• with three exceptions create problems for the er denomination than three are rowed by more reader. The first exception is on p.46 lines 4-6 than one oarsman to some or all of the oars. The where for "asymétrique" read "symétrique," for monères is a ship with one rank (or file) of oars• "prouve" read "proue" and for "prouve creuse" men on each side of the ship "et ainsi de suite" read "proue creusé." The second is the word (see my Greek and Roman Oared Warships hippago (p.59 1.4) for a horse river-transport. The 1997). latin word is either hippagogus from the Greek or hippagus. The third is the place name Sexaginta John Morrison Pristes [liburnael] which on p. 14 is Sexagenta Great Shelford, Cambridge 98 The Northern Mariner

Phillip Playford. Carpet of Silver: The Wreck of Aboriginal population still talked about the wreck the Zuytdorp. Nedlands: University of Western and the survivors as though it were a recent event. Australia Press, 1996. xii + 260 pp., maps, photo• This raises many fascinating issues which graphs, illustrations, appendix, notes, index. AUS Playford explores coolly and crisply. The book $45, cloth; ISBN 1-875560-73-4; AUS $34.95, begins with his own first visit to the wreck site. paper; ISBN 1-875560-85-8. Two chapters set the scene for the wreck — one on the VOC, which contains an extremely good There is a passage in one of John Wyndham's outline account of the company, the other on the novels in which two scientists travel together by Zuytdorp itself, its final voyage and speculation train. The British Astronomer Royal reads a lurid on what happened based on other VOC ship• thriller, his companion a heavy tome. In real life, wrecks on the Western Australian coast. The third the choice is not so stark, but finding a book that chapter concerns the identification of the wreck is engrossing and interesting enough to serve as itself, both by "modern" Australians and by their leisure reading and yet is intellectually satisfying Aboriginal predecessors, whose descendants have is not easy. Playford's book fits the bill. been dispossessed of the land in the region. That does not mean it is trivial, although the Chapters 4 and 5 discuss early expeditions to the subject lends itself to lurid treatment. In 1711 a site and the later looting. There are graphic ac• VOC treasure ship was wrecked on the barren counts of diving in such dangerous waters and a coast of Western Australia. Playford, then a description, damning in its import, of the relation• young man, discovered the wreck site in the early ships between official and amateur marine 1950s, and his life-long obsession became the re• archeologists and treasure hunters. The last chap• covery of its immensely valuable cargo and a ter speculates on the possible fate of the survi• proper scientific and responsible investigation of vors, on the basis of what was found on shore and the site. Playford is no seeker for personal gain: on local Aboriginal legends. Playford carefully he is a scientist himself, an eminent geologist. describes the controversial theories of Daisy Playford spent much time on his interest. He Bates, that shipwrecked or marooned Dutch sail• first visited the site in 1954, was involved in ors intermarried with Aborigines, producing a expeditions that year and in 1958, and kept a mixed racial stock — still part of the context of close interest in other expeditions after that. He political debate in Australia. But he is uncon• worked with the Western Australia Museum vinced. Board to help preserve the wreck, and did his best This is a well-written, measured book which to help recover looted coins and artifacts. also conveys the excitement of the people in• There was a lot to loot. The Zuytdorp was volved in finding a shipwreck of such impor• carrying around 133 sacks of mainly silver coins. tance. The maps are excellent and the photo• When divers eventually managed to get to the graphs both technically good — as one would ex• wreck itself in 1964 — or 1967 — they found what pect from a geologist - and evocative. It is a plea• came to be known as the "carpet of silver." The sure to read and provides much food for thought. uncertainty of dates reflects how the details of what happened at the wreck site were deliberately Richard Pennell obscured. Adventurers flouted the Western Aus• Parkville, Victoria, Australia tralian and then Commonwealth laws on historic wrecks and between 1980 and 1986 the site was Michael Holmes. Augustus Hervey: A Naval comprehensively looted. Very little of the silver Casanova. Bishop Auckland, England: Pentland has been recovered. Other items from the wreck Press, 1996. xiv + 306 pp., illustrations, maps, — in particular guns — were preserved. And more bibliography, index. £17.50, cloth; ISBN 1- was found on shore — evidently some of the 85821-384-3. survivors survived for quite a while. They built fires from the wreckage in the hopes of signalling Until the publication of his Journal in 1953, to passing ships. But they were never picked up, Augustus Hervey was known mainly as the and no one knows what happened to them. Even probable legitimate husband of the Duchess of so, in the early nineteenth century, the local Kingston, who was tried for bigamy in a scandal- Book Reviews 99 ous case. The Journal revealed another facet, the small ship was beneath his dignity, and also dashing naval officer, well connected, resourceful because he was beginning a love affair and did and amorous. Michael Holmes draws heavily on not want to be away. Financial need made him the Journal, but points out that it covers only accept, but he continued to despise Anson. thirteen years. This book attempts to illuminate Numerous such examples in Hervey's career the other parts of an intriguing career. make it difficult to share the author's enthusiasm Such a treatment of a significant naval figure for the subject. In the Mediterranean in 1757 he is always welcome, and much fresh material is served under the aging Admiral Osborne, and presented. There are some faults, however, many Saunders (later to carry Wolfe's force to Quebec). of them revolving around the author's sympathy Hervey's Journal criticizes both for their indo• for his subject. Often Hervey's versions of events lence and lack of imagination, and implies that are accepted to inflate his significance, and his Hervey supplied most of the good ideas and much shortcomings are sometimes glossed over. There of the staff work. Holmes accepts this, and ex• is an unfortunate sensationalist taint to the subti• presses surprise that Saunders could be so useless tle: "a naval Casanova." Obviously one under• here, yet so talented at Quebec. That Hervey was stands a wish to increase sales, but this myth exaggerating a trifle never seems to occur as an should be disposed of. Hervey did bed numerous explanation. It also transpires that much of Her• women, when on duty in the Mediterranean vey's advice involved sending him on independ• especially, but his total is, frankly, not that im• ent cruises on enemy coasts. In 1758 he served pressive. Indeed as a rich twenty-something under Hawke, skilfully commanding the inshore aristocrat afflicted with raging hormones, and the squadron at Brest, though he unfortunately re• leisure accorded a navy captain in peacetime on turned to England just two weeks before the detached service, one is almost surprised he did Battle of Quiberon Bay. not do rather better. The Journal ends there, and the rest of He admits that he chased anything female, Hervey's life must be charted from less exciting fifteen-year-old girls or aging widows, and he sources. His remaining war service was credit• frequently paid huge sums for the services of able: under Rodney's command in the Caribbean actresses and courtesans. Why any of this is he captured St Lucia, and was present at the considered either remarkable or deserving of capture of Havana. Here again the author bubbles Hervey being described as "one of the most over with admiration, comparing Hervey with promiscuous men of his age" is not apparent. Marshal Ney, as one of "the bravest of the brave" That said, his naval career is interesting for standing on his quarterdeck exposed to enemy enough. He came from a prominent Suffolk fire. True, this was very courageous, but hardly family, raised to the peerage under Queen Anne uncommon in naval battles. and promoted to the Earldom of Bristol under This was to be his last command. In a peace• George I, the title Hervey would inherit in 1775. time England, Hervey turned to politics, unfortu• He entered the navy as a typical younger son, the nately joining the Grenville faction which en• way greased by parental influence. Advancement joyed just one short bout in office. He shifted his was delayed by the family's politics but he made allegiance to Sandwich, and it paid off somewhat Captain in 1746, and his service under Byng in with a seat at the Admiralty in 1771. His major the Mediterranean in the 1739-48 war was credit• contribution here seems to have been a revision of able. Denied a peacetime command he drifted to the Guard Ship policy, but he managed to avoid the Opposition, and did much to force changes in thorny issues like dockyard reform or timber the 1749 Navy Bill, which did not endear him to procurement, even though he had been vocal for the Admiralty. In 1751 he requested a 40-gun years on supposed corruption in those areas. This ship and was insulted when Lord Anson at the was not a sparkling record, and one suspects Admiralty only offered a 20-gun frigate. At this advancing age and illness affected his energy. His point one loses sympathy for Hervey: to offer any attendance dropped off at the Board, and finally ship to a political opponent in peacetime was an he resigned in pique at not being promoted to the act of great generosity, and Hervey should have second position. By then he had succeeded to the been grateful. Yet he wanted to refuse because a Earldom of Bristol upon his brother's death, and 100 The Northern Mariner

felt a nobleman could not serve under a com• draughts and a photographic collection of a moner, as Sandwich proposed. Sandwich was quarter of a million items. Apart from volumes of happy to ease him out at that point. Hervey illustrations compiled in the 1920s and '30s by offered to serve in the American War, but in what the likes of Moore, Bowen, Chatterton and Rob• had become typical fashion he dithered away the inson the archive as a whole in sadly under used chance of a command by constant delays. He died and knowledge of its scope largely unrecognised. shortly thereafter, having briefly enjoyed the huge Published in association with the NMM, income of the Earldom. each volume in the first Series presents three How to assess Hervey? This might not be the hundred high quality reproductions of contempo• final book on the subject, but it seems to indicate rary prints, paintings and charts from the collec• he was a solid though not brilliant performer. He tion, many published for the first time, supported was prickly, sensuous, arrogant, brave, and given by authoritative commentaries on the events to horrid errors of judgement (such as his hasty depicted. As this review is being prepared the marriage). A more balanced book on Hervey is third volume, Nelson Against Napoleon, 1798- doubtless possible, but future authors might reas• 1801 is due to appear. The Campaign of Trafal• onably question if the subject is worth the labour. gar 1803-1805 is scheduled for November 1997 with volumes covering The Victory of Seapower, Paul Webb 1806-1815 due in the spring of 1998 and The London, Ontario Naval War of 1812 in the autumn of that year. For those prepared to commit themselves to purchase Robert Gardiner (ed.). Navies and the American the five volumes covering the Napoleonic Wars a Revolution, 1775-1783. London: Chatham Pub• subscription arrangement is on offer enabling lishing, 1996 and Annapolis: Naval Institute buyers to make a saving of £5 on each volume. Press, 1997. 192 pp., illustrations, sources, notes On completion of this first batch the reader will on artists, index. £30, US $49.95, Cdn $69.95, have access to fifteen hundred contemporary cloth; ISBN 1-86176-017-5 (Chatham) or 1- illustrations focused on a twenty-two year period 55750-623-X (NIP). Canadian distributor, Van- at the high point of sailing naval history. well Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. Notwithstanding the acknowledged scope of the Museum's collection a weak spot is pictorial Robert Gardiner (ed.). Fleet Battles and Block• material of American origin relating to the Revo• ade: The French Revolutionary War, 1793-1797. lution of 1775-1783. To overcome this deficiency London: Chatham Publishing, 1996 and Anna• a number of leading institutions in the States have polis: Naval Institute Press, 1997. 192 pp., illus• contributed examples from their archives. trations, sources, notes on artists, index. £30, US The text of Navies and the American Revolu• $49.95, Cdn $69.95, cloth; ISBN 1-86176-018-3 tion is arranged in four sections — "The War at (Chatham) or 1-55750-272-2 (NIP). Canadian Sea and in the Dockyards," "America and the distributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, West Indies," "European Waters," and the "East ON. Indies." Within these categories Robert Gardiner, Nicholas Tracy, David Lyon and Roger Morris Before commenting specifically on these books it have contributed background commentaries to would be helpful perhaps to say a few words events, each of which is illustrated by an average about the Chatham Pictorial Histories series of of five plates. Also running through the sections which these are the initial volumes. Under the are a series of thematic pieces dealing with such editorship of Robert Gardiner, who has to his subjects as "Royal Dockyards," "gunpowder," credit the recently completed twelve-volume "Supplying the British Army in North America," History of the Ship of which he was Series Editor, "Copper Sheathing," and "The Carronade." Chatham Publishing has set about tackling sys• Stephen Cumbley joins the panel of experts; tematically a problem that has been long ne• otherwise the arrangement of Fleet Battle and glected. In the custody of the National Maritime Blockade is along the same lines with a pattern of Museum, Greenwich, are some 66,000 prints, commentary and thematic material concentrating drawings and paintings, 100,000 plans of ships on a four-year period when the Royal Navy began Book Reviews 101 to demonstrate its mastery over the world's sea battles in the Age of Nelson?" Bookshelves in oceans. It is perhaps inevitable that in dealing shops and libraries already groan under the with this period not all the illustrations are new to weight of titles and subtitles along the line of "the the reader but that in no way detracts from the Age of Nelson" and "Nelson's Navy." The mar• overall value of the work. ket, as stimulated by the likes of Patrick O'Brian, Each volume concludes with a series of notes clearly wants these books but given finite pub• by Julian Mannering on artists, printmakers and lishing resources, one worries that fresh and their techniques. The high quality of the repro• worthwhile scholarship may be passed by for yet ductions lend themselves to closer scrutiny with another haul over these well dragged grounds. a magnifying glass to bring out some of the finer In his introduction, Lyon touches the issue of detail. Captions are clear and include NMM the great and, in other eyes, sometimes dubious reference numbers for the benefit of those who elasticity of the term "Age of Nelson." Seldom might wish to call up the originals or purchase restricted to Nelson's career, or even his lifetime, photographic copies. the term can be stretched to serve many goals or These then are no mere coffee table books markets, from the Seven Years' War to the end of but serious works of reference. Success with this the Napoleonic, sometimes to the end of fighting first series will surely encourage the publisher to sail and even to the twilight of Royal Navy supre• return to the Collection for further compilations. macy. "Remember Nelson" could be used to jus• In his preface the Editor draws attention to the tify all sorts of things, from rum consumption to fact that an ongoing copying programme has rigid traditional doctrine which had little to do made three-quarters of it available on microfilm. with Nelson. Lyon is clear on his definition (from This is welcome news indeed for overseas muse• Nelson's birth to the end of the Napoleonic Wars) ums and galleries! although he acknowledges that the less market• able term of "Sea Battles in the Age of George Norman Hurst III" would perhaps be more accurate. Coulsdon, Surrey The appeal to a popular market and readers of sea fiction is clear in this book, with a fore• David Lyon. Sea Battles In Close-Up: The Age of word by Alexander Kent and sprinkled references Nelson. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, in to authors like C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian. association with the National Maritime Museum, Care is taken to introduce naval terminology, 1996. 192 pp., photographs, illustrations, maps, avoiding the technical jargon that can so easily figures, index. US $29.95, Cdn $41.95, cloth; make a discussion cryptic. Lyon is not afraid to ISBN l-55750-746-5.Canadian distributor, make interesting present day references, for Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. example comparing Baltic naval stores to Persian Gulf oil. In this book, David Lyon presents case studies of Not surprisingly, many of the battles cover sea warfare from 1759 to 1815. He examines familiar ground. There is little new in Lyon's selected battles, from Quiberon Bay to the bom• conclusion that Nelson's success owed as much to bardment of Algiers, for lessons in how sea a superb team as his personal brilliance. Lyon campaigns were waged and what were the essen• does keep his study fresh by looking at less tial ingredients to success. Using examples from exhaustively discussed actions such as the his chosen actions, along with a scene setting Danish-Russian oared clash at Svenskund in 1790 introduction and thoughtful picture captions, he along with an interesting exploration of the ships, summarizes the many technological, social, plans and strikes against Napoleon's invasion strategic and cultural aspects to the sea war of this preparations. period. Perhaps the most rewarding feature of this This is a handsome and deftly written book, book, to a knowledgeable reader, is the rich and aimed at the popular market, but also of some skillfully utilized visual content. The illustrations interest to the scholar and knowledgeable naval are rich, not in large or lavish coffee-table cate• buff. The very familiar ring of the title does raise gory, but in their variety and skillful interpreta• the question: "Do we really need another book on tion. The book was published in conjunction with 102 The Northern Mariner the National Maritime Museum of Greenwich and 64-gun ship of the line, of the third rate, "the makes good use of Greenwich's tremendous finest ship I ever sailed in," said Nelson in 1795, collection. Vessel plans and models are put to seemed, like Warspite, always to be in on the equally good use, for example in the chapter on action. Thus this book is very much war history, Flamborough Head, nicely clarifying the issue for Agamemnon was at the centre of events, at the that Serapis was not a frigate. Many contrasting Battle of the Saintes, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, views are offered of a single engagement. They the summit of her career. Duties in the West are used not merely to illustrate but to explore the Indies followed, and she was in on the Battle of knowledge, style, aims and bias of artists. The Santo Domingo. In South American waters she tactical discussion is thus enhanced by adding a had long service, until she came to grief in level of cultural significance to the battles: how Moldanado Bay, off the coast of present-day they influenced not just the outcome of cam• Uruguay, in 1809. She was nearly constantly on paigns but popular and naval culture. Thus, such active service for twenty-eight years. This richly comments as "Another artist wallowing in the told book covers nicely the several encounters dramatic possibilities of storm, gunfire and and near-scrapes of the ship, and handsomely wreckage" (p.31) display a lively critical style, illustrates the Royal Navy of the era. not distracted by the grandeur of big battle Anthony Deane has a personal connection scenes. with the history of this great warship. Sir An• While not the "definitive account" of eigh• thony Deane (1638-1721), King Charles IPs teenth and early nineteenth century naval actions, scientific naval architect, was ancestor to the as promised in the book jacket, Lyon's book author and flourished almost a century before succeeds both as a popular introduction and as a Agamemnon was designed by Sir Thomas Slade, refreshing visual examination of this much ex• senior surveyor of the Royal Navy. Seven ships plored topic. were built to the speculations of the ship between 1762 and 1783, Agamemnon being the third. As Dan Conlin Deane points out, they each had distinctive fea• Halifax, Nova Scotia tures and characteristics. The details of the build• ing of Agamemnon, at Buckler's Hard, her launch, Anthony Deane. Nelson's Favourite: HMS Aga• fitting out, and maiden voyage are provided. So memnon at War 1781-1809. Annapolis: Naval are details of the wooden world of her times. Institute Press, 1996. 320 pp., illustrations, fig• The story of Agamemnon in relation to South ures, maps, appendices, glossary, bibliography, American history is especially welcome, for the index. US $44.95, Cdn $62.95, cloth; ISBN 1- record of Royal Navy history in Latin American 55750-620-5. Canadian distributor, Vanwell waters has not been fully told and remains Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. underappreciated. The author does not explain specifically how the Agamemnon came to be sent The literature of maritime and naval history to South America. However, it seems clear that contains one specific branch that this reviewer this was part of a general naval buildup to provide finds delightful — the history of individual ships security to the Portuguese royal family, which — and a word needs to be said here, at the outset arrived in Rio de Janeiro early in 1808. The of this review, about the genre. Captain Stephen waters of South America were then incompletely Roskill set the standards in his classic work on surveyed, and the perils both ashore and afloat HMS Warspite. For all the technical details, for were many. With the Royal Navy as guarantor of all the recounting of the refits, that book por• Brazil's independence, quarterdeck diplomacy trayed the character and personality of the ship — was important to Whitehall's policies. More could much like a good biography. A ship history is a have been made of this aspect of this ship's superb introduction to naval history generally, history which is otherwise superb, and a great and so it is with Anthony Deane's Agamemnon. credit to author and publisher. As a subject of study, Agamemnon, has the benefit of association with Lord Nelson, who Barry Gough always referred to her as his favourite ship. This Waterloo, Ontario Book Reviews 103

