BOOK REVIEWS

Greg Bailey (ed.). “The Voyage of the F.H. overall themes. The third section is a very Moore” and other 19th Century Whaling short account by a passenger on a whaling Accounts. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & voyage, followed by the much more Company Inc., www.mcfarlandpub.com, comprehensive excerpts from Etchings of a 2014. viii+205 pp., index. US $39.95, Whaling Cruise by J. Ross Browne. The paper; ISBN 978-0-7864-7866-8. excerpts from Etchings do present more of an introduction to whaling, but these are All too often, whaling is represented solely hidden away in a fourth chapter and would by the story of Moby Dick; one very long really have been much better positioned at voyage to the Pacific under a tyrannical the beginning. The book is rounded out by captain. But voyage length, destination, the promising, but again fragmented, captain, and a myriad of other factors all memoirs of a New England whaling varied from voyage to voyage. The diaries captain. and memoirs presented in “The Voyage of Although none of the works (apart the F.H. Moore” and Other 19th Century from Browne’s) could stand alone, together Whaling Accounts help “complicate” this they help support the author’s singular view of whaling. They present a multi- theme that whaling was a necessary, every- faceted view of the New England whaling day part of nineteenth century life. He trade by following a boat-steerer, passenger, seeks to present the “human side of an greenhorn, and captain to the Caribbean, inhumane trade” that is “ugly, repugnant, North Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, and Arctic but also fascinating”(3). In this goal, he is Ocean where they hunted black fish, sperm successful; the collected stories do present a whales, and right whales. relatable view of the trade. This is by no means, however, an While this is the only theme that introductory piece on whaling. The lack of Bailey articulates, he appears to have supporting interpretation of the sources or focused on several main themes: the lack of even a glossary of maritime and whaling whales and resulting boredom; the mix of terms makes the collection challenging for comradeship and conflict; race relations; someone with little background in the trade. and temperance. Whaling is perhaps a The Voyage of the F.H Moore by Samuel misleading name for the trade; it only Grant Williams, is the collection’s raison occupies the crew for a very small fraction d’être; it has never been published before of each voyage. While the excitement of and this, along with its contents – a landing a whale is displayed in the excerpts, reasonable informative account of a it is balanced with long periods of looking Caribbean whaling trip – spurred editor for whales or chores such as mending, Greg Bailey to build a book around it. The cleaning and processing the blubber. In this second piece by Williams, though, is quite instance, Bailey has done well; he’s resisted fragmented, with many illegible words and the urge to concentrate on the “exciting” disconnected stories; it adds little to the parts and includes much of the everyday life

The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord, XXV No. 1, (January 2015), 69-115 70 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord of the whalers, furthering his theme of this character [temperance], is much greater humanity. in this service that in any other departments Long periods of boredom result in of our marine”(90). the theme of comradeship and conflict. In This collection presents an all of the voyages presented, the crews were interesting, if fragmented, view on between a dozen to two dozen men, all nineteenth century whaling. Standing confined on relatively small boats for alone, it may not fully inform a reader, but months on end–close friendships and could add to the literature already existing fraught animosities were inevitable. on the trade. It is a pity that many of the Browne gives many examples of both: his themes are not more fully drawn out, but it friendship with “W”; his problems with the does provides an excellent resource for mulatto cook and the Portuguese crew; and those looking to do so. his winning over other crew members with Kate Jordan his sketches. Melbourne, Australia As mentioned by Browne, conflicts sometimes resulted from the mixing of cultures on the ships. Whaling crews were David Bates and Robert Liddiard (eds.) often international, composed of men from East Anglia and its North Sea World in the multi-cultural home ports and men that were Middle Ages. Rochester, NY: Boydell picked up to replace crew members who Press, www.boydellandbrewer.com, 2013. had taken ill or deserted. Williams had two xiv+349 pp., illustrations, maps, tables, Cape Verde Island Portuguese and a number notes, index. US $99.00, hardback; ISBN of black sailors, including a large West 978-1-84383-846-3. Indian. Editor Bailey, in one of the few “helping hands” he