John D. Grainger (ed.). The Royal Navy in the contexts of both the global war against Napoleon River Plate, 1806-1807. Aldershot, Hants, and and the struggles for independence in South Brookfield, VT: Scolar Press for the Navy Re• America. Conceived by Sir Home Popham, naval cords Society, 1996. xiv + 380 pp., list of docu• commander at the Cape of Good Hope, and ments and sources, maps, biographical outlines, entered upon without authorization from London, index. US $99.95, cloth; ISBN 1-85928-292-X. the campaign, although minor in itself, had important consequences. One of Popham's objec• The River Plate is best known in British history tives was to open up new markets for British as the site of the December 1939 battle which led goods. Like so many Englishmen at the time, to the dramatic scuttling of the German pocket Commodore Popham believed that free trade battleship GrafSpee. At the height of the Napole• would bring prosperity to the region and reconcile onic wars, however, the River Plate was the area the local population to British rule. He was sadly of a much longer but little-known and certainly mistaken. An unlooked-for result of the expedi• less successful campaign. Between late March tion was to spark not only local resistance to the 1806 and January 1808, units of the Royal Navy British but the popular uprising against Spain. participated in five amphibious landings and in The apparent unwillingness of the Spanish Vice• assaults upon Buenos Aires, Moldanado and roy to defend Buenos Aires, the ouster of the Montevideo. Buenos Aires was captured in June British by local forces and their successful de• 1806 only to be lost to a popular uprising in fence of the city against the second British as• August. Moldanado and Montevideo fell to the sault, combined with the British capture of Mon• British but a final grand assault on Buenos Aires tevideo, removed all legitimacy from Spanish was defeated. British forces withdrew from the authority and stimulated the revolt which led by River Plate in January 1808. 1810 to independence. Overshadowed by the battle of Trafalgar, and The events of the campaign are documented by events on the European continent, such opera• in valuable detail. Inevitably, most of the docu• tions are seldom mentioned in the standard histo• ments are the official accounts of the leading ries of the Napoleonic wars. This 135th volume British participants, Commodore Popham, Rear of the Navy Records Society publications is a Admiral Stirling who replaced Popham in Decem• welcome collection of documents which serve to ber 1806, and members of the government. How• remind us that although the great fleet battles ever, a significant number are taken from the have received almost all the glory and attention, letters, diaries and memoirs of junior officers and the Royal Navy's functions for most of the war provide illuminating details of events from a very were to disrupt enemy trade and to convoy troops different perspective. Unfortunately, Grainger has to amphibious landings in which sailors often been unable to find any accounts from the lower fought alongside soldiers. It is probably true to deck. Sensibly, overall, the book does not follow say that most sailors of the Royal Navy partici• a purely chronological pattern; this would have pated to some degree in amphibious operations added confusion to an already complex collection during the long wars with Spain and France in the of material. The documents are arranged accord• last quarter of the eighteenth century. The great ing to commander (Popham, Stirling, Murray), Nelson had taken part in the invasion of Nicara• with the exception of one set on "Reactions and gua in 1780 and lost his right eye at the siege of Plans in Britain." Within each section the docu• Calvi in 1794. None of these operations utilized ments are presented chronologically. In addition, large numbers of men. At a time when casualties there is a list of relevant British government in a European land battle such as Austerlitz ministers, two maps, and several pages of brief numbered at least 100,000 men, the attacks in the biographical notes. The result is a remarkably River Plate area involved at most 15,000 British clear picture of the whole operation from the soldiers and sailors. Major-General Beresford points of view of the government, the command• captured Buenos Aires in two days with a mixed ing officers and the junior commissioned ranks. force of just 1,500 soldiers, marines and seamen. In sum, the collection succeeds at two levels. A fine introductory essay by the editor, John Broadly, it provides an expose of the immense Grainger, puts the River Plate operations in the difficulties which had to be surmounted in order 104 The Northern Mariner to carry out amphibious operations during the reflected his own high standards, and his disgust Napoleonic Wars. The haphazard bargaining and at the poor quality 'passed over' captains who bluffing through which Popham collected soldiers had been returned to the Navy by political influ• and ships for the expedition, the lack of estab• ence and sent out to command on the rivers. Too lished supply lines or of any sound intelligence many of them would fail again. These men stood about the enemy's strength were far from unique in his way. He did not see the obvious irony that to the River Plate campaign. Closer to earth, or his own career had depended on political patron• sea, the makeshift way in which such operations age from the outset. He had no quarrel with had to be carried out, and their results, is shown patronage, only with the abuse of the system that in fascinating detail. John Grainger has provided produced inefficient officers. Furthermore he was a volume which meets fully the high standards of not impressed by the Navy's greatest wartime the Navy Records Society's publications. hero, David Glasgow Farragut, whom he saw at close quarters during the operations around Gerald Jordan Vicksburg. He considered Farragut to be impul• Toronto, Ontario sive and irresolute. By contrast Phelps own combat performance was exemplary. He proved Jay Slagle. Ironclad Captain: Seth Ledyard cool under fire, and a dynamic improviser in Phelps and the U.S. Navy, 1841-1864. Kent, OH: adversity. Perhaps his finest hour came during the Kent State University Press, 1997. xvi + 449 pp., retreat of the disastrous Red River Expedition of photographs, maps, illustrations, appendices, 1864, when he had to abandon his own ship, and notes, glossary, bibliography, index. US $35, lead a number of small and weak craft past strong cloth; ISBN 0-87338-550-0. Confederate batteries. Though he had command• ed large armoured ships and led squadron opera• This book is the biography of an American naval tions, he was by then still only a Lieutenant officer who, despite playing a major role in the Commander. Disappointed of the promotion that Civil War, did not reach the highest rank. Phelps he believed he had earned, Phelps alienated the received little recognition in his lifetime and, until Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, with his now, had been neglected both by his own service incessant lobbying. Once his usefulness on the and by historians of the Mississippi campaigns. In Mississippi had passed, Welles therefore allowed Ironclad Captain Jay Slagle allows Phelps to tell him to resign his commission and take a highly his own, very human story. paid civilian job, nine months before the war He grew up, in every sense, in the service, ended. This was a curious decision, for Phelps encountering sex, politics, travel and death before would have been very useful in the river opera• he had reached the rank of midshipman. After tions that characterised the end game of the war in active coastal and riverine service in the Mexican the East, notably on the James River. He had far War Phelps displayed considerable ability on a more experience of Confederate ironclads and scientific detachment, before returning to sea. His mines than Atlantic coast officers. Instead he Civil War began with the evacuation of Norfolk made a second career in Pacific coast shipping Navy Yard, where he personally set fire to the and trans-isthmian canal projects, before moving Merrimac. He was then detached to the western into Washington local government and the diplo• rivers, where he found his forte. As a dynamic, matic service. He died in 1885, while serving as aggressive and intelligent river warrior Phelps Minister to Peru. was the moving spirit of the Mississippi cam• As a major player in the key naval campaign paigns. The four senior officers he served under, of the Civil War Phelps was eminently worthy of Rodgers, Foote, Davis and Porter, relied on him a well-organised, clear and effective biography. to conduct independent operations, lead the fleet Jay Slagle has done him justice; allowing Phelps into action, serve as flag captain and take on all to speak for himself gives readers the opportunity the most demanding tasks ashore and afloat. to reach their own conclusions. This book is a Bursting with self-confidence Phelps was major addition to the literature on the nineteenth- highly ambitious. His sense of professionalism, century United States Navy and the Civil War. sharpened by the Retirement Board of 1855, Ironclad Captain is a credit to the author and the Book Reviews 105 press. Highly recommended. not been slighted: naval air operations in the Dardanelles/Gallipoli campaign, the Suez Canal, Andrew Lambert and the hunt for the German cruiser Kbnigsberg London, England in 1915 in German East Africa are all chronicled. The result is a balanced, full account of naval air R.D. Layman. Naval Aviation in the First World operations in World War I. War: Its Impact and Influence. Annapolis: Naval Yet this is not merely an account of opera• Institute Press, 1996. 224 pp., photographs, tions. The conceptual role of naval aviation in appendices, select bibliography, index. US areas such as strategic and tactical offence, aerial $36.95, Cdn $51.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-617-5. combat, aerial reconnaissance, sea lane defence, Canadian distributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. and attacks on sea lanes are all related herein. It Catharines, ON. can be seen from Layman's account that the foundations of naval aviation were laid down in At first glance, the terms, "naval aviation" and World War I, with surprising contemporary "World War I" seem mutually exclusive. "Naval application to the problems facing today's mari• aviation" evokes air-to-air combat over the South time strategists. Truly, this book proves that "the Pacific in the 1940s, or modern jets being more things change, the more they stay the same." launched from steam catapults. "World War I" Finally, personalities are also discussed. evokes trench warfare, the first generation of U- Admirals are frequently perceived as hide-bound, boats, and of SPADs, Nieuports, and Fokkers in conservative types resistant to change and inno• dogfights over the Western Front. Yet, as with so vation. Layman helps dispel that stereotype. He many other aspects of aviation, World War I left shows that admirals throughout Europe evinced its imprint on naval aviation. It is a little-known interest in the use of aircraft even before the fight• subject, because there was very little air-to-air ing began in 1914. Indeed, several nations, such combat at sea; it was definitely not the stuff of as France and Germany, planned aggressive pulp magazines in the 1920s and 1930s. R.D. expansion of naval air arms. Those plans were Layman's book therefore fills an historical lacuna. severely disrupted by the outbreak of World War The term "definitive" can and must be ap• I. Layman does deal objectively with one objec• plied to this book. Layman thoroughly covers tion to shipborne aircraft often attributed to most aspects of naval aviation, including sea• admirals — that the oil and gasoline from aircraft planes, observation balloons, anti-submarine dirtied the ships. Layman emphasizes that numer• aircraft, zeppelins, and the first attempts at air• ous sailors were washed overboard, and that oil craft carrier construction. Most attention is given and gasoline dripping on a ship's deck did noth• to the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) of Brit• ing to improve an already-risky situation. There• ain's Royal Navy, for it is of that service that most fore, the admirals' objection to shipborne aircraft of the records and documentation has survived. may have had a legitimate basis in crew safety. However, Layman gives due tribute to the naval The text is accompanied by good photo• air services of other countries such as Germany, graphs and. helpful appendices. It is marred France, Italy, Russia, and the United States. All slightly by its somewhat textbookish tone and a had such air arms, and all are discussed in varying few maps would have been helpful. But these are degrees of detail. small criticisms. This work is recommended for The book will delight lovers of World War I World War I and naval aviation enthusiasts. The aircraft trivia. Aircraft are lovingly dissected and cover carries a reproduction of an oil painting analyzed for technical and operational merits and depicting a Sopwith Baby floatplane flying near demerits. Aircraft carrier enthusiasts will enjoy HMS Lion at the German fleet's surrender in reading about the first attempts at deck-landing 1918; the difference between that image and an aircraft. It is nearly incredible to realize just how F-14 flying near USS Eisenhower in the 1990s is far technology took aircraft carriers and naval surprisingly small. aviation in a span of some fifty years. While the geographical focus is on the North Robert L. Shoop Sea, other areas of naval aviation operations have Colorado Springs, Colorado 106 The Northern Mariner

John Wells. The Royal Navy: An Illustrated obvious in the two dates provided for Wells' Social History 1870-1982. Stroud, Gloucs.: Alan joining the navy (January 1939, p.vii; May 1929, Sutton for the Royal Naval Museum, 1994. X + p. 151). Poor editing for style erupts periodically. 306 pp., photographs, illustrations, chronology, Wells identifies three major watersheds in notes & references, bibliography, index. £12.99, the social evolution of the navy: Fisher's tenure paper; ISBN 0-7509-0833-5. as Second Sea Lord; the Geddes Axe, and finally the years of and following Mountbatten's tenure From the passage of the English Elementary as First Sea Lord. Wells would suggest that only Education Act, 1870, when "national education the third period dealt with change satisfactorily. and social awareness became within the Navy a Of the first, when Fisher campaigned for im• reality," (p.ix) through to the Falklands war proved education of officers, and interchange- victory, Captain Wells, who joined the Royal ability of engineering with executive officers, Navy in 1929, has traced social change in his Fisher's own character, the revolutionary nature service. Any single volume work governing such of much of what he proposed, and the fact that a topic over a century and twelve years of unprec• society by comparison had not perceptibly shed edented technical and social change must neces• any of its class values all worked against success. sarily move quickly. The space given the various Thus the status of engineering officers remained time periods is well balanced, but the method of a difficult point for years to come. During World treatment undergoes a subtle change. War I the RN had expanded with too many For the first sixty years Wells relies heavily permanent personnel, hence the need to cut back on published memoirs, and indeed that offers one with the economies of the ten year rule. Officer of the great strengths of the book. It reintroduces ranks were ruthlessly pruned and a two-tiered many published accounts which otherwise may system for sailors pay was introduced which set have been left unnoticed. Any serious student of the stage for the Invergordon mutinies. Again, social history of the late Victorian navy will be change was not handled smoothly. World War II grateful for this departure point. For the period of completed the change in society started by the his own service, Wells introduces his own per• previous war, and the RN was compelled to sonal observations and those of his many friends. notice. By contrast with the previous attempts, the They are cited in the notes by name "to author" arrival of Mountbatten at the Admiralty heralded without date. This obviously changes the book a more sensitive and sensible approach to change. from a work of an historian, (but arguably not Family life styles led to shortened foreign deploy• detached) to that of a participant. Be cognizant of ments. Assistance was now given to families, that gradual shift. This introduces the normal previously left to fend for themselves if their difficulties of the bias of the participant. In the six existence had been acknowledged at all. New chapters that use personal communications, a weapons and sensor technologies demanded and total of only five references are to non-commis• got a thorough review of the trades structure. sioned personnel. The continuing importance of Now the navy was prepared to let tradition go in class well into the post-war navy, and compari• the face of change, as it had not been under sons of habitability between RN and USN ships Fisher. This assessment is of interest as the con• are interesting, if not disturbing; more comment sidered opinion of a participant, supported by the from sailors would balance the discussion of individuals mentioned in the notes. class. (The RN emphasis on class gives an inter• Richly illustrated, with a twelve-page de• esting sidelight on the RCN mutinies.) A second tailed chronology, this book can be recommended specific concern may be the result either of bias as a good beginning to a large subject. Remem• or sloppy editing. The assertion that RN "lesser bering that it was written by a man who was flag officers...head[ed]... Canadian embryo naval almost 80 in the publication year, its shortcom• forces" (p. 136) is of course wrong. Was the RCN ings may be more easily overlooked. lumped with the Australian and New Zealand navies because Wells, representing RN bias, William Glover believed it to be true or because the manuscript London, Ontario was not properly edited? Poor editing of fact is Book Reviews 107