grants the reader, Historians have long sought to discover the comments that the “black members of the origins of the British and Irish peoples – crew did not even merit the mention of their who they were and where they came from. names in the log book”(57). Browne is This subject still remains a popular one for particularly scathing in his treatment of the study, particularly the early development of Portuguese onboard, disliking their the North Sea World, which has fascinated appearance, attitude and musical abilities. students and professional historians as well Boredom, friendships, conflict, and as general readers of economic and mixed crews are all to be expected. What maritime history. was surprising is the prevalence of The co-authors of this beautifully temperance. Sailors of any kind are presented collection of essays on the North assumed to like their tipple. But in three of Sea in the Middle-Ages, Professor David the excerpts, the boats are declared for the Bates and Dr. Robert Liddiard, are attached temperance movement, if not the men to the University of East Anglia, the former themselves. In Williams’ account, he notes being the Professorial Fellow in History and the mates coming from their Christmas the latter a Senior Lecturer in History. They dinner looking as if they had been drinking have produced an intelligent and stimulating despite of their declaration as a temperance book, featuring contributions by 18 scholars vessel; he also tells of crew members who delivered papers on different elements trading their shirts for gin on an island. of this topic at the “East Anglia and its Passenger Francis Allyn Olmsted North Sea World” conference in 2010. comments: “To the credit of the American Each of the contributors to this Whale Fishery...the proportion of vessels of book explains in detail how East Anglia had Book Reviews 71 been a distinctive region since the Middle Anglo Norman period, and claim that the Ages. They examine the development of nature of the stone buildings in Romanesque trade between Iceland, Denmark, the East Anglia indicates the inhabitants’ Netherlands and Belgium from AD 580 to relative sophistication. Describing the AD 675 and show how, for the most part, Flemish influence on English Manuscript relations between these maritime Painting in the late fourteenth century, the neighbours were peaceful – until, that is, the authors compare it with pre-Viking so-called Age of Northmen (AD 600 to AD everyday artefacts including coinage and 1100), when the God-fearing Christians of their detailed maps of the “North Sea Western Europe faced the pagan Northmen World.” Thus it seems that not only was in what has described as “the wrath of God trade of great importance to the region, but let loose” (Cunliffe 2013). it resulted in almost thirty years of respite The editors have skillfully chosen from Viking raids. representative case studies on economic According to other sources, English relations with Flanders during the Anglo- rural society was highly differentiated and Norman period, which describe the extent to contained a large minority of substantial which North Sea maritime neighbours households by the fifteenth century developed enduring economic links in a (Wrightson 2000). Similarly, in the distinctive community of trading partners. seventeenth century, entrepreneurial A Germanic settlement in eastern Britain initiatives with a narrow geographic radius was firmly established by AD 600 and, were hampered by transport, following the battle of Catterick in the same communication and other obstacles. In year, they crossed the Tees and moved Europe, for example, high tolls and poor northwards, reaching almost to the Firth of roads limited the transport of goods (Munck Forth. 1990). Although transport costs were not the only expense, it was only in the late The year AD 866 has been nineteenth century that traffic in the North highlighted as the turning point when a Sea reached 5.5 million tons (Hobsbawm movement of the population from Mercia 1975). into Northumbria marked a new phase of Histories of medieval East Anglia Viking control at the heart of East Anglia. have not often been attempted, especially While contemporary sources usually refer to ones that commence as early as the Ice-Age the Scandinavian raiders and settlers as and centre on a region bound together by Northmen, they have since become more little more than the shared frontier of the popularly known as Vikings. Their raids sea. This fascinating book will be enjoyed engulfed Britain and Ireland and spread by readers of economic and maritime insidiously along Europe’s Atlantic coasts history for its clear explanation of the and estuaries. They founded settlements in development of East Anglia from medieval Britain, France, Iceland and Greenland times to its status as a distinctive region of (eventually exploring as far as the coast of the British Isles. America). Professor Bates and Dr. Liddiard Twenty