David Phillipson. Band of Brothers: Boy Seamen exercised in bending and reefing sails daily. in the Royal Navy 1800-1956. Stroud, Gloucs.: Naval seamen manned guns when battle offered, Sutton Publishing, 1996. x + 150 pp., photo• and officers detailed one or two boys to each gun. graphs, notes, bibliography, index. £14.99, cloth; Boys carried powder from the magazine, col• ISBN 0-7509-1251-0. lected cartridges in lidded pouches and ran with them to their respective guns. Often gunpowder Band of Brothers: Boy Seamen in the Royal Navy would ignite from flying sparks, red-hot shot or 1800-1956 by David Phillipson lends whole new flashback from gun breeches, inflicting frightful meaning to the term "child labour." The author burns on the boys. However running from their recounts his juvenile days spent shortly after quarters meant certain death at the hands of their World War II at HMS Ganges, the Royal Navy's officers; most boys made the best of a hazardous principal boys' training establishment at Shotley situation and fought bravely and cheerfully. Point near Ipswich on the Suffolk coast, and Although Phillipson did not join Ganges indeed, the first of the "stone-frigates," for it until January 1947, sweeping social and political opened its doors in October 1905. Phillipson changes during the first half of the twentieth characterizes Ganges as a "Victorian time-capsule century, plus two world wars, had exercised little embedded in the post-atomic Royal Navy," for or no influence on the British Admiralty's philos• the treatment accorded boys by the Royal Navy ophy of indoctrination and training of its boy even in the mid-1950s differed little from that entrants. Meals had changed little. The average meted out in 1914 or 1790. naval cook could be "relied upon to ruin good Of course, in the eighteenth and early nine• food." Ganges sausages "came to us pale and all teenth centuries, people took for granted that ten• but raw, like swollen fingers of a corpse, though or twelve-year-olds, mere children, would leave generally likened to another part of cadaver's home to go to sea. Boys began work in rural com• anatomy by the ungrateful recipients." munities at that age. Anyway, a seaman needed to Typically many boys, separated from home start young to literally "learn the ropes." In the and parents for the first time, hated Shotley. They mid-eighteenth century no such rating as "boy" found it hard to come to terms with Naval routine. existed in the Royal or merchant navies. Boys Phillipson's drill instructor one day in a rage flung aged from nine to seventeen were entered on a a rifle at a hapless lad, who fumbled the catch. ship's books as "servants," a misleading word. The muzzle smashed the boy in the mouth, cut• They served not as domestics, but as apprentice ting his lip. Tears welled in the boy's eyes and seamen. Frequently boy volunteers consisted of trickled down his cheeks. The instructor, a bit unwanted children, waifs, runaways, strays (but nonplused, muttered: "All right, son, all right — not juvenile criminals). Not all boys volunteered. no call for that. Remember the more you cry the A ten-year-old might be safe from the press-gang, less you piss!" After forty weeks of instruction but any lads much older were not. Ship's officers under that "kindly" drill instructor's tutelage, often ordered brutal punishment, "cuts" or caning, Phillipson went to sea in December 1947 in HMS usually six or twelve strokes — sometimes in two Ulster, a destroyer of the Boys' Training Flotilla installments — for the most trivial offences. The based at Rosyth on the Firth of Forth. boy, strapped down, bound hand and foot with Not until 1 April 1956 did the Admiralty trousers down, would be beaten by a seaman with finally abolish the rating of "boy" in the Royal all the strength and venom he could muster. The Navy, thus ending three centuries of tradition. boy's bottom after twelve strokes resembled raw Juvenile recruitment virtually ceased, and Shotley beef, and crew members would have to carry him closed in 1973. Other sweeping changes took to sick bay for attention. When peace finally place in the service at large. The Navy abolished arrived in Europe in 1815, impressment in the the rum ration, and consigned Jack Tar's ham• Royal Navy ceased, but flogging persisted. mock to history; living space aboard now in• Some older boys worked aloft on the highest cluded bunks. Phillipson performs yeoman ser• yards. Occasionally these "upperyardmen" died vice in tracing Band of Brothers' three-centuries- from falls, an occupational hazard for all seamen. old tradition and richly embroidering it with The Admiralty enjoined that all boys should be colorful personal recollections. He finds one 108 The Northern Mariner recent development beyond an old sailor's com• flopped exhausted into his hammock. He was sent prehension though, "female officers and ratings for the next day by the Snotties' Nurse who told serving alongside men in warships at sea. Kiss him in no uncertain terms: "You will carry out me, Hardy." any duty, at any time, to the best of your ability, until it is completed and, if necessary, at the cost David Beatty of your life." That was the standard to which the Sackville, New Brunswick British naval officer was trained. These principles guided Anderson's career C.C. Anderson. Seagulls In My Belfry. Bishop until his retirement in 1969. During the war he Auckland, Durham: Pentland Press, 1997. 202 served in Motor Torpedo Boats in the Channel pp., photographs. £8.99, paper; ISBN 1-85821- and the Mediterranean, in a sloop in the Atlantic 461-0. and a destroyer on East Coast convoys where he obtained his first command. After VE Day he was This account of a thirty-nine-year career in the sent to the East Indies, and in 1945 he was ap• Royal Navy begins when the author, as a six- pointed Assistant Chief of Naval Intelligence in year-old boy, fell under the navy's spell while Occupied Germany. He later commanded HMS standing on the jetty in Boulogne staring at the Contest, served as the Commander of the Royal sleek lines and sinister power of a British de• Naval Barracks, Devonport, and as Staff Officer stroyer lying alongside. His aunt saw this excess (Plans) to the British Joint Services Mission in of boyish enthusiasm as a simple case of his Washington, DC. He was Head of Section 2 of having "bats in his belfry," but his mother was the Naval Intelligence Division during the Suez closer to the mark. "Not bats," she replied. "Sea• Crisis, and later became Commander of the Naval gulls!" Seven years later, after surviving the Air Station at Yeovilton and Naval Attache at ordeal of the entrance exams and personal inter• Bonn. He ended his career with promotion to view, he passed into the Royal Naval College, rear-admiral and as appointment as Flag Officer, Dartmouth, as a naval cadet, age thirteen. Admiralty Interview Board responsible for the Cadet training at Dartmouth was a mixture of selection of future naval officers. academic studies, practical seamanship and engi• Anderson enjoyed a varied and interesting neering, all focused on the day when the aspiring career which he fleshes out here in a series of naval officer would join the Fleet. Yet mastery of personal anecdotes related with humor and affec• these subjects was only part of the curriculum. tion against an historical background just suffi• The overriding objective of the system was to cient to establish a context for reminiscences. He instil in the cadets the precept of instant, precise relates the influence of the Fisher reforms at the and unquestioning obedience; a brutal discipline, turn of the century which in fact created the navy totally unacceptable by today's standards, but he entered in 1930. He describes the effects of hallowed by generations of practice, was enforced post-war reductions between 1919-1933, and the by senior cadets and cadet captains as the means state of the Royal Navy at the outbreak of the war to accomplish this end. Accompanying this and in 1939. He comments on the effects of the related to it was the concept of "duty" which, creation of the Post and General Lists which according to Nelson's dictum, was "the great effectively shut off opportunities for command to business of a sea officer." The inculcation of many officers and proved shattering to morale these precepts begun at Dartmouth continued in with serious consequences in the recruitment of the training cruiser and the Fleet which the young Junior officers. In short, Anderson had told an naval officer first joined as a midshipman. Ander• interesting story very well. His book is bound to son's account of his experiences shows vividly interest anyone who seeks a personal account of the way these precepts were developed in the the navy before and after World War II, and, of practice of his day. For example, a sense of duty course, it is the personal account which adds was indelibly impressed upon him when, as a realism and balance to historical analysis. midshipman in charge of the pinnace coming back wet, cold and tired from a late run, he let his C.B. Koester coxswain take the boat to the boom while he Kingston, Ontario Book Reviews 109

Ian McGeoch. The Princely Sailor: Mountbatten had more to do with the development of com• of Burma. London & Washington: Brassey's, bined operations than Mountbatten. In 1944 1996. xiv + 285 pp., photographs, maps, figures, Ramsay drafted a letter to Cyril Falls, who had notes, index. £19.95, cloth; ISBN 1-85753-161-2. stated in the Times that Dieppe "proved to be the source from which almost every lesson affecting Vice-Admiral McGeoch has responded to critics future operations...was derived." He did not think of Lord Louis Mountbatten by firmly removing that Falls really believed that, and after careful the principal warts they claim to have identified. consideration of every "lesson" said to have been In McGeoch's opinion Philip Ziegler, the highly learned, pointed out that "It was not until they acclaimed biographer of Mountbatten, just doesn't [amphibious operations] were removed and know enough about the old navy. Only born in placed under service ministries and planned and 1929, and not a professional sailor, "Ziegler's carried out under their direction that sanity pre• judgement of Lord Louis' professional compe• vailed. Dieppe was a tragedy and the cause may tence as a captain of destroyers is hopelessly be attributed to the fact that it was planned by adrift." (p. 52) But wait, did not Ziegler arrive at inexperienced enthusiasts. Because as was only to his judgement on the evidence of Mountbatten's be expected some rather elementary mistakes professional colleagues and superiors at the time? were made, it is claimed that valuable lessons Indeed he did, and according to Ian McGeoch were learned." (Churchill Archives, RMSY 8/21). their judgement was either clouded by envy, or McGeoch also takes on those who would suspicion of the popular and charismatic Lord criticise Mountbatten's performance as Supreme Louis, or they were themselves unqualified to Allied Commander South East Asia. That the judge because they were out of date and of lim• American General Stillwell did not get along with ited ability. The officer principally singled out for Lord Louis, and the feeling in many quarters that that assessment is Lord Cunningham of Hynd- Mountbatten was not the man for the job, are hope, the victor of Matapan and ultimately the acknowledged. Here, however, there is less for First Sea Lord, held in high regard at the time but the apologist to challenge. McGeoch reflects the not, apparently, by admirers of Mountbatten. opinion of most observers that Mountbatten The brilliant young Mountbatten as Chief of carried out his functions skillfully. His further Combined Operations, according to this account, service as Viceroy and Governor General of India achieved all his aims. That astonishing revelation also receives appropriate complimentary treat• depends on some careful reassessment of events. ment. "For a Rear Admiral aged just 48, it was a Having inherited a most unsatisfactory organisa• shore job somewhat above and beyond the call of tion from Sir Roger Keyes, Mountbatten, says the duty," writes McGeoch. A nice understatement. author, made it thoroughly professional, and was Mountbatten's return to the navy, where he responsible for developing the techniques that served as Fourth Sea Lord, Commander-in-Chief, made the Allied invasion of Europe possible in Mediterranean and First Sea Lord, was propitious. 1944. McGeoch, in other words, accepts He proved to be a superb administrator and Mountbatten's own version of events. Thus negotiator, an astute planner and, as always, very Dieppe, "admittedly at a fearful cost," showed good on public relations. His elevation in 1959 to that this was not the way to carry out an assault Chief of the Defence Staff allowed him to deploy landing. McGeoch rejects Brian Loring Villa's all these qualities. arguments in Unauthorised Action, which ac• McGeoch claims to have disposed of the cused Mountbatten of authorising Operation criticisms directed towards Mountbatten. In my JUBILEE without Cabinet authority, on the view he has not done so with respect to his han• grounds that in this first book by someone who is dling of a destroyer flotilla nor the Dieppe raid. A not a military historian, all the evidence has been man of lesser stature would not have emerged selected to prove a tentative hypothesis. with his career unscathed from these episodes. McGeoch deals too cavalierly with Villa, and His intelligence and his undoubted ability to fails to come to terms with the primary sources inspire loyalty are beyond question, and these that have served Villa well. Moreover, he glosses qualities had a lot to do with his ability to survive over the fact that Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay such disasters. So did his genius for public rela- 110 The Northern Mariner tions. True, he had laid the foundations of a duction of the book, who happened to be in town brilliant naval career with outstanding course for the conference, actually said: "If you find this results and a talent for technical innovation. He Canadian naval identity, what are you going to do had also built up a watertight insurance policy by with it?" Good question. his extraordinary personal life-long campaign, Canadians tend to use the word "identity" to strongly supported by his wife Edwina, and mean the collection of myths, images, lore and trading on his royal connections, to become stories that make up their soul, whether national, accepted and remarkably well known in every naval or whatever. The trouble may be that our corner of society on both sides of the Atlantic. myths have too many sources for us to handle The particularly tragic manner of his death, at the collectively. The trilogy of which A Nation's hands of an Irish terrorist, underlined the indivisi• Navy is part, as well as the outpouring of excel• bility of his private and public persona. lent Canadian naval books over the past few With these observations in mind, The Prince• years, helps greatly to build our collective soul. ly Sailor is well written, informative and enter• The Australian naval historian James taining; it should stir up a few lively discussions. Goldrick comes right to the point by asking: "[has] either [the Australian or Canadian Navy] W.A.B. Douglas emerged as a truly national entity or simply as a Ottawa, Ontario construct of an alien culture?" He says that the critical requirement for any navy is a capability to Michael L. Hadley, Rob Huebert, and Fred W. conduct war at sea, so that some distinction must Crickard (eds.). A Nation's Identity: In Quest of be drawn between elements alien to the national Canadian Naval Identity. Montréal & Kingston: culture because they impose unnecessarily differ• McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996. xxiv + ent values, and elements unique because they are 460 pp., photographs, illustrations, figures, tables, integral to naval efficiency. That is, navies can be notes, bibliography, index. $49.95, cloth; ISBN different from other organizations in a nation 0-7735-1506-2. state, and should be different to the extent re• quired to work well. This is a good book and a good read! The authors Three chapters, by William Glover, Graeme and editors have put together a fine volume to Tweedie and Siobhan McNaught, provide an complete the naval trilogy beginning with The excellent analysis of Canadian naval origins. The RCN in Retrospect (1982) and The RCN in Tran• birth-pangs of the Navy reflect the turmoil which sition (1988). The editors give proper credit to had been roiling, according to Tweedie, since Maritime Command, the Naval Officers' Associa• well before Confederation, about Canada's place tion of Canada, the Centre for Foreign Policy in the world and in the Empire. Siobhan Studies at Dalhousie University, and the Pacific McNaught points out: "Concern about maritime and Maritime Strategic Studies Group at the security was only one issue. At least as important University of Victoria, for funding publication. were questions about Canada's freedom of action The book is a collection of the papers pre• and responsibilities with respect to Great Britain." sented at the Fleet Historical Conference which Glover reminds us that the Fisheries Protection took place at the Maritime Warfare School in Service was fashioned by Laurier to advance Halifax in October 1993 (I was greatly privileged Canadian interests that were in conflict with those to participate in that conference as a panel moder• of the United States, intending that it should ator). Together they explore many facets of evolve into a Canadian Navy. By 1904, Marine Canadian Naval identity. and Fisheries was the largest department of Foreigners are mystified and puzzled by the government and the service was equipped with Great Canadian Quest for identity. They are modern ships. Britain did not support the princi• mystified because they find it easy to recognize ple of local navies, preferring to improve Anglo- Canadians, and they are puzzled by our preoccu• American relations, but by 1910, having pulled pation in searching for something so obvious to the Royal Navy back to its home waters to coun• them. Professor Michael Howard, strategist, and ter the increasingly powerful German Navy, the British guest mildly mis-quoted in the intro• Britain had become keen on full-fledged domin- Book Reviews 111 ion navies, and the Royal Canadian Navy stag• ships and equipment of the modern Navy, suc• gered into existence, Canadian all right, but not ceeded in doing so, all show scenes of the evolv• entirely certain what that meant. There was ing navy. Bernard Ransom, David Zimmerman, general agreement amongst all political parties William March's "Evolution of HMCS Royal that Canada's interests lay in being part of the Roads," and Serge Bernier's "The Navy's First Empire, but the manner in which Canada should French-Language Unit" fill out the people picture. serve the Empire was fiercely debated. Finally James Goldrick's "Comparison of the If there is a fault in the book, it is that it Australian and Canadian Naval Experience" and assumes that the Navy as it evolved lost touch James Kiras' "the Maritime Command, National with the society in which it lived, that its Canadi- Missions, and Naval Identity" look to the future anism was a sham, and in particular that its while Vice Admiral Peter Cairns' "Points of officers consisted of closet Brits. In fact there Departure: Towards the Next Forty Years," is a were a lot of dedicated imperialists in Canada summation of the conference which he had con• until say the early fifties, as evidenced by the vened as Maritime Commander. extraordinary way Canadians flocked to the The RCN was firmly Canadian when it colours to defend the mother country in two began in 1910, but in common with the rest of world wars, and they felt themselves none the less Canadian society, was not quite sure what that Canadian for being happy and passionate Imperi• meant. Clearly it knows what and who it is today. alists. After all, the Statute of Westminster was We can be proud that it serves this country so enacted only seven years before World War II well, and dare to hope that it continues to do so. and a Canadian flag, in 1967. This book is essential to any good naval library. Canadian society was indeed evolving away from the Empire, in common with the rest of the D.N. Mainguy Empire, but it is quite wrong to judge the early Ottawa, Ontario officers of the Navy as non-Canadian. Brooke Claxton said (quoted by Glover): "I had convinc• Paul Kemp. A Pictorial History of the Sea War ing evidence that the senior officers of the Navy, 1939-1945. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, just as the senior members of the Conservative 1996. 192 pp., photographs. US $39.95, Cdn party, were away out of line with Canadian $55.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-674-4. Canadian sentiment...." Perhaps not non-Canadian so much distributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, as non-Liberal! ON. However, as Glover points out, by 1949 the Navy needed to draw up a new social contract Few tasks are as daunting as being asked to select between officers and men. This was accomplished roughly five hundred photographs depicting naval in a very Canadian way, through a Commission warfare during World War II for a special compi• of Inquiry into incidents which had taken place in lation. No matter how hard one tries, getting a ships. The resulting Mainguy Report, named for combination that manages to please everyone is its Chairman, was a model of rapid action which almost impossible. Nonetheless, photo essay might well be examined with profit today. The works are relatively popular with history buffs last incident into which it inquired occurred on 15 and publishers alike. March 1949, and the report was delivered in The editor of this volume, Paul Kemp, is October 1949. It remains the basis for the leader- with the Imperial War Museum's Department of led relationship in the Canadian Navy to this day. Photographs. As such, he has been able to pro• The other chapters all add breadth to the vide us with an excellent selection of images and book. Marc Milner, Michael Hadley and Fred a very well organized volume. The photographs Crickard are stage setters. Catherine Allan's fasci• are presented in eleven defined sections, covering nating account of the Canadian Naval Operational virtually every naval aspect of the war. Given the Intelligence Centre, Jan Drent's excellent paper constraints with which he had to work, Kemp has on "A Good Workable Little Fleet" which reveals managed to include prints that provide a revealing how Admirals Harold Grant, Nelson Lay, and glimpse of both sides of the fence. One example Frank Houghton, all in positions to design the of this are the images of Axis warships on convoy 112 The Northern Mariner duty. The portraits of commanders from some of Wolfgang Hirschfeld (as told to Geoffrey the various major navies makes another interest• Brooks). Hirschfeld: The Story of a U-Boat NCO ing touch. Strangely, only one officer from the 1940-1946. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, Imperial Japanese Navy and none from the Rus• 1996. xvi + 253 pp., end-maps, photographs, sian and Italian fleets are depicted. No one, appendices, notes, index. US $28.95, Cdn $40.50, however, can argue against the individual officers cloth; ISBN 1-55750-372-9. Canadian distributor, who are portrayed. Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. Each section is accompanied by a descriptive though general account that gives some back• Jordan Vause. Wolf U-Boat Commanders in ground on the events in that sphere of conflict. World War 11. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, The actual text is perhaps the weakest element in 1997. xi + 249 pp., photographs, notes, bibliogra• the volume, in part because it is lacking in de• phy, index. US $28.95, Cdn $40.50, cloth; ISBN tailed analysis and investigation. For some inex• 1-55750-874-7. Canadian distributor, Vanwell plicable reason, the publisher chose to use a Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. relatively large print for the text. This reinforces the feeling that something is missing, and creates Two quite distinct U-boat books have been the impression that the publisher deliberately launched by the US Naval Institute Press into restricted the word count for the volume. Clearly, what many might think is an already glutted the photographs are the focus of the work, but market: one an old salt's recycled memoirs (as readers would benefit from a more detailed told to a British writer), the second a thoughtful discussion of the events themselves. analysis and critique by an American historian. As in other works of this type, the images Both are well worth reading and make valuable included are a mix of well known and other less contributions to literature on German submarines. frequently published photographs. While they Unfortunately for the memoir, however, the cover bear the mark of careful selection, the publisher's design projects a false image: "Hirschfeld" writ layout has deprived them of some of their impact. large in gothic letters over a "teutonic' painting of Many of the photographs cross over the spine of a statuesquely profiled German sailor, steely-eyed the volume. At least equally disappointing is the rambo-zambo gaze reaching into the distance, decision to use lower grade paper instead of the juggernaut-jaw jutting defiantly against the coated type usually employed in this type of dangers of the sea and the violence of the enemy. work. This tends to dull the image, and de-em• And beneath it all a stylized U-boat knifing phasize the impact of the pictures. Researchers through daunting seas with Nazi banner unfurled. and writers will be further disappointed to learn Here, surely, is he-man stuff. Was it perhaps this that none of the photographs are accredited. This ugly image from the past that made the British means that the publisher has in essence given us writer confess awkwardly in the preface that "I the equivalent of winning lottery numbers, with• depart from the tradition of apologizing when out advising where or how to claim the prize. introducing the personal account of a German This shortcoming is further compounded by the serviceman of the Hitler period."? It is a rather complete lack of reference to the archives and odd statement, given that no such tradition of private collections that were consulted. apology exists. Nor should it. Despite these minor irritants, most readers Fortunately, the Hirschfeld whom readers with an avid interest in wartime photographs and have come to know in his original editions — naval history should benefit from this work. It Feindfahrten: Das Logbuch eines U-Bootfahrers offers a good cross-section of images depicting (Wien: Paul Neff Verlag, 1982) and Das letzte most aspects of naval conflict during World War Boot — Atlantik Farewell (Munchen: Universitas II, and this is exactly what it set out to do. In Verlag, 1989 — is neither the political dinosaur short, this is one book that you should acquire for the cover of the American edition proclaims, nor the photographs, not the text. the inflated hero. He was, to quote the German expression he once used of himself, but a "little Peter K.H. Mispelkamp sausage" (ein Wurstcheri) in the midst of large- Point Claire, Québec scale events. Therein lies the special virtue of his Book Reviews 113 books. They are as unique as the memoir of Ernst of the text are the narrative portraits of the man Kaiser, the lower-deck writer who preceded him who is more responsible than any other subma• with QXP - ein U-Boot auf Feindfahrt (Herford: riner or archivist for preserving the U-boat record: Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, 1981). Most naval Horst Bredow, director of the U-Boot Archiv in memoirs have been written by officers and former Cuxhaven-Altenbruch. A former U-boat officer, officers, and leave us in little doubt about how Bredow survived the perils of submarine warfare battles were won and discipline maintained — at and on pondering the grace of survival devoted least from the upper-deck perspective. The lower- all his human and financial resources to founding deck perspective is at once more narrowly fo- the Archives he continues to manage almost cussed, down-to earth and sometimes whimsically single-handedly. It provides incomparably valu• ironic. Between these two worlds lies the realm of able resources to researchers, while marking rites the lower-deck communicator: aware of the signal of passage for aging veterans. Vause's portraits of and cypher traffic, of the relationships among Bredow both introduce and conclude this volume, officers, and the command links between ships, thus providing a vivid frame-work that quite packs, and shore commands. properly evokes the intangible aspects of image Hirschfeld's originals, like the American and meaning that can either uplift, haunt, or composite, are well-narrated accounts of the obsess. experience of a wireless operator, based on his When drawing his conclusions together at wartime notes — the "log book" of the German the end of a long reflective journey through title. He served six war patrols in U-109, and biographies of command Vause astutely observes: then, on promotion to Warrant Officer, aboard the "no two commanders were the same and it was a larger, and more famous, snorkel-equipped U-234 futile exercise to force them into a single class which was allegedly carrying uranium oxide ore with a common image." While recognizing the to Japan when it surrendered to the USS Sutton. role of "even false" images in uplifting and inspir• It is clear that Hirschfeld experienced much. ing a culture, he cautions that "false images can What we miss, however, is any indication of what also burden people...with reputations they do not the experience actually meant, and of how he deserve." (p.224) In attempting to rehabilitate his deals with the record of German history. skippers from the distortions of propaganda and For reflections about meaning and value we popular lore, Vause has engaged himself in a turn to Jordan Vause's Wolf: U-Boat Command• moral undertaking. Yet he is wise enough to ers in World War II. Concerned about the preva• recognize the pervasiveness of ambiguity and lence of stereotypes, particularly the wartime leave us to our own thoughts about public image propaganda and 'Hollywood' image of the U-boat and historical truth. skipper that still survives despite postwar analy• The market for U-boat books and film never ses, Vause sets out to humanize them. By provid• seems to have reached the saturation point. The ing a series of engaging portraits — for example, theme has such a grip on the imagination that we of Victor Oehrn, Wolfgang Ltith and Jürgen can expect more. At least two film companies Oesten — Vause achieves a balanced and persua• have documentaries in mind, and a commercial sive account. Specialists will already be familiar press is preparing an anthology about 'second- with Liith, especially in light of Vause's pioneer• string' skippers not otherwise featured in mono• ing biography of the man. But they will gain new graphs. When, one wonders, will either reviewer and refreshing insights into such relatively ob• or author borrow an expression from matelot scure men (on the book-market) as Oehrn, who Ernst Kaiser's book-title of 1981 and sign "QXP" was one of Grand Admiral Dônitz's most impor• at the end of his script? That was, after all, how tant planning officers, and Oesten, Knight's Cross German communicators keyed off their message: winner and skipper of U-61, U-106, and U-861. end of transmission.' But whoever reads it, won't These are by no means of arcane interest, but really believe it is true. broadly relevant to submarine history. Vause writes with an easy flair that permits Michael L. Hadley one to read his book — as I did — in virtually a Victoria, British Columbia single sitting. Perhaps the most innovative aspect 114 The Northern Mariner

James Foster Tent. E-Boat Alert: Defending the The retreat of the few remaining E-boats to Normandy Invasion Fleet. Annapolis: Naval Holland and Norway completes the rarely told Institute Press, 1996. xvi + 286 pp., maps, illus• story of cooperation between coastal forces and trations, tables, photographs, notes, selected Bomber Command. bibliography, index. US $32.95, Cdn $45.95, Tent winds up his story with an analysis of cloth; ISBN 1-55750-805-4. Canadian distributor, the dangers posed to the invasion by the E-boats. Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. Elsewhere in his book, he also gives a brief des• cription of coastal forces and their development Operation Neptune, the naval side of the invasion from 1866 through the British CMBs of World of Europe in June 1944, was so vast an undertak• War I and on to the 1920s and the design process ing and the expected interference of the Kriegs- which resulted in the diesel-powered E-boat. marine so anti-climactic that good books on the There is no question that the E-boats were a subject are hard to find. James Foster Tent helps superb weapon, miles ahead of any similar wea• fill that gap in a most satisfactory manner with pon on the Allied side. Ironically, it may have this book on the best weapon the Germans had to been too good; its high diesel engines were interfere with Operation Neptune: that superb exceedingly sensitive with an average service life product of German technology, the E-boat. of 400 hours. Moreover, the German builders Tent opens with the Lyme Bay Disaster on faced enormous difficulties in meeting the the night of 28 April 1944, a scant forty days Kriegsmarine standards for scarce materials. It before D-Day, when German E-boats (or offi• was partly for this reason that there were only cially Schnellboote) paid a lightning visit to the thirty-four E-boats in the Channel on D-Day. English shore of the Channel, savaged a convoy Finally, politics in the Nazi court diminished the of valuable LSTs, sinking two, seriously damag• effectiveness of this weapon. ing a third and costing 749 US combat engineers E-Boat Alert is an exceptionally well-re• and sailors their lives. The convoy was escorted searched book, to judge by the extensive notes by a Flower-class corvette, its destroyer escort and list of sources. Yet it is also a good, and at having failed to appear. Tent describes the Allied times exciting, read that is highly recommended. reaction, including the temporary disagreement I cannot close without pointing out one error that among senior officers, before the decision was slipped by either the author or his editor. HMS finally made to request the help of RAF Bomber Scimitar, the missing escort that night in Lyme Command. There is a brief but effective section Bay, was of World War I vintage all right, but she on the history of Bomber Command, followed by was one of the Admiralty "S" Class, built at a description of 617 Squadron and the technology Clydebank, and not an old four-stack destroyer. of strategic bombing. Tent's narrative includes She sank a U-boat in 1941. the career of Barnes Wallace and his efforts to develop the 12,000-pound Tall-boy bomb, which David Fry became the chosen instrument for the destruction Toronto, Ontario of the E-boats and their concrete pens. D-Day intervened before the attack was D.K. Brown (ed.). The Design and Construction launched. Tent recounts the events of that day, of British Warships 1939-1945: The Official and the limited German reaction to the invasion, Record— Vol. 2: Submarines, Escorts and Coast• including the part played by the E-boat flotillas al Forces. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996. and the difficulties under which the performed. 158 pp., photographs, figures, tables, index. US Not until June 14 was the RAF ready for a mas• $39.95, Cdn $55.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-161-0. sive assault on Le Havre, which had become the Canadian distributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. main E-boat base once Cherbourg became threat• Catharines, ON. ened by American ground forces. The process of photo reconnaissance, photo interpretation, Fortunately for those not involved in the planning ULTRA decryptions and plain good luck which and design of the warships used by the Allies spelt the end of the E-boat flotillas as an effective during World War II, especially the Canadian force in the English Channel are all described. Navy (all of whose ships were British designed), Book Reviews 115 at the end of the war the Director of Naval Con• whose expertise was with steam triple-expansion, struction in London set his various design teams so they settled for that — and a drop of three knots the task of recording their wartime activities and in available speed. The Algerine 'sweepers were decisions, and the reasons therefor. These reports innovatively designed to be both fleet sweepers were never published, but now, in an interesting for all types of then-known sweeping and as and useful three-volume series, they are available escorts. For the MTBs, the main problem was the for scrutiny. This volume covers most of the ships lack of a suitable engine and the strain of high employed by the RCN — all but destroyers and loads moving fast in heavy seas "which had a cruisers: corvettes, frigates, various minesweep• disastrous effect...suffering frame damage." (p. ers, MTBs and MGBs, and Fairmiles. It also des• 86) The Fairmile motor launch was designed for cribes the decisions related to submarines, sloops, conversion in forty-eight hours from minesweeper depot ships and Admiralty motor fishing vessels. to MTB to anti-submarine vessel. The book's sec• It is not a book for the casual reader. But for tions are filled with such comments, problems those interested in the why and wherefor of our faced, and not always resolved. Suitable equip• warships' selections and designs it makes for a ment for planned use was always a difficulty: quite fascinating read. Those sailors at sea in builders for complicated engines, gun turrets to these ships often felt that the designers took little withstand long exposure to salt water, radar that cognisance of the needs or even the experiences would fit on small ships, or sets that could be of the final users. Yet time and again in these squeezed into whatever room was still available pages the design team modified their plans to in constricted radio shacks or navigation spaces. meet hard-gained experiences which had been Each class of vessel is described in detail as reported back. One gets the impression that the to estimated requirements, the final design, user problems often were related to the hard facts dimensions, speed, weight, stability measure• that ships were used for purposes, or at least in ments, costs and then modifications proposed and locations, for which they were not designed — made. It is possible to trace developments within uses demanded by the Admiralty's operations each class, and then the more major transforma• division when the planning of many years before tions, such as from Flower Class corvette to had not envisaged those employments. The frigate to Castle class, and to compare these with corvette was a typical case. Planned for coastal the almost ideal sloop design (of which the RCN convoy work with an initial crew of twenty-nine probably wisely acquired none — they were com• (two officers!), they were required, as soon as the plicated to build, and required a more experienced U-boat war developed, to serve in mid-Atlantic, crew than we could provide until late in the war). with crews of fifty, then up to seventy-four or This is an expensive book for its type, but a more. The design team soon appreciated the need valuable addition that should resolve some co• for the extended foc's'le, more spacious bridge, nundrums as to why things were as they were. even a modification in the flare of the bow to meet heavier seas. As technology advanced, so Fraser M. McKee the designers had to shoe-horn in both equipment Markdale, Ontario and operators: advanced and extra asdic sets and "Hedgehog," augmented anti-aircraft fire power, Joel R. Davidson. The Unsinkable Fleet: The rocket stowage, and so forth. They were, in fact, Politics of U.S. Navy Expansion in World War II. very receptive to comments from sea by the users, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996. xii + 233 a heartening realization. pp., photographs, notes, bibliography, index. US There are many snippets of interesting $28.95, Cdn $40.50, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-156-4. details: in the crowded corvettes crew stress Canadian distributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. resulted in a calculated twenty-three per cent lost Catharines, ON. time; in the frigates this was reduced to an esti• mated fifteen per cent. The frigates were origi• The hidden meaning in the title of this important nally to have had turbine engines; when construc• book is the relentlessly expanding US Fleet tion yards were sought it developed that they during World War II and the inability of certain would be largely built by the corvette builders, political forces to arrest its growth - notably the 116 The Northern Mariner

leaders of the US Army, the US Army Air Forces, Davidson faults the government in general and the Office of War Mobilization. Credit (or and the navy in particular for not creating unified blame) belonged entirely to Admiral Ernest J. planning organizations for resource allocation and King, the dynamic commander in chief of that goes so far as to say that more objective leaders Fleet throughout the war whose singular and could have done better — a position with which he dogged determination to keep building overcame seems uncomfortable, and understandably so. the opposition. In this apparently revised disserta• Quantitative yardsticks had been the norm in tion Joel R. Davidson has not only revealed a new building all the world's modern navies from the dimension of that remarkable man's role in the mid-nineteenth century. real victory — over the Axis powers — but in so The only glaring omission in The Unsinkable doing has demonstrated the not always held view Fleet is the aviation component of the US Fleet. that the US Navy excelled in wartime political Aircraft carriers are treated but naval aircraft only and bureaucratic battles. once — in mid-1944. The procurement levels for Although the author endeavored to focus on these were the work of Congressman Carl Vinson the processes by which American leaders deter• and Admiral John H. Towers in 1940-42, and the mined the scale of naval expansion, the archives literature on the subject is ample, including this of bureaucratic agencies that he milked omitted reviewer's biography of Towers. Davidson, personalities and therefore actual account of how however, gives Vinson his due in supporting decisions were made. Thus he has had to infer the King's ship construction programs in 1942 and thought processes and agendas of the individuals again in 1944-45. Indeed, a closer look at Vinson involved. Fortunately, his inferences generally might have led Davidson to the very possible ring true. Particularly revealing is the fact that conclusion that Vinson was the most objective King's army counterpart, General George C. procurement planner of all. Marshall, avoided directly challenging King's expansion program largely to preserve unity on Clark G. Reynolds the strategy and policy making Joint Chiefs of Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina Staff. Within the navy, King resented the fact that a civilian, Undersecretary James V. Forrestal, had Paul Kemp. Liverpool and the Battle of the charge of procurement of ships and the other tools Atlantic 1939-45. Liskeard, Cornwall: Maritime of war, especially when Forrestal tried to econo• Books, 1996. 120 pp., photographs. £9.95, paper; mize on shipbuilding after becoming Secretary in ISBN 0-907771-55-6. April 1944. Their relationship was icy at best. But no one in the US government was able to This is a carefully selected collection of over one wed the sizes of the armed forces to overall hundred photographs, presumably from the strategy, so that the navy's ship expansion was Imperial War Museum in London, mainly of divorced from strategic planning. Nor were any of Royal Naval escort vessels, convoys, merchant the Joint agencies that were created to achieve ships and bomb damage in Liverpool. Each such unity able to overcome the parochialism of photograph is captioned with a brief and informa• their competing army and navy members. The tive explanation. biggest crisis occurred during 1943-44 when it In the longest and most critical battle of appeared that manpower seemed to be inadequate World War II, Britain's resources were strained to for the many new warships (and merchantmen) the limit. The only way it could carry on was with under construction. The army agreed to place a tremendous amounts of material imported by sea cap on its size, but the navy refused to do the from Canada and the United States. In their effort same. King nevertheless got his way by the end to break the supply line, the Germans used ships of 1944 and kept construction programs working and aircraft, but mainly submarines. The British until three weeks before the war ended. In fact, merchant fleet was the largest in the world, during 1945 he and Forrestal came together in consisting of about 4,500 ships, large and small. pressing for new and better ships, not for battle When ships sailed independently, the chances of but to comprise a powerful postwar fleet. In this being torpedoed were greatly intensified. On the they succeeded. other hand, when ships sailed in convoys that Book Reviews 111 were protected by escorts, attacking submarines For any historian or naval enthusiast this almost always faced stiff opposition. Convoys of little book provides a true picture of the life and a maximum of seventy ships protected by naval times of the foremost British port participating in escorts therefore became the pattern. At first the the Battle of the Atlantic. convoys were escorted by a pair of destroyers a few hundred miles into the Atlantic. The destroy• L.B.Jenson ers then picked up a UK-bound convoy and Queensland, Nova Scotia escorted it back to port. However, it soon became apparent that escorts were required for the whole Timothy D. Dubé (comp.). Canada At War 1939- of the Atlantic passage. 