some years later in AD are to be congratulated for their intelligent 892, Alfred’s military preparations were organization of the material and for putting tested when two Danish armies descended together a book that makes a valuable on Kent. The authors believe there is contribution to maritime history. Together evidence of East Anglia’s use of coins for with an exhaustive index and a multitude of its economic relations with Flanders in the illustrations, the editors give a clear and 72 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord interesting explanation of why, even today, that is impressive given the relatively short the North Sea is so important to the regional space involved with any of his books, this economy, principally in the exploitation of one included. oil and gas. The book commences with a This book is the product of a description of the surrender of the German successful and comprehensive conference in High Seas Fleet to the Grand Fleet at the East Anglia, and its contents reflect the conclusion of the war. It is an effective and diversity of the papers presented. This in innovative introduction. Bennett then itself should guarantee it a place on the covers the global aspects of the naval war shelves of any reader with an interest in by recounting the pursuit of the Goeben, the early maritime history. Dardanelles campaign, the hunt for the German merchant raiders, and the disaster Michael Clark of Coronel and the triumph of the London, England Falklands. The next section details the war in home waters, touching on the early Geoffrey Bennett. Naval Battles of the engagements, such as Heligoland Bight, the First World War. Barnsley, S. Yorks: Pen & German bombardment raids, Dogger Bank Sword Maritime, www.pen-and- and then, of course, Jutland. The final sword.co.uk, 2014. (Originally published: section, almost an afterthought and light on B.T. Batsford Ltd., London 1968). x+302 detail, covers the war on merchant shipping pp., illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, and how the U-boat campaign nearly index. US $21.70, paper; ISBN 978-0-141- succeeded in bringing Britain to its knees. 39087-5. The book concludes with a short discussion on the scuttling of the German fleet and a This welcome reissue of a classic short brief summing up. All in all, a well written, narrative history of the war at sea in the comprehensive, if brief, and competent First World War by Pen & Sword is one of a account. large number of similar publications that There are some shortcomings. I this indefatigable publisher has released in was surprised that the book does not include recent years. I recall reading Bennett’s a new introduction by a practising historian. book as a teenager within a few years of its The book has been reissued unadorned, publication and remember it well with which I think a pity and a missed pleasure. opportunity by the publisher to contribute Bennett served in the RN from the something new with the book’s resurrection mid-1920s to the mid-1950s, rising to the in today’s bookshops. More fundamentally, rank of captain, and had a typical career for the account only covers the activities of the the period. He took to writing narrative RN and its principal adversary, the German histories on retirement of which this volume Navy. Clearly these two antagonists are the is a fine example. In general, his books are dominant players in the conflict, but the a straightforward recounting of the events in absence of all the other nations involved is a question, written in an engaging style that is significant gap. There is also no discussion easy to read. His judgements of the actors on the pre-war years, the road to war and in the scenes he describes are trenchant but the role of German naval policy in bringing sympathetic – he well knows the difficulties that war about. The quality of the diagrams and obstacles they faced from personal illustrating the engagements is uneven, with experience. He also put his finger on the some quite clear and uncluttered, with key issues and why things were so in a way others anything but. The bibliography is Book Reviews 73 entirely from secondary sources, which for North Atlantic waters in the twenty-first underlines the point that this is not a century can also be avoided. scholarly book. Finally, the index is only Overfishing for cod and herring, adequate and not comprehensive. It only and the overharvesting of shellfish, seals, touches on ships and individuals. Not a walruses, whales, and seabirds prompted crucial defect given the nature of the book. Europeans to venture into Western waters in For the general reader this account the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. of the war at sea from 1914-1918 is They found in today’s New England and perfectly adequate. It recounts the story at a Atlantic Canada new ecosystems of good pace, is engagingly written, and seemingly inexhaustible sealife to satisfy, Bennett’s judgements have stood up they hoped, the Old World’s insatiable and reasonably well. For the serious student, growing needs. Settlement of and survival the book has inevitably been overtaken by a in the New World by Europeans, however, vast amount of scholarship over the past 45 soon threatened ecosystems there, and well years. The gaps in the account are before the end of the seventeenth century significant and its chief value must lie in the the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for one, was book’s swift recounting of the war’s major experimenting with regulating weiring and incidents which can help frame the thinking netting in its rivers and streams and of the modern researcher. Perhaps the best imposing a closed season on all commercial audience today remains that “interested fishing in an effort to conserve what it saw teenager” who retains the capacity of as a finite supply of cod, mackerel, and actually reading. bass. Nonetheless, as Bolster tells us, despite such modest attempts to mitigate the Ian Yeates results of largely unrestricted harvesting, the Regina, Saskatchewan western North Atlantic, washing the shores of the new United States and Atlantic W. Jeffrey Bolster. The Mortal Sea: Canada, had come to resemble the depleted Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail. seas of Europe by 1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Over several chapters, Bolster www.hup.harvard.edu, 2012. xiv+378 pp., describes with great proficiency the illustrations, maps, appendix, notes, evolution of fishing technology during the glossary, index. US $29.95, cloth; ISBN nineteenth century as fishermen sought 978-0-674-04765-5. greater efficiency in a time of declining stocks. The invention of jigging and the W. Jeffrey Bolster’s The Mortal Sea: arrival of purse seining for mackerel along Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail is a with development of the pinkey schooner book at once fascinating – and alarming. served the needs of the mackerel trade well. From late medieval times to the present, The mackerel catch peaked in the 1830s, Bolster writes, humans have exploited and then declined due to the fickle and depleted the rich fishing grounds of the unpredictable nature of the fish, but was western North Atlantic, and in so doing attributable as well to what many observers have led us to the brink of ecological claimed was “human interference”(108). disaster today. Yet, as historian and Schooners in the cod fishery got bigger and environmentalist, Bolster is not all about more powerful too, and more capable of drowning us in a sea of doom and gloom. ranging farther afield, yet cod landings in He offers valuable insights as well as to the Gulf of Maine continued to drop how the ecological cataclysm he predicts precipitously from 1865 to 1890. Maine 74 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord fisherman exacerbated their own problems historians, environmentalists, scholars, and beginning in 1850 by engaging in lay readers alike. internecine strife among themselves in the More important, after his dreary so-called menhaden wars. One group of story of decay and decline, Bolster leaves us fishermen began pursuing schools of with some sense of hope for the future of menhaden in small vessels to render them the North Atlantic fisheries. Restoration of for oil, while other fishermen protested the our seas, he notes, calls for vision, practice as destroying the forage base on commitment, and action on the part of which the already struggling cod and fishermen, politicians, and scientists, as well mackerel fisheries depended. Additional as an understanding by all parties of the sad pressure on fishing stock occurred with the history of the fishing trade. Five hundred arrival of industrial canning in the late- years of fishing history shows us that more nineteenth century with the consequent efficient harvesting technology is not a increase in the number of fish dealers and substitute for resource management. It fishing merchants. While scientists at the should teach our generation too, he says, United States Fish Commission, established two simple rules: we as humans have a in 1871, concluded in the 1880s that limited ability to control nature, and we humans had little impact on supplies of cod, cannot always bring about all the outcomes mackerel, and herring, a position with we want. Our course is to pilot our craft which G. Brown Goode in his monumental within these rules. A precautionary seven-volume Fisheries and the Fisheries approach to sustainability through the lens Industries in the United States (Washington, of history should be our guide. DC, 1884-1887) agreed, fishermen William L. Welch themselves vigorously dissented and called Natick, Massachusetts upon the federal government to act to insure a sufficient stock of fish for future generations. Unhappily, over the protests of Thomas Bottcher. Viermastbark PASSAT, Mayor John F. Fitzgerald of Boston, eine Baudokumentation: Neue Erkenntnisse speaking as long ago as 1912 for “the zur Rekonstruktion des stehenden und biggest fishing port in the western world” laufenden Gutes. Bremerhaven, Germany: (243), the continued use of previously Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum and shunned mechanized bottom trawling in the Oceanum Verlag, www.dsm.museum, 2013. twentieth century, combined with 143 pp., illustrations, scale plan, government lethargy, has left the former bibliography. 