1945; A Survey of Archival Holdings of the In early 1941 a Western Approaches Com• Second World War at the National Archives of mand Center was established in Liverpool in a Canada. Waterloo, ON: The Laurier Centre for new headquarters located in a heavily protected Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, 1996 waterfront basement under Derby House. Here [Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario escort commanders, convoy commodores and N2L 3C5]. 52 pp., photographs, illustrations. $6 ships' masters, all based in the same port, got to (+ $2 s&h), paper; ISBN 0-9697955-6-4. know each other. As the war progressed more escorts, mainly Timothy Dubé and his collaborators at the Na• corvettes and frigates, became available and tional Archives have produced a worthy successor hunter/killer groups of sloops and corvettes were to Jerry O'Brien and Glenn Wright's excellent formed to seek out submarines on passage or Sources for the Study of the Second World War forming up for wolf pack attacks. Because they (Public Archives of Canada, 1979). were not directly concerned with the safe and Like O'Brien and Wright's work, the present timely arrival of convoys, hunter/killers were free survey is organized according to the record to take up the chase of U-boats as they were groups the National Archives has created for detected and to hunt them to exhaustion without government departments and agencies. Beginning being confined by time. There are excellent with Record Group 2, the Privy Council Office, photographs of Captain Walker and his successful there are descriptions of thirty-six record groups, ships as well as other ships which also became ending with RG 145, the Canada Labour Rela• noted U-boat killers. In contrast to these groups, tions Board. The accounts vary in length from a whose role it was to seek and destroy the enemy, single paragraph for agencies, like the Canada the chief duty of Canadian escort groups was to Relations Board, that had only one or two very drive and keep U-boats away from the convoy; specific functions in the war effort, to over twenty they would try to sink attacking submarines only pages for the Department of National Defence when the opportunity presented itself. Most times (RG 24). they were denied a good hunt, having to hurry The important contribution of the present back to cover their own protective area near the work is that it goes well beyond the official convoy. papers in each group. The bulk of each entry is a The main western departure point for con• description of personal papers, held by the Manu• voys was Halifax, Nova Scotia while Liverpool script Division of the archives, of participants in became the major eastern terminal with warships the activities of the particular department or based at Gladstone Dock. At Birkenhead nearby, agency. There are equally full references to the the Canadian destroyers and corvettes first used relevant photographs, art, audio tapes, maps, Greenock as their eastern terminal. In 1941 a plans and films in the 'sectors' of the archives splendid safe base for Atlantic escort vessels was that specialize in these media. Although one has established in Londonderry in Northern Ireland. access to the finding aids for all of the various Ship repair facilities in Belfast were used by subdivisions of the archives in the reference room Canadian ships from time to time. Liverpool, at the main building, it takes considerable knowl• within German bomber range, was very heavily edge to know where to begin to look among the damaged and photographs of the damage appear diverse collections. The present publication goes in this book. far in supplying that knowledge. Such a tool is 118 The Northern Mariner especially useful in these times when government some reason, the Captain countermanded this, and restraint and the proliferation of records have so Ottawa sailed on her last operation with the made it essential that researchers are well ground• inadequate set she had. (The full story is told in ed before they make demands on the increasingly TNM/LMNll, No. 2) What if Type 271 had been precious time of archives staff members. fitted? Would Ottawa have detected U-91 - Readers of this journal will not be surprised presumably on the surface as was their habit — at the further evidence that Canadian seamen when encountering the approaching relief de• were less likely than soldiers and other landlub• stroyers? Yogi, I know, says "Yes." bers to keep comprehensive papers. There is Chapters 21 and 22 relate good anti-subma• however a quite rich selection of personal photo• rine actions by two corvettes in the Mediterranean graph collections of naval personnel (pp. 21-2) in early 1943. In the first case, Ville de Québec and, to a lesser extent, concerning shipbuilding, brought a U-boat to the surface with an accurate (p. 34) Other good news is that several collections urgent attack, then sank her by ramming. About of papers and photographs of members of the a week later, Port Arthur, after a good deliberate Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service are now attack, forced the Italian submarine Tritone to the available, (pp. 21-2) as are sources in a variety of surface in obvious difficulties. Helped by some media for war artists who recorded both naval and gunfire from an accompanying escort, she, too, shipbuilding activities, (pp. 22, 34) was sunk. It is worth noting that this period is usually reckoned as one when our Navy's stock Roger Sarty was selling a little low, after some disastrous con• Ottawa, Ontario voys in 1942. In those two particular actions, there was no doubt about the results. There were, Fraser McKee and Robert Darlington. The Cana• however, many other occasions when it was diffi• dian Naval Chronicle 1939-1945. St. Catharines, cult to claim a "kill." Of necessity, certainly from ON: Vanwell Publishing, 1996. x + 272 pp., the aspect of Operational Intelligence, it had to be photographs, tables, glossary, appendices, bibli• a tough analysis — there was no sense just think• ography, indices. $39.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55125- ing that we had one less enemy to cope with. 032-2. Accurate numbers and locations were essential, hence the sometimes niggardly assessments of the This welcome book is a complete record of every day. The authors are persistent in their use of all ship lost and every success against enemy war• references, including interviews with participants ships experienced by the Royal Canadian Navy in in the action and the analysis, to make this point. World War II. I have been looking forward to its Prescott's action over a period of some hours publication for a long time. It must have been in against U-163 west of Spain, confirmed as a "kill" 1994 that Fraser McKee told me that he and Bob through detailed analysis of all records in the Darlington were collecting the material for it. I 1980s, is typical. cheered them on, only guessing at the amount of Some of the actions described here are still research necessary! Well, they did it, did it well, clouded by .uncertainty. Take, for instance, the and have presented it to us pretty much in accor• loss of Athabaskan as described here. Peter A. dance with the definition of a "chronicle" they Dixon offers a different explanation for the give. (Of necessity, though, there is some analysis sinking in an article appearing recently in Cana• and interpretation.) Each chapter and table de• dian Military History V, No. 1. Dixon re-exam• serves its own review, but I shall only pick a few ined the action in the belief that a torpedo fired for special comment. from a British Motor Torpedo Boat might have Chapter 19, describing the sinking of Ottawa caused the second, and critical, explosion. by U-91, is a great story of action, bravery, survi• For sheer bravery and seamanship, Chapter val, humour, and a very big "what if?" CNRS 65 is significant. Quite apart from all other con• member Yogi Jenson, then a Sub-Lieutenant and siderations, surely the "bulk canallers" and the the ship's gunnery officer, has told how the shore "bulk lakers" did not really belong on the North staff intended, when they were last in Londonder• Atlantic. The survivors of the Lady Hawkins — ry, to fit Type 271 radar before she sailed. For seventy-six of them in one boat under the Chief Book Reviews 119

Officer - hung on for five days in January 1942, miles of hostile ocean and destroyed some 3,000 until picked up. Then there was the epic voyage allied merchant ships carrying approximately 28 of the survivors from Point Pleasant Park, sunk million tons of food, petroleum, equipment and in early 1945 — three boats with forty-two souls war supplies as well as 158 Allied naval ships, and 375 miles later - who arrived off the Kalahari some 800 German U-boats. The lives of 45,000 coast of southwest Africa before they were res• Allied merchant and naval seamen were lost, as cued. As we all know, it has been an uphill strug• were 32,000 men of the Kriegsmarine — a total gle for our merchant mariners to gain proper greater than all other naval battles combined in recognition; these stories help to achieve this. the past 500 years. This book is attractively written, well-illus• Postwar Casualty by Doug Fraser, himself trated and full of facts. There is useful informa• an officer in the Allied merchant navy, maritime tion about post-war service or disposal of all the historian and peacetime journalist, tells the com• ships. I like the headings of the chapters, each an pelling story of the role Canada's merchant navy appropriate quotation or aphorism. The humour played in that battle. Using available source of the day is there, too, all of which makes the material, personal recollections and reminis• book a very good read. Still, I cannot help "pick• cences, Postwar Casualty is arranged into twelve ing" a few "nits"! For instance, my gunnery train• comprehensive sections that cover major aspects ing tells me that the order to fire starshell has of Canada's wartime merchant navy: how the always been "Illuminate," not "Ignite." (p. 152) I fleet was established; the emergency shipbuilding also hope that the crew of Liverpool Packet program; the demand for and training of seamen; pulled to Cape Sable Island, and not Sable Island, and the convoy system. Fraser then carries his as there is a considerable difference in distance, account into the post-war period, explaining how (p. 236) Finally, with reference to p. 252, Stephen that merchant marine became a casualty of post• Roskill states in The War at Sea, I, p. 34 that war policies, and most importantly, the shameful ASDIC is an acronym for "Anti-Submarine story of the sailors who had risked their lives at Detection Investigation Committee" and that it sea only to be neglected in the fifty years that dates from 1917. I'll go with this. followed by a forgetful country, with special Enough! This is a good book, both as a refer• emphasis on Canada's collective indifference to ence and as a remembrance. Like so many others, the shipping industry in general and merchant I have been aware of most of this history, person• seamen in particular. The result is an engaging ally or otherwise, for more than fifty years. The book that is certain to rekindle the memories of Canadian Naval Chronicle, brings it all together. those who served, even as it awakens the interest of students of our maritime heritage. Along the Ian A. Macpherson way he gives attention to some of the little known Newport, Nova Scotia activities of wartime sailing, like repairing tele• graphic cable in dangerously exposed locations at Doug Fraser. Postwar Casualty, Canada s Mer• sea. The text is supported by photographs which chant Navy. Lawrencetown Beach, NS: Potters- include welWaiown Canadian merchant ships that field Press, 1997. 154 pp, photographs. $16.95, served with distinction, among them the CNS paper, ISBN 1-895900-07-7. Order from Nimbus 'Lady' boats, 'Park' ships and war-damaged mer• Publishing, Halifax. chant ships, as well as the wartime Halifax-based Western Union cableship, Cyrus Field. The bitter fights had no names, only convoy Fraser's treatment of the merchant marine's designations and numbers marked on a chart. postwar experience could easily cause his book to Some historians refer to them collectively as the become a polemic. Yet his research is both factual "Battles of the Convoys." The phrase "Battle of and broad. Moreover, while he relives some of his the Atlantic" was first given public expression by own experiences, Fraser also draws on his long Sir Winston Churchill. It was an unremitting career as a journalist and editor in radio and battle, fought for nearly six continuous years television. His post-retirement career as political without intermission, period of recovery, or advisor and speech writer provides insight into moments free from danger. It extended over 2,000 Canada's consistently negative policies on the 120 The Northern Mariner merchant marine, which he presents as the out• fall of 1943 these convoys were operating like a growth of an insular society and a post-war tram line with "leavers" and "joiners" at each withdrawal from the womb of colonial security. major port as the convoys sailed eastward. This His observations on political and public attitudes, volume of traffic did not escape the notice of the including the shadowy world of political conniv• German High Command, who attacked them in ance as practised by Prime Minister Mackenzie the Mediterranean with aircraft and U-boats. King, reveal what he sees as the narrow vision of Forgotten Tragedy covers the story of one of a nation in which decisions are conveniently post• these convoys — KMF-26 — and in particular a poned and staff advisors move reluctantly out of ship in the convoy, HMT Rohna, carrying US the nineteenth century. The picture of the postwar Army personnel to India from Iran. Rohna, of years and the dismantling of a merchant marine 8,602 GRT, had been built in 1926 for the British service which suffered a casualty rate more than India Steam Navigation for use on the Singapore- twice that of the RCN, is not a pretty one. Can• Penang-Madras run, with accommodation for ada's merchant marine veterans became the post• sixty passengers. At the outbreak of World War war pariahs of an ungrateful nation. II she was requisitioned by the Admiralty for use All this makes Postwar Casualty an inesti• as a troopship. On 25 November 1943, Rohna mable contribution to a branch of maritime his• sailed from Iran with 2,000 American troops tory that should be made available for distribution aboard and joined convoy KMF-26 at sea bound in libraries, universities and high schools for the for India. The following day the convoy was benefit of future generations. attacked fifteen miles northeast of Bougie by thirty German HE-177 aircraft from 11/KG 40 R.F. Latimer with Henschel HS-293 glider bombs and nine Dartmouth, Nova Scotia torpedo-carrying aircraft. One of the glider bombs hit Rohna about fifteen feet above the waterline Carlton Jackson. Forgotten Tragedy: The Sinking on her port side, flooding the engine room and ofHMTRohna. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, starting a fire. The ship remained afloat for less 1996. xvii + 207 pp., figures, photographs, illus• than one hour, and as she settled by her stern, the trations, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. bolts holding her engines and boilers sheared off, US $27.95, Cdn $38.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750- allowing them to crash through the ship's side. 402-4. Canadian distributor, Vanwell Publishing, Rafts were launched and only her starboard St. Catharines, ON. lifeboats could be lowered. Many were over• loaded and swamped. A total of 1,015 soldiers As its title implies, this book tells the story of the were lost, together with 147 of the ship's crew sinking of HMT (His Majesty's Trooper) Rohna, and gunners. In terms of American servicemen which resulted in the death of over a thousand US lost, it was a tragedy surpassed only by the 1,103 soldiers, the worst incident involving a ship killed aboard USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. transporting American troops in World War II. Carlton Jackson describes the loss of the ship Following the Allied invasion of North and the rescue and experiences of the survivors. Africa in November 1942, the Royal Navy intro• It is a compelling read, particularly the epilogue duced a series of Military Convoys from the which recounts the lives of the survivors during Clyde to Gibraltar designated KMS (slow) and the remainder of the war. However, while the data KMF (fast) to provide reinforcements and sup• on the US serviceman and German fliers involved plies for this war theatre. These convoys were in the incident is very well researched, the naval/ later extended eastward into the Mediterranean as merchant ship aspect is skimpy and contains a Allied forces captured more enemy-held territory. number of errors. For example, twelve ships are With the invasion of southern Italy in September incorrectly identified as to type. Thus, the Dutch 1943, the terminus was extended eastward to passenger liner Marnix Van St.Aldegonde is iden• Alexandria, including ships for onward routing to tified as a destroyer while the destroyer HMS India. This resulted in a far more effective use of Winchelsea is identified as a battleship. Nor is the mercantile tonnage as ships no longer had to use author correct in stating in the introduction that the Cape route to the Middle and Far East. By the "no history of World War II" mentions the Rohna Book Reviews 121 tragedy. This may be true of American books, but corded at the "World War II Black Naval Veter• the loss is written up in The War at Sea (III, Pt. 1, ans of Great Lakes celebrations of the 50th Anni• p. 209), the Official British Naval History of versary of Admissions of African-Americans into World War II by Captain S.W. Roskill. General Service of the US Navy on 20th June 1992." These accounts revealed the strength and John K. Burgess courage these men had to show in the face of Calgary, Alberta outright discrimination and of the degrading, humiliating conditions they were made to endure. James S. Peters, II. The Saga of Black Navy The bulk of the book, a hundred pages, is Veterans of World War II: An American Triumph. devoted to a series of descriptions, mostly in San Francisco: International Scholars Publica• appendix form, which range from an account of tions, 1996. 160 pp., illustrations, index. US how the Black World War II Naval Veterans of $24.95, cloth; ISBN 1-57309-122-7; US $12.95, the Great Lakes organized themselves in Septem• paper; 1-57309-123-5. ber 1982, to a series of research documents on such matters as the Special Training Program at Dr. James S. Peters II writes of the experiences of Great Lakes for 1945, to a transcript of the Min• black US Navy veterans who served during utes of the Reunion of Band Members of Great World War II on land, sea and ammunition de• Lakes Training Center in the spring of 1973. As pots. He places the experiences of individuals well there is an Appendix on the veteran's consti• within the larger historic contexts of segregation tution, correspondence and press releases. and discrimination generally in the Navy. He also Obviously, the material in these appendices outlines his own account of his experiences in the is of historic worth in and of itself, but such Navy, where he was a psychologist-teacher at material is usually the primary evidence on which Great Lakes Navy Training Center, and places a scholar bases his or her analysis. To devote so them alongside those of other black men who much space to such material detracts, I feel, from served at the same time as he did. the power of the actual testimony. There is a He shows that until 1942 African-Americans tension, therefore, in the book between the oral could only serve as mess-attendants and stewards, history, the memoir and the source material which but after the opening of general service, they is never adequately resolved. could be trained to other posts, including signal• men, radio mechanics and teachers, though not as Chris Howard Bailey commissioned officers. The route to higher Portsmouth, Hampshire advancement, he shows, was blocked: blacks were able to become Petty Officers but even then Edward C. Ray mer. Descent Into Darkness: Pearl that was difficult. It was not their lack of educa• Harbor, 1941. A Navy Diver s Memoir. Novato, tional qualifications or ability that kept them back CA: Presidio Press, 1996. 214 pp., photographs. but racial discrimination. Not until after the war US $21.95, cloth; ISBN 0-89141-589-0. Distrib• was total integration in the military achieved; uted in Canada by National Book Network, those who, like Dr. Peters, pioneered in the Navy Toronto, ON. during World War II helped bring it about. Much of the book concentrates on recording In the immediate aftermath of the Japanese attack his account of how in some focused way he and at Pearl Harbor, the US Navy rushed a team of his fellow black Naval Veterans, who served at hard hat divers to Hawaii. Their job was to assist Great Lakes, witnessed and participated in this in the massive salvage of the sunken battlefleet phenomenon — how, for instance, he personally and get as many ships as possible into the war. suffered from blatant discrimination, by meeting The divers, flown in from San Diego, arrived to all the publicized requirements for specialist find flames and smoke still rising from Battleship ranking as a Welfare Worker, assistant to the Row and a thick coating of bunker oil floating in Chaplain, for example, but being denied it. He the harbour, coating everything. does this by briefly outlining his experience and Edward Raymer was the lead diver of the juxtaposing it with excerpts from accounts re• group. "None of us second-class divers could be 122 The Northern Mariner considered experienced, since our training had dore Mason's Battleship Sailor (NIP, 1982) and been minimal, and we had little or no practical Alvin Kernan's Crossing the Line (NIP, 1994) as experience. Our biggest achievements were our unvarnished views from the ranks of the enlisted. new-found abilities to burn and weld underwa• Despite the title, Descent into Darkness also ter." (p. 11) In short order, Raymer and his ship• includes an account of Raymer's service in the mates gained more practical experience than they South Pacific as a salvage diver at Tongatabu, ever could have imagined. Tulagi and Guadalcanal. Raymer's activities Until now, the only detailed account of the provide an interesting side note to the campaigns salvage dives and activities at Pearl was Vice waged there, including repair dives on the battle Admiral Homer N. Wallin's Pearl Harbor: Why, damaged USS Portland and what it was like How, Fleet Salvage and Final Appraisal (US pulling survivors and the dead from the bloody Navy History Division), Raymer's book is an waters of Iron Bottom Sound. excellent complement to Wallin's, and any Descent Into Darkness is illustrated with a scholar interested in the Pearl Harbor story, as selection of photographs showing the battle- well as salvage diving or the Pacific War should damaged ships at Pearl, the salvage operations, buy Descent into Darkness. Those interested in and Raymer and his mates. Because of wartime the fate of USS Arizona will also be interested in restrictions, and poor visibility — or none — there the book, as it offers a fairly detailed sense of are no images of the divers at work, or what they what the Navy's divers saw and encountered, and saw at Pearl Harbor. For underwater imagery, those impressions and facts have never before Raymer used a detailed drawing of the sunken achieved wide distribution. Given the gruesome Arizona done by the US National Park Service's nature of the dives, it was probably wise that Submerged Cultural Resources Unit, and for read• Raymer waited more than fifty years before ers interested in more of the same, Daniel publishing his reminiscences. Lenihan's edited Submerged Cultural Resources In a compelling, first-person narrative, the Study: USS Arizona Memorial/Pearl Harbor author recounts his adventures in the darkness of National Historical Landmark (National Park overturned and half-sunk battleships, including Service) is recommended. detailed accounts of dives on USS Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Oklahoma, California, and West Vir• James P. Delgado ginia. He tells of the difficulties of working in Vancouver, British Columbia pitch black, oily compartments with decaying bodies floating above his head, of the mistakes Peter C. Smith. The Battle of Midway: The Battle made, of moments of heroism, occasional panic, That Turned the Tide of the Pacific War. Rev. and fortitude. He does paraphrase conversations ed.; Staplehurst, Kent: Spellmount, 1996. 192 pp., he had at the time, reconstructing them with the map, photographs, figures, appendices, bibliogra• aid of his "memory and the personal reminis• phy, index. £18.95, cloth; ISBN 1-873376-53-7. cences of a few surviving members of our old Distributed in North America by Howell Press, diving crew." (p. xiiii) The conversations should Charlottesville, VA. therefore be read with a note of caution, and for flavour only; as Raymer himself notes, "the The Battle of Midway, one of the most decisive dialogue reflects the language the actual charac• engagements in history, has not lacked for cover• ters would have used under the circumstances.... age. Dozens of participants, biographers, and [and]...portrays their personalities accurately." historians have assessed virtually every aspect of Raymer also recounts his adventures ashore the conflict. That either side could have emerged with his buddies, drinking, chasing women, victorious is shown with clarity in this account. occasionally catching them, and outfoxing offi• The principal strengths of this work are its cers. It is an honest account of young men at war, concise narrative treatment of the battle and its and off-colour tales notwithstanding, should be concluding chapter in which Smith analyzes the read for that content, too, lest too sanitized a factors that "weighed in the balance which finally version of the war experience ever be perpetu• tipped toward Fletcher and Spruance and away ated. In this fashion Raymer's book joins Theo• from Yamamoto and Nagumo." (p. 167) Smith Book Reviews 123 argues convincingly that American planning was of Smith's assessments. When the first edition of superior to that of the Japanese because Admiral this work appeared in 1976, it received little Yamamoto's plans depended on the United States attention from historians on either side of the reacting as anticipated, while American plans Atlantic. One hopes this edition will gain more. were far more flexible and left initiative to the commanders on the scene. He believes that James C. Bradford Yamamoto's overall ploy of attacking Midway to College Station, Texas lure the remaining US fleet into a climatic battle was sound. Had Japan succeeded the entire Yuriy Fedorovich Strekhnin; trans. James F. Pacific might well have fallen to her. Gebhardt. Commandos from the Sea: Soviet Where Yamamoto failed was in his organiza• Naval Spetsnaz in World War II. Annapolis: tion of the Japanese task forces sent against Naval Institute Press, 1996. xviii + 264 pp., maps, Midway. He separated them so widely that it was notes. US $28.95, Cdn $40.50, cloth; ISBN 1- impossible for them to support each other. Smith 55750-832-1. Canadian distributor, Vanwell Pub• correctly points out that "the battle was ultimately lishing, St. Catharines, ON. decided by three American carriers opposed by four Japanese carriers, and yet Japan had eight Sea-borne "Special Forces" is a term with a cer• carriers deployed in the operation." (p. 169) A tain mystique about it. To most of us in the West, "tragic under-estimation" of the American intelli• it conjures images of superbly-trained American gence system led Yamamoto to send four carriers SEALS or British Commandos. We know very ahead of his other forces and place them in a little about similar amphibious units of other position from which only luck could extradite countries operating in World War II. So it is all them. In the ensuing battle luck favoured neither the more interesting to read Yuriy Strekhnin's side. Nor did either the Japanese or the Americans account of the Soviet Navy's Danube Reconnais• display more courage or heroism. What the sance Detachment. This absorbing book owes a Americans had in their favour, besides signal good deal to James Gebhardt, its translator, who intelligence that tipped them off to Japan's target, also added numerous informative chapter notes was radar. American aircraft, especially fighters, not found in the original Russian version. Told in were inferior to Japanese Zeros, but radar gave spare undramatic prose, it describes gallant raids Americans "those vital minutes of extra warning by Soviet naval infantry behind German lines, against incoming Japanese air strikes that was conducting partisan warfare, battling the SS, and denied to the Japanese. It made all the difference." sabotaging enemy transport. (p. 171) The second American advantage was Dramatic as it is to read of ceaseless combat, leadership. Smith vindicates both Frank Jack their main role was intelligence-gathering; to Fletcher and Raymond Spruance against their uncover Nazi intentions ahead of time, and find critiques arguing that both made essentially the weak points in enemy forces. Strekhnin uses correct decisions based on shrewd judgments interviews and personal accounts of veterans to concerning the enemy. These stand in stark convey how the Detachment carried out hazard• contrast to the "dazed rumblings" of Chuichi ous missions. Those missions were assigned by Nagumo and the "muddled orders" issued by the Black Sea Fleet staff because, though they Yamamoto during the battle. He calls Midway the often fought far from bodies of water, the job of battle that showed the Japanese could be stopped these sailor scouts was to help Russian ships and argues that it marked the coming of age for wage war more effectively. the US Navy. One might say the same things Mariners will be interested in learning what about the Battle of the Coral Sea a month earlier. manner of vessels were allocated to this inland Smith lists no primary sources and only naval duty. When it entered the Danube River twenty-three secondary sources in his bibliogra• estuary, the Danube Flotilla consisted of thirty-six phy. There are no notes to guide readers. Instead, armoured cutters, twelve mortar boats, twenty- he depends on his crisp prose and the force of his two minesweepers, and fifteen rubber boats, as arguments to support his judgments. Many spe• well as twenty smaller craft. The ships were cialists will undoubtedly take issue with several manned by naval personnel, and supported a 124 772e Northern Mariner strong combined force of artillery units, the 369th that of an amphibious landing. Not only must its Separate Naval Infantry Battalion, and the Recon• land, air and sea elements be well coordinated, naissance Detachment. the invading force must also take into account the In passing, this book indicates how many vagaries of weather and tides, not to mention the naval actions must have been fought on the fact that as its men and machines wade ashore, Eastern Front, both between opposing ships and they will likely come under heavy attack from an in support of land forces. They took place mainly armed opposition lurking on or very near the on rivers, where Soviet armoured cutters often beach. Despite all of these problems, the twenti• formed the spearhead for advancing army troops. eth century has witnessed numerous successful However, they could not have steamed success• landings, including the spectacularly successful fully into enemy occupied waters without their Allied invasion of France in June 1944, the way being cleared first by the reconnaissance largest amphibious operation in history and one commandos, through providing intelligence or that sealed the fate of Hitler's Germany. As defeating opponents. Often, the scouts would Theodore Gatchel notes in his preface, this puzzle capture a German prisoner with the intention of — the claim that amphibious landings were so taking him back to headquarters for interrogation, difficult versus the evidence that they were so then find themselves fighting for their lives as SS often triumphant — is what prompted him to study units came in pursuit. The matter-of-fact language the defender's point of view. of veterans' reminiscences emphasizes the horrific Using numerous examples of amphibious circumstances of their adventures — boat han• operations ranging from Gallipoli in 1915 to the dling, night patrols, brutal combat, icy waters, Falklands in 1982, as well as Germany's aban• killing Russian traitors — all with full awareness doned attempt to invade Britain in 1940, Gatchel that their own capture would lead to torture and tries to prove that defending against amphibious death. During many missions, they depended assault is far more difficult than effecting one. greatly on Soviet civilians, who repeatedly risked Attackers have often succeeded, he says, because their lives to help without question. they possessed some crucial advantages over the The narrative follows their battleground from defender: air and sea superiority; the ability to the North Caucasus coastline of the Black Sea to pick the time and location of the landing; the the Crimean peninsula, then into the Danube existence of a specialized amphibious assault River through Hungary and Austria to final doctrine as opposed to an absence of a doctrine to victory in Czechoslovakia. So huge a canvas defend against such attacks; unity of command. might make events hard to follow, were it not for These are good points, but one comes away Strekhnin's recounting of individual stories of feeling that Gatchel has not really proven his participants in the detachment's combat esca• argument. His argument concerning Gallipoli is a pades. The only disappointments are the lack of case in point. That operation, designed by Win• photographs or index, and the inadequacy of the ston Churchill to knock Turkey from the war (in two maps. Still, this is an informative look at the long British tradition of conducting war on some little known fighting sailors. the periphery rather than facing a stronger foe on the continent of Europe), failed to achieve that Sidney Allinson goal. Not only did Turkey not collapse, the Victoria, British Columbia Anglo-French forces that landed at Gallipoli, after months of failing to break out from their beach• Theodore L. Gatchel. At the Water's Edge: De• head, had to withdraw ignominiously after suffer• fending Against the Modern Amphibious Assault. ing more than 250,000 casualties. Yet, Gatchel Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996. xxvi + argues, because the Turks could not defeat the 226 pp., maps, photographs, notes, bibliography, invaders at the water's edge, the campaign dem• index. US $35, Cdn $48.95, cloth; ISBN 1- onstrated Turkish weakness, especially at the 55750-308-7. Canadian distributor, Vanwell command level. Australians and New Zealanders, Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. having lost so many men at Gallipoli for no tactical or strategic gain, might disagree with that For complexity, few military operations can equal conclusion. Yes, the Turks did not defeat the Book Reviews 125 attack at the water's edge, and yes they could not an increasingly large base of documentation. throw their enemies into the sea, but once ashore Now, twenty years and millions of words later, the Anglo-French forces had all they could handle there is a real literature about signals intelligence just to cling to their precarious foothold. They and its effect on World War II, and the time is had no hope of winning. right for a critical bibliography of the field. Additionally, Gatchel makes poor use of Signals Intelligence in World War II: A some events that might have improved his case. Research Guide is an unusually good example of His account of the battle for Guadalcanal is that genre. Myron Smith has written in the field cursory at best, a true shame as the struggle for of intelligence history and he has also read widely that tiny island offers an excellent opportunity to in the literature, even in the more specialised see how two fairly evenly matched foes (at least sources like the journal Cryptologia or the when the campaign began) conducted both offen• "United States Cryptologie History" series pub• sive and defensive amphibious operations. Fur• lished by the National Security Agency's Center thermore, the sad case of the August 1942 landing for Cryptologie History. His introductory essay at Dieppe by a largely Canadian force, a force puts the literature into its own historical context. that was nearly annihilated on the beaches, is The bibliography is especially useful regarding mostly ignored. Admittedly Dieppe was a raid the article literature and is up-to-date in its cover• and not intended to be a permanent landing. Yet age to the end of 1994 (though, curiously, Smith its spectacular failure would seem to offer a mentions the more peripheral works by "Nigel nearly perfect example of what not to do when West" on World War II signals intelligence but one is the attacker, and a textbook example of a not his main publication in the field, "The Sigint near perfect defence. Perhaps most surprising, Secrets"). However, beginning in 1995 many given that Gatchel is an ex-Marine, there is not significant works are overlooked, like Antony nearly enough said about the fascinating develop• Best's Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor, Avoiding ment of Marine amphibious doctrine in the inter• War in East Asia and Carl Boyd's American war period. Theodore Gatchel is correct in saying Command of the Sea Through Carriers, Codes, that the claims that the amphibious landing is the and the Silent Service, among others. Nonethe• most complex form of warfare seem odd given less, this volume will be the standard bibliogra• the record of success such assaults have enjoyed. phy in the field for works published between Unfortunately, I do not think he has managed in 1970-1994, and it compares favourably in quality this book to explain why this has been the case. with other bibliographies of intelligence. If this work has a weakness, it flows from its Galen Roger Perras nature: by definition, any bibliography must seek Calgary, Alberta to be inclusive, and include a host of tangential or minor works, which may hamper as many readers Donal J. Sexton, Jr. (comp.). Signals Intelligence as it helps. In this case, it certainly seems unnec• in World War II: A Research Guide. Bibliogra• essary to include so many general military histo• phies of Battles and Leaders, No. 18; Westport, ries (like John Keegan's Six Armies at Normandy, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. xl + 163 pp., indi• David Fraser's Alanbrooke or Carlo D'este's ces. US $69.50, cloth; ISBN 0-313-28304-4. Decision in Normandy) simply because their author offers a passing opinion on the value of Since 1970, perhaps the greatest development in ULTRA. On the other hand, Smith does avoid the studies of World War II has been the attempt to trap which so often ensnares authors of military uncover the signals intelligence record and to bibliographies — the tendency to include every• incorporate that into the history which it shaped. thing written on a topic without attempting to This process started in sensationalism and ended gauge any of its value. He offers frank and sensi• in scholarship, ie. it became simultaneously more ble comments on the value of the works which he boring and more accurate. It began with a few addresses. This is particularly useful, given the books which made great claims on the basis of number of bad books which litter the field. small evidence and continued with a growing Smith understands that the very issue of the number of monographs and articles written from value of intelligence is problematical and draws 126 The Northern Mariner

particular attention to the methods of scholars the history of ASW in this century in a brief but who have addressed this problem and to writers vivid chapter and then outlines the key character• who have debunked sensationalist claims. He also istics of submarines so that his readers will under• understands the controversies regarding how stand the essential nature of the undersea oppo• intelligence affected specific campaigns and nent. The book then covers the range of consider• draws them to his reader's attention. Smith's ations involved in ASW, starting with the nature section on the battle of the Atlantic, for example, of the ocean itself, then working through the det• notes not merely the many specialist accounts of ection and weapon systems — along with very intelligence but also the works of students of the important supporting organisations such as wide campaign as a whole like Marc Milner and David area surveillance systems — to the point where the Syrett, who downplay claims for the influence of way these interrelated warfare systems and skills intelligence on those events, though in the pro• operate together can be outlined. The final chap• cess he also conflates the somewhat different ter discusses what the future holds for ASW. views of these authors. Because of Smith's Those looking for simple solutions to the breadth of research, his grasp of the historical and problems of ASW will be disappointed here. scholarly context and his willingness to call Gardner does not provide a cookbook full of specific works bad or outdated, this bibliography ASW solutions. Instead, he approaches the prob• will prove valuable to any neophyte in the field lem in a general way and points out broad ap• and useful even to old hands. proaches that have proven successful in the past while noting that no solution is likely to be per• John Ferris manent because of the dynamic nature of the Calgary, Alberta problem. He also couches his language in a frustratingly qualified way, rarely giving absolute W.J.R. Gardner. Anti-Submarine Warfare. "Bras- statements about what is and is not effective. He sey's Sea Power: Naval Vessels, Weapon Systems notes that advances in detection technology may and Technology" series; London: Brassey's, 1996. open the way to easier detection of submarines, xiii + 160 pp., photographs, illustrations, figures, but then observes that previous advances in tables, further reading, index. £25, paper; ISBN detection technology have been matched by 1-85753-120-5. Canadian distributor, Vanwell improvements in submarine design. This is a wise Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. approach that may be frustrating, but is entirely reflective of naval warfare as it really is, as op• This is the eleventh of a planned twelve-volume posed to how pundits would prefer it to be. series aimed at those with a basic knowledge and On the whole Gardner achieves the aim of interest in sea power. It is therefore written in the series, which is to provide a comprehensive simple, but not simplistic, language. Experts are yet easy-to-grasp introduction to an important unlikely to find much new here, and laymen may aspect of sea power. The pictures and illustrations be deterred by the complexity of the subject. are well chosen to illustrate the various descrip• These caveats aside, this is a useful and well- tions and subjects discussed. The book is not written introduction to the myriad complexities referenced, but general indications of where associated with anti-submarine warfare (ASW). material is derived from is occasionally given. Submarines have left an indelible mark on There is no doubt of the author's expert knowl• naval warfare in the twentieth century, and dedi• edge, but on the other hand there are times when cating an entire volume in this series to the coun• references might have been useful. The suggested tering of one type of vessel alone is indicative of reading is a short list, but does outline the most that impact. While narrowing the focus to one useful volumes available today. In short, this type of warship may seem excessive in one book is exactly as described by the publisher, a respect, the range of considerations involved in useful quality that should be encouraged. combatting submarines are considerable. Gardner, an ex-Royal Naval officer, brings D.M. McLean his comprehensive practical and theoretical know• Orleans, Ontario ledge to bear in this volume. His book sketches Book Reviews 127

Ron Barrie and Ken Macpherson. Cadillac of depth sonar, helicopter handling equipment, data Destroyers: HMCS St. Laurent and Her Succes• processing systems and CANTASS. The first sors. St. Catharines, ON: Vanwell Publishing, seven St. Laurents, originally designed for mass 1996. vii + 104 pp., photographs, tables, appendi• production in an emergency, eventually became ces, bibliography, index. $29.95, cloth; ISBN 1- unique in NATO navies because of their longev• 55125-036-5. ity in service, some for almost four decades. These ships had such long operational lives This welcome study, co-authored by Ron Barrie because of extensive refits and meticulous main• of the Coast Guard, uses the same format as Ken tenance. The true dollar cost of keeping them in Macpherson's books on wartime Canadian de• service so long (because successive governments stroyers, frigates, and minesweepers. It carries the were unwilling to embark on new ship programs) story forward, describing not only the twenty would make uncomfortable analysis and reading. ships of the three classes based on the St. Laurent The Avro Arrow continues to excite national design but also the four gas turbine "Tribals" and interest because it had the potential to out-per• the twelve "City"-class patrol frigates. form fighters being produced by other countries. Outstanding photographs have always been In their own way the St. Laurents were as innova• a hallmark of Macpherson's books and there are tive and outstanding a warship as the Arrow was many good ones here. The preface promises that an interceptor. Yet the "Cadillacs" do not stir the alterations to ships due to major modifications same emotions across Canada, perhaps because will be shown and in most cases this is valid. their program went on to completion and the There is a short description of the genesis of each ships saw many years of hard service. The Resti- major class and a brief history of every ship. gouche, Mackenzie, and Annapolis classes were These try to include highlights and feature some all improvements on their predecessors. The collisions and groundings. The DELEX program Mackenzies were never significantly modified which enabled the already venerable family of St. because funds were not available but their sisters Laurent and derivative classes to continue operat• — the St. Laurents and the other classes — all had ing until the City-class frigate program yielded their operational capabilities enhanced. results (fourteen years from cabinet decision to The Tribals and City-class patrol frigates first ship in service!) is also described. The au• have also been successful designs, comparing thors note that published material on post-war favourably with warships produced for other ships is "often skimpy." Although their bibliogra• navies. They too have taken many innovative phy is thin and does not include items like RCN Canadian systems to sea and arguably are more In Retrospect and RCN In Transition (both of capable for their designed tasks because tech• which have useful material on the origins of the nological advances have resulted in sensors and St. Laurents and Tribals) they have gathered an weapons far more capable than those that were impressive amount of detail on individual ships. available for the "Cadillacs." Another Macpherson hallmark is the provision of There are a few errors. The caption under a useful tables and lists. Cadillac of Destroyers picture of aaASROC launcher (p.13) places it in delivers, with appendices listing commanding the wrong class of ship. A 57mm gun in a City- officers, major refits/conversions and participa• class frigate (p. 14) is incorrectly identified as a 5- tion in UN actions in the Adriatic and off Haiti. inch mounting. "Nixie" is described as a "torpedo The design for St. Laurent, done in 1947-48 system" rather than as a torpedo decoy device, by Captain Rowland Baker and his team, marked (p.69) There are a few errors in spellings and a technological "coming of age" for the Canadian dates in the extensive lists of commanding offi• Navy. The class were instantly dubbed "Cadil• cers. As for omissions, it is unfortunate that lacs" by their sailors because of the contrast with Athabaskan and Terra Nova are not shown in the World War II-era destroyers to which they their Persian Gulf configuration. were accustomed. The distinctive new destroyer Cadillac of Destroyers is a pleasing record of escorts, the first warships designed entirely in this post-war destroyers and frigates built in Canada. country, were later equipped with other innova• The foreword is by Rear Admiral Timbrell, tive systems developed in Canada, like variable CMM, DSC, St. Laurent's first commanding 128 The Northern Mariner officer. Because the pictures appear to have been of actions that gave a final fillip of the imagina• scanned for publication, not reproduced from tion to that disappearing breed, the true "Gunnery photoplates, they lack the clarity and impact of Officer." No one who has read accounts of the those in Macpherson's River Class Destroyers. Korean War (and yes, notwithstanding Alexan• Nevertheless, Vanwell has produced another der's strictures, they do exist — and very good attractive volume complete with striking pictures ones, too, though from the Canadian standpoint) and much detailed and useful information. can escape the fact that this was a shoot-'em-up battle of the gunboat diplomacy kind, at least Jan Drent from a naval standpoint. In many ways the war in Victoria, British Columbia Korea was a throwback to the sort of scrap the Canadian naval staff had been longing to fight, James Edwin Alexander. Inchon to Wonsan: where guns were arbiter. Indeed, the treasured From the Deck of a Destroyer in the Korean War. Canadian Tribal-class ships were in their element Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996. xv + 228 there, and reigned supreme as "trainbusters." Not pp., maps, photographs, notes, glossary, index. a hint of this, however, appears in this volume. US $29.95, Cdn $41.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750- This is particularly poignant at this instant as 022-3. Canadian distributor, Vanwell Publishing, this review is being written, for I have before me St. Catharines, ON. the announcement of the death of Read Admiral Jeffrey Vanstone Brock, one of the more progres• This book is an example of a recent trend in sive and successful officers in any navy during writing history which I have seen called "creative the Korean War. It was he who led operations at non-fiction." The author makes no bones of this Inchon, the expedition with which the exploits of fact, cheerfully admitting that it is a pastiche of the mythical USS John J. Borland begin. I also destroyers' experiences, as delineated in their have in front of me Marc Milner's two volumes logbooks, done up as though one ship had been on the RCN and the long Battle of the Atlantic front and centre during the operations. There is during World War II, and which remind us of the even a valuable Canadian prize for such a genre, privations of those who served in that war. Re• if my memory is correct. As an historical process gardless of the discomfort of warships in the it is not one that catches my fancy; instead of 1950s, they were nothing like those who served telling a story "like it was," it gives a false im• in corvettes and their equivalent. Neither did the pression of the times and gives dangerous scope Korean conflict match the ferocity of the Battle of for an author's own biases or preferences to the Atlantic, where submarines represented a intrude. It also tends to downplay the long peri• large part of the menace to warships. On the other ods of utter boredom that most warship crews hand, given that the Korean War probably im• endured between engagements. pressed upon large-ship navies the possibilities of Furthermore, the title of the book should pro• mine warfare, the book is helpful, although that bably be revised to read "from the deck of an story should be told from the point-of-view of American destroyer in the Korean War," for its whose doing the sweeping. experiences are totally of the US Navy. Distress• Otherwise, to me the only value to me was ingly, from a Canadian standpoint, there is not the the way in which Alexander criticized General slightest indication that the RCN participated in MacArthur, who receives short shrift in the book, that far-off conflict. Given that the author be• an interesting feature. All in all, however, Canadi• moans the anonymity of the Korean War, it is a ans would do well to save their book-buying shame that in his attempt to redress the balance he budget for a Canadian book, and perhaps the best did not write a more balanced version himself. is still Boutilier's The RCN in Retrospect 1910- After all, the Korean War was a truly United 1968 (UBC Press, 1981), where can be found an Nations matter, and it was possibly the last time account by a Canadian participant of "The De• that there was a reasonable balance between stroyers' War in Korea, 1952-53." American forces employed and those of other countries, particularly the Commonwealth, Kenneth S. Mackenzie Alexander describes in some detail the sort Salt Spring Island, British Columbia Book Reviews 129

Don Sheppard. Bluewater Sailor: The Memoirs of of a Soviet nuclear submarine that is shadowing a Destroyer Officer. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1996. his destroyer's carrier task group. Good stuff. But xi + 334 pp., photographs. US $24.95, cloth; Sheppard then describes how he boards a US ISBN 0-89141-554-8. Navy sub during a training exercise and leads it in a successful attack against the same carrier task For this reviewer, naval memoirs fall into two group. Then, he returns to Henshaw and leads the general categories. First are those that give in• task group in a successful attack against the US sights into events of the past; ones that take the Navy sub! It is not that Sheppard should not be reader beyond documents, beyond standard taken seriously — the fact that he rose to the rank accounts, beyond the obvious to provide impor• of Commander and captain of his own destroyer tant first-hand knowledge of events and personali• as a mustang is testament to a fine career — it is ties — in other words memoirs that serve as good just that he appears too good to be true. While history. Second are those that are just a good this detracts from his memoirs being good his• read. They may not blaze new trails or provide tory, it in no way takes away from the fact that, dramatic insights but they serve as pleasant like a good sea story, it is just plain entertaining. diversions of the maritime kind — "brain candy" And that makes it worthwhile reading. for the armchair matelot if you will. Bluewater Sailor is definitely of the latter Michael Whitby category. And that is no put down. Commander Almonte, Ontario Don Sheppard's rich, salty account of his service in US Navy destroyers is a wonderfully entertain• Martin S. Navias and E.R. Hooton. Tanker Wars: ing sea yarn. By utilizing a fair degree of artistic The Assault on Merchant Shipping during the licence, Sheppard condenses his experiences from Iran-Iraq Crisis 1980-1988. London and New a long career in destroyers into the twenty-four- York: LB. Tauris, 1996. xi + 244 pp., maps, month period in the late 1950s when he served as tables, appendices, notes, indices. US $110, cloth; Electrical Officer and Engineering Officer in USS ISBN 1-86064-032-X. Distributed in North Henshaw (the names of the ship and individuals America by St. Martin's Press, New York. have been changed to protect the innocent). The book opens with Sheppard joining the In the century since Alfred Thayer Mahan first ship. He quickly makes a name for himself by put pen to paper, naval strategists have attempted turning his department around but that is just the to codify the elements of maritime warfare. With first of a series of challenges in which Sheppard, the disappearance of superpower confrontation, a mustang commissioned from the ranks, fights to and in its place economic factors driving so many win the respect of his fellow officers, many of other facets of modern life, perhaps it is time to whom are snooty academy men, and to overcome re-visit the simple imperative of our capitalist his own insecurity. He ultimately wins the battles system, to keep the sea lanes open for free trade. within and without, yet his accounts of the vari• The essence of this already had been summed up ous hurdles he overcomes are illustrative of more in the naval prayer: "that [the Fleet in which we than the human condition as it applies to the US serve] may be... a security for such as pass on the Navy destroyer service during that period. By seas upon their lawful occasions." describing the operations and routines of a de• As those immortal words infer, this concept stroyer with the Pacific Fleet during that period, is nothing new, reflecting as they do the limited, Bluewater Sailor serves as a useful primer on economic expansion objectives which character• naval operations and shipboard life at the time. ized the centuries-old maritime struggles between Under normal circumstances, that would England and, successively, Spain, the Nether• make Bluewater Sailor good history. But it stops lands, France and the United States. Prompted by being that in that it is peppered with reconstructed the total warfare experience of two World Wars, dialogue and plenty of line shooting. Simply put, however, Western navies tended to lose sight of Sheppard surmounts every obstacle in his path this. Maybe that helps to explain what went and looks very good doing it. For example, he wrong in the Persian Gulf. takes responsibility for the successful prosecution For eight years, from 1980 to 1988, an in- 130 The Northern Mariner conclusive war of attrition was waged in the influence upon maritime trade; and, because of southwest Asian desert between the brutal dicta• the recent preference for flags of convenience, torship of Saddam Hussein and the zealots of those powers which ultimately intervened had the Revolutionary Iran. Although the confrontation least immediate material interests. was dominated by operations on land, there The proliferation of effective anti-ship evolved an important maritime dimension. On the weaponry throughout the Third World should eve of the war, approximately 60 percent of the give pause to anyone concerned with the free world's oil (some 16 million barrels per day) was flow of trade by sea. Regrettably, the price of this being carried by merchant ships through the Strait volume will put it beyond the reach of most of Hormuz. Tanker Wars chronicles the attempts readers. But for anyone who has the institutional by both Iran and Iraq to gain leverage through the requirement to analyse trade warfare in a modern control of merchant shipping routes and the context, it is well worth the investment. destruction of enemy and allied merchant ships. It also details the abject failure of the interna• Richard H. Gimblett tional community to do much for the first six Blackburn Hamlet, Ontario years to halt the attacks on merchant shipping, and then its one-sided intervention (favourable to Michael Clapp and Ewen Southby-Tailyour. Iraq) for the last two years. Amphibious Assault Falklands: The Battle of San Navias and Hooton present a meticulous and Carlos Water. London: Leo Cooper and Anna• balanced account of the progress and import of polis: Naval Institute Press, 1996. xx + 300 pp., this aspect of the Iran-Iraq War. Some one hun• end-map, chronology, glossary, photographs, dred vessels under a variety of flags were in the appendices, index.. £18.95, US $26.95, Cdn Shaft al Arab and became "constructive total $37.95, cloth; ISBN 0-85052-420-2 (Leo Coo• losses" (CTLs) in the opening crossfire. The first per), 1-55750-028-2 (NIP). Canadian distributor, premeditated anti-shipping attack came over a full Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, ON. year later, in October 1981, when Iraqi Super Frelon helicopters attacked the Liberian bulk This book examines the Royal Navy's contribu• carrier Al Tajdar. Significantly, it was also the tion to the Falklands War in 1982. Michael first use of the weapon which became synony• Clapp, appointed Commodore Amphibious War• mous with the Tanker War — the Exocet missile. fare in 1981, commanded the Falklands Amphibi• From there, the authors trace the escalation ous Task Group the following year and was in Iraqi attacks through 1982 and 1983, the jointly responsible not only for planning the delayed but inevitable Iranian response in 1984, amphibious assault but its execution and follow- through the full-blown Tanker War of 1985-86 up operations. Major Ewen Southby-Tailyour, which resulted in Western naval intervention in Royal Marines, was then Commander Marines' 1987 — a total of 411 ships known to have come Landing Craft Branch at Poole and had com• under attack. Their saga culminates with a chapter manded the Falklands Garrison three years ear• on the Second Gulf War of 1990-91, and ends lier. While posted to the Falklands he had sailed with an ominous description of Iranian rearma• around the coastline surveying the beaches. ment with ex-Soviet and Chinese weaponry. Because of this intimate knowledge, he was co- They cover use of the full range of available opted as Landing Craft Commander. Their story, land, sea, air and mine conventional weapons. written largely in the first person, provides a They deal adequately with the conduct of opera• unique account that focuses primarily on the tions, though their focus is the effect upon trade. battle in San Carlos Water northwest of Port Indeed, their primary data source is Lloyd's of Stanley. London Maritime Information Service. As such, Hitherto, all eyes were on operations in they situate the Iran-Iraq War in its proper histori• support of NATO on the Central Front in Europe. cal context as a modern example of limited mari• Little thought had been given to operations in far time economic warfare. But it is one with several distant waters. The Royal Navy's main role was to bizarre twists: neither protagonist could be con• support the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic sidered a naval power, yet both exerted profound by providing submarines to engage Soviet ballis- Book Reviews 131 tic attack submarines and surface ships, as well as not designed for amphibious operations contrib• maintaining its own nuclear deterrence. In addi• uted to the problem. tion, British warships would provide anti-subma• Secondly, more attention had to be given to rine support to the Striking Fleet Atlantic as well joint Army/Navy amphibious exercises. The 5th as convoy protection in the Atlantic, Channel and Infantry Brigade, according to Clapp, had little North Sea. Protection of the northern and south• "understanding of joint operations and was ern flanks of NATO would be provided by a joint plagued with communications problems" (p. 225). international amphibious task force. This Am• One particular incident, among many, stands out. phibious Task Group was "expected to sail early 2nd Parachute Regiment "hijacked a chinook in a crisis and certainly early enough to be re• helicopter to bring forward the Brigade's commu• ceived by the host nation before hostilities be• nications equipment, only to be diverted from this gan." (p. 4) This role, timely reinforcement of the task to push the Paras forward. Attempts to sort Northern Flank, kept the art of amphibious war• out the communication problems ended in disas• fare alive, but just barely. A series of budget cuts ter when the Commander of the Brigade des• caused the navy to be "seriously undermanned patched a helicopter forward without informing and equipment was often incomplete." (p. 3) anyone else. The helicopter was subsequently Efforts to streamline the armed forces had re• shot down by a British frigate which was waiting duced the navy's operational capability with no for the nightly Argentine Hercules flight whose reduction in commitments. The surprise invasion probable flight path was similar to that taken by of the Falkland Islands by Argentina in early the helicopter." (pp. 225-6) The combined forces 1982 threatened to stretch the already meagre overcame many, if not all, of these problems resources of the Royal Navy to the limit. because of their training and professionalism, Clapp gives a detailed account of the opera• good leadership, and a willingness to get on with tion, paying particular attention to command and the job under extremely trying conditions. A re• control issues, communications, and logistics. curring theme throughout the book is the impor• The latter, although not particularly exciting, is tance of flexibility and improvisation to stay crucial to the success or failure of any operation. abreast of the ever-changing tactical situation. This was especially true in the case of the Falk- The book is interesting and extremely well lands War as the British were forced to operate written. More important, it makes a significant 8,000 miles from home and had to take every• contribution to our understanding of amphibious thing with them. Unlike the planned-for amphibi• operations and the campaign in the Falklands. It ous operations on NATO's northern flank there will make a valuable addition to the naval library. was no "host nation' to provide secure shore facilities, jetties and beaches to off-load supplies. Shawn Cafferky Instead, the Royal Navy faced a hostile enemy Victoria, British Columbia which was dug-in and operating in close proxim• ity to its home bases. Charles A. Meconis and Boris N. Makeev. U.S. - A number of key lessons emerged from the Russian Naval Cooperation. Westport, CT: war and should act as a handbook for future Praeger Publishers, 1995. xiii + 172 pp., selected amphibious operations. Firstly, improved coordi• bibliography, index, tables, figures, US $55, nation was required especially as it relates to the cloth; ISBN 0-275-95387-4. loading of stores. The hastily assembled force, with its tons of supplies, were improperly loaded From the beginning, and despite assertions to the and steps had to be taken to rectify the problem contrary, this book is firmly locked in the icy grip during the stop-over in the Ascension Islands. of Cold War thinking and one has to ask "Why Nevertheless, these measures failed to resolve the was it written?" Although published in 1996, it is logistical problem and delays in off-loading largely filled with data made available three or equipment and supplies continued to plague four years earlier and based on a very out-of-date operations in San Carlos Water throughout the concept on the way in which the Russian Navy war. To be fair, a lack of merchant shipping would evolve after the Cold War. It is based on a coupled with the fact that many of the ships were simple fallacy: that the Russian and US navies 132 772e Northern Mariner have nothing in common save the ownership of that seems left over from a previous era: that the weapons of mass destruction. The inescapable US and Russian navies are the greatest in the fact the book overlooks is that even though the world and should cooperate together in keeping Russian Navy remains the world's second largest the peace at sea. The only problem is that the in terms of the number of ships in its inventory, authors forgot that the great Soviet fleets are no the majority have little or no combatant value. more. According to Arkadiy Pauk and Igor Hence any comparison with the Americans is Sutyagin, "The Russian Navy: Now and in the invalid. Despite this reality, Meconis and Future" (Alexandria: Center for Naval Analyses. Makeev, in an act of glorious self-delusion, still March 1997), "the Russian Navy is suffering maintain that the Russian fleet will retain its today from a combination of Russia's severe international standing. From this perspective and economic conditions and mistakes made in the under the motivation that one of the aims of the navy's development in the Soviet period." (p. 36) book is to remove "the few remaining Cold War Yes, there is some residual capability in the icebergs" (p. 10) one is hardly inspired to keep Russian Navy; they can still launch a ballistic reading. But one does out of sheer curiosity. missile from the waters of the Arctic and they can Reading on, one is struck by a series of still send a submarine out to shadow an American nagging doubts about the book, not least of which Task Force. But their operational ability is dis• is the question "for whom was it written?" From tinctly limited, as they themselves freely admit. the discussions of US maritime strategy and force In time, we may see the Russians back at sea plans one could easily come to the conclusion on a wider scale and we could well see them as a that the authors know little about sea power and full member of some multinational naval force. less about the role of sea power in American But this will take time and will be a secondary defence and foreign policy. The discussion of factor to economic renewal. The dream of large- Russian sea power is equally unconvincing and is scale US-Russian Naval Cooperation envisioned more akin to the fading dream of equality held at by Meconis and Makeev died long ago. In many the end of the Gorbachev era than the realities of respects, logic of their book is as puzzling as the today. The various statements of future Russian Russian Navy itself, which is still somewhat of a naval policy are completely inconsistent with riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. assessments published in Jane's Fighting Ships and by the Center for Naval Analyses. Peter Haydon Only when the authors get to "Naval Arms Halifax, Nova Scotia Control" do some of the questions of audience begin to be answered. But the text reads far more Peter T. Haydon and Ann L. Griffiths (eds.). like the highly idealistic agenda of the February Multinational Naval Forces. Halifax: Centre for 1991 Moscow naval arms control conference than Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University, straight thinking on today's problems. This view 1996. xi + 261 pp., figures. Cdn $19.95 (+ $1.40 is strengthened further when the authors begin to GST), US $15.95, paper; ISBN 1-896440-05-3. discuss such things as constraints on the opera• tions of submarines and express a desire to im• This is the latest proceeding of the annual Dal• pose limitations on the "size and activities of U.S. housie Maritime Security Conferences. In 1995 antisubmarine forces in designated areas near the the subject of Multinational Naval Forces was Russian coast." (p. 87) These sentiments quickly addressed by a series of papers on political and turn into an attack on submarine building pro• military planning, organisational considerations grams in the belief that "there is no need for and recent Canadian experiences of UN-spon• Russia to squander precious resources on new sored or endorsed operations. Thirteen presenta• forces capable of protecting its own SSBNs tions are reproduced here, together with a sum• against western ASW forces if there are other mary and analysis of subsequent syndicate dis• ways to ensure that a second-strike nuclear force cussions that took the form of a hypothetical is maintained." (p. 99) crisis management exercise. All of a sudden, one begins to get the idea The list of participants reveals that the that the book has a distinct political agenda — one workshop was rather less international than in Book Reviews 133

earlier years. The discussion therefore tended to time power in the post-Cold War period. How• be coloured by Canadian concerns and preoccu• ever, the description of the Canadian auxiliary pations. The uneasiness of the politico-military Preserver's role off Somalia is comprehensive relationship in Canada is noteworthy from a and provides a good example of the potential of British perspective as is the Canadian problem of such a ship in this situation. It is also good to the political desire to impose a "peacekeeping" have a published account of the Canadian co• paradigm on situations for which it is inappropri• ordination of combat logistics in the Gulf War, ate. The papers made clear the difficulties — and something of which the Canadian Navy was very importance — of distinguishing between peace• proud at the time. The latter also contains some keeping and enforcement operations. Unfortu• enlightening material on command and control nately there was no one to provide the latest matters. British naval doctrine on the distinction between The syndicate discussions provided differing "constabulary" and "combat governed" tasks that approaches to the problem of a UN response to a can be helpful in analysing this problem. Foreign• regional aggressor trying to take control of an ers will however appreciate the clear description international strait. These reflected, above all, the of the political and military planning processes in problems of creating effective UN politico-mili• Canada. The sections on intelligence and media tary institutions, the central problem that bedevils relations are good generic summaries of the all discussion of "UN" military action. problems. Multinational operations are the standard The paper on the possibility of a standing form of contemporary naval action and the expe• UN force is flawed by the misunderstanding of rienced Canadian voice is worth hearing on the what was intended under the auspices of the UN issue. The book provides a worthwhile contribu• Charter's Military Staff Committee, something tion to the literature on the subject. this reviewer tried to make clear in "International Security" some years ago. It is just not true to say Eric Grove that the aim then was standing forces. What was Hull, England envisaged were earmarked national forces de• clared to the UN rather as forces were later de• Elizabeth Van Wie Davis. China and the Law of clared to NATO. The intended command system the Sea Convention: Follow the Sea. Lewiston, was via the Security Council and the Military NY, Queenston, ON and Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Staff Committee with no role for the Secretary Mellen Press, 1996. iv + 118 pp., photographs, General. Several of the objections the author appendices, bibliography, index. US $69.95, found to a UN standing force rested on the as• ISBN 0-7734-9059-0. sumption that like a peacekeeping force it would be subordinate to the normal civil UN bureau• What a curious little book! It fails miserably as an cracy, a situation that has done much to discredit academic study of the People's Republic of China UN operations in recent years. and United Nations Convention on the Law of the NATO has provided the industrial standard Sea, as the book is devoid of analysis, insight or for international operations and an excellent critical thought. The book fails as a non-academic chapter most usefully sets out how this works and work as it lacks lucidity and contains facile how it might be extended beyond Alliance mem• platitudes passing as insightful commentary (i.e. bers. There are also informative chapters by "it is time for Asia and the rest of the world to Americans on the key issue of the development of realize the vulnerability" of fishing resources). combined doctrine, something that has gone The mistakes and oversights are legion. In much further since the Conference was held. chapter one, for example, the Strait of Malacca is Of considerable use for reference are the ac• referred to as being part of the territorial waters of counts of Canadian operational experience of Indonesia and Malaysia, leaving out Singapore's multinational forces in the Adriatic, Somalia and key position in the Straits. Another example the Gulf. The Adriatic chapter could have been concerns the island dispute in the South China more extensive as this was in many ways the Sea. The author, without providing any support, most interesting application of combined mari• states that China (presumably the People's Re- 134 The Northern Mariner public of China) has a strong historic claim to contest that continues in Canada and the United sovereignty over the Spratly Islands based on States today). Charles Fuss, Jr. has held senior abundant evidence. It is stated that Japan has positions in more than one agency involved in recognized the PRC claim, an assertion the Japa• drug interdiction, including the Office of National nese would hotly deny. The competing claims to Drug Control Policy in the Executive Office of the islands fails to include those of Malaysia and the President. No one could therefore be more Brunei — a remarkable omission. qualified to recount the story of the efforts to stop The Canadian angle in this book is that smuggling by sea. China, like Canada, refers "to the link between At first marijuana entered the United States conservation and marine pollution." What this from Mexico or was home-grown. However, a means is open to interpretation. Also, several combination of increased demand in the 1970s, 1992 articles in Maclean s dealing with the Rio together with effective interdiction efforts (di• Environment Conference figure prominently in rected principally at the Mexican heroin crop but the relied-upon sources. also affecting marijuana), caused suppliers to There is no question that the PRC is begin• begin importing marijuana by sea from Colombia ning to assert itself in ocean relations. There are and, to a lesser extent, Jamaica. The ebb and flow serious ocean resource disputes in the South of the long drug war are covered in Sea of Grass. China Sea and in North Asia in which the PRC It is all a great gamble: complex operations in• has a critical role. The PRC has recently ratified volving fast boats, surveillance, deception, chases the UN Oceans Treaty and simultaneously took and great profits for the smugglers, create excite• action allegedly inconsistent with the Treaty, thus ment for both sides. At first, fishermen faced raising serious questions about the PRC's com• with a downturn in their industry could make mitment to the Treaty and international law and good money running a few loads of grass. The order. Marine environmental protection has not US Coast Guard at the time considered its func• yet been high on the policy agenda in the PRC, tion to be maritime regulation and safety, and was this needs to change. There are countless legal, reluctant to get into drug interdiction; the Navy political, environmental and strategic questions to had no involvement at all. Penalties were light, be explored in a study of the PRC and the law of and so smuggling was attractive. By the late the sea. None of these interesting and important 1980s, this had all changed. Combined operations questions are addressed in this book. worthy of a Tom Clancy novel involved search aircraft, Coast Guard, and naval ships of every Ted L. McDorman kind. The importation of marijuana by sea Victoria, British Columbia dropped, and the Colombian drug barons shifted to cocaine, a commodity more easy to conceal Charles M. Fuss, Jr.. Sea of Grass: The Maritime and to deliver by air. The sea blockade has there• Drug War 1970-1990. Annapolis: Naval Institute fore been scaled down, and marijuana supply has Press, 1996. xxi + 326 pp., photographs, maps, returned to land routes or is home-grown, al• table, figures, notes, bibliography, index. US though Canadians know from several seizures on $31.95, Cdn $44.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-276-5. both coasts of drug mother-ships that some still Canadian distributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. comes by sea. Catharines, ON. Sea of Grass describes the operational his• tory of American anti-drug forces. While these The sale of marijuana was outlawed in the United particular efforts were comparatively successful, States by the Federal Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 overall drug use has expanded. This is a social and its mere possession by the Boggs Act of phenomenon which presents a paradox. Failure to 1951. Nevertheless, the enormous demand for this interdict illegal drugs leads to ruined lives and substance, widely considered to be less harmful urban crime. Success means enormous legal ex• than alcohol, less addictive than tobacco, and penses, as the taxpayer pays for both prosecution with some therapeutic qualities, led to the long and defense and prisons become overcrowded. It and complex contest between smugglers and is a lose-lose proposition. Fuss notes that de• enforcement agencies described in this book — a mands for action by the public were not so much Book Reviews 135 anti-drug but in response to the rising crime rate Thresher, but of course his most interesting as addicts robbed for drug money and gangs achievements probably fall into the "secret" fought each other over the right to control the category. He was fortunate in being able to ben• trade. The first wave of baby-boomers wanted efit from the Navy's interest in deep sea explora• their recreational drugs and saw little wrong with tion, at a time when the Navy had deep pockets. marijuana and occasional cocaine use. Their atti• What will be new for most readers is Bal• tude today is curiously ambivalent: although they lard's geological work: studying hydrothermic now "run the world" they have not legalized pot vents close-up, and his contribution to the theory and do not seem to be recommending it to their of plate tectonics, new and controversial at the children who, in any case, tend more towards time he was preparing for his PhD. Ballard was chemicals like "ecstasy." In the meantime, over• an early evangelist of the manned submersible as worked police and Coast Guard forces only an up-close investigation tool, something not manage to intercept about 10 per cent of illegal appreciated by his seniors in the geological drugs, while convictions, if obtained, often take sciences. After much academic in-fighting, years. One cannot help thinking that there must Ballard's faction triumphed. be a better solution to this problem. It is of course impossible to spot where Ballard did the writing, and where McConnell can C. Douglas Maginley take credit. The book is certainly fast-paced, and Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia there are no tedious asides into scientific minutia. Unfortunately, some errors have crept in: HMS Robert D. Ballard with Malcolm McConnell. Prince of Wales was not a battlecruiser (p.358); Explorations — An Autobiography: My Quest for HUMS Kirishima was neither larger nor more Adventure and Discovery Under the Sea. London: heavily armoured than Bismarck (p.397); and the Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995. 407 pp., colour fact that Bismarck did not "implode" is not proof photographs and illustrations. £20, cloth; ISBN 0- that she was scuttled rather than sunk by Royal 297-81504-0. Navy gunnery, (p.379) He does point out, though, that the flyer who spotted Bismarck on 26 May Marine geologist, naval officer and former army 1941 was an American in RAF service (there are subaltern, SCUBA diver, underwater explorer, a few places where stereotypic "rah-rah" Ameri• showman. Dr. Robert Ballard is all of these, and can flag-waving is all too prevalent). his discovery of the wrecks of Titanic and Bis• The nice selection of illustrations, all in marck has given him world-wide celebrity. No colour, are more than just a collection of "he was surprise, then, that his autobiography can be there" images. There are action photos of his found in so many bookstores: a mass-market, teams, artifacts, the research vessels and submers• rather than scholarly work. It is what you might ibles, and of course the remains of Bismarck and expect — an entertaining read that takes you on a Titanic. Two minor proofing issues: the photo of tour of the high points of Ballard's career. the wreck of USS Barton was reproduced upside- Little space is wasted on Ballard's childhood down, and of course "the HMS" for the Australian and youth — in two paragraphs, we learn that he Canberra should have been simply "HMAS." was fascinated by marine life and submarines, Explorations was written with Ballard near and that he grew up in San Diego. The rest of the the summit of his career — a public relations book concerns itself with the story of his profes• exercise and source of funds. It is to be hoped that sional life. All the major events are covered: his there will be a follow-on version some years post-graduate studies in marine geology; the hence, more contemplative and less gung-ho. He quest for the Titanic; exploration of the Roman is not short on self-confidence — but then the wreck Isis (named by Ballard); finding the Bis• book only touches lightly on his private life. It marck; the survey of the wrecks off Guadalcanal; would be interesting to learn more about Ballard the JASON Project. No startling revelations, and the man, with more depth, less ego, and an index. these tales have been told elsewhere. Ballard's work for the US Navy is touched upon — notably William Schleihauf the examination of the remains of the submarine Pierrefonds, Quebec