29,90 €, hardback; ISBN 978- teeming fishing banks of the western North 3-86927-012-8. Atlantic virtually devoid of fish as we see them today, Bolster concludes, after what he From a time long past, the four-masted terms five hundred years of ruthless human barque Passat lying at anchor in the exploitation. German Baltic port of Travemunde, near the Bolster writes well, his sources are Hanseatic city of Lubeck, is a beautiful and comprehensive, and he argues his positions vivid reminder of what sailing used to be. persuasively. His maps, vintage photos, Over a century ago, Passat was launched in reproductions of marine paintings, his Hamburg, Germany. She sailed to South graphs and charts, and glossary of nautical America with general cargo to exchange for terms and sketches of fish species in an nitrate destined for Europe. Later she appendix all enhance an already impressive transported grain from Australia to the old work. The Mortal Sea should appeal to continent. In 1957, Passat was Book Reviews 75 decommissioned. Two years later she was The biography begins with a purchased by the city of Lubeck, and is now summary of the Wilson family heritage and a museum ship. its emigration from Scotland to Clermont, New knowledge on the New York, in 1784. The family became reconstruction of standing and running prominent in local society and political rigging allowed Thomas Bottcher to write circles. Stephen Bayard Wilson was born in Viermastbark PASSAT, eine 1795 into an already large immediate Baudokumentation. Baudokumentation family. In 1810, at the age of fourteen, he means documentation of construction. It is decided he wanted to follow the sea and a technical description of the rigging of a journeyed to New York to seek a berth on a four-masted barque. The book is not, merchant vessel. His initial letter is to his however, about techniques used or the father, detailing his efforts to seek a berth. quality of materials. Nor is it about the Between 1810 and 1812 Stephen made three history of the Passat or sailing itself. Over merchant voyages to Spain, Russia and a quarter of the book consists of a reprint of India. In 1812, his family secured him an the 1910 Bauvorschrift, a truly tedious appointment as a midshipman in the U.S. collection of ship-building regulations. Navy. As Stephen is on his way to India, Fortunately, the book is very graphic, with the War of 1812 is declared and the many drawings and photographs, since appointment is put on hold. Upon their apart from the reprinted rules, there is little arrival in Calcutta, the crew of Stephen’s text. It does contain, however, more than 60 vessel is arrested and he is transported to pages of photographs of the Passat under Dartmoor Prison in England. He is assumed full sail at sea, showing the splendour of a dead since there is no further ship in its element. These pictures give the correspondence with his family until he best impression on life on board these great turns up in Charleston in 1816 after being windjammers. released from Dartmoor. Stephen returns to Clermont and in July 1816, activates his Jacob Bart Hak appointment as a midshipman. Leiden, The Netherlands Boston harbour was Stephen’s initial duty assignment aboard the USS Marjorie Alice Argo Buss. Stephen Bayard Independence where he remained until Wilson. A Nineteenth-Century U.S. Naval 1818. His letters to his family during this Officer and his Family. Baltimore, MD: period deal mostly with his lack of funds Otter Bay Books, www.otter-bay- and attempts to seek promotion. In August books.com, 2012. xx+213 pp., illustrations, 1818, he is assigned to the new USS appendix, notes, bibliography, index. US Guerriere for sea duty in the Mediterranean, $26.00, CDN $36.00, cloth. Available from where he served until 1820, still a the author. midshipman. During this time, the Navy Department ordered that all midshipmen Author Marjorie Buss presents a unique should take a written examination for picture of her great-great-grandfather, promotion. Unfortunately for Stephen, the Captain Stephen Bayard Wilson, through exams were to be given in the United States. personal letters sent over his lifetime to and Author Buss presents several of his lengthy from his family and friends. The source of letters describing the political and social this correspondence is a collection currently atmosphere during his Mediterranean archived in Ann Arbor at the University of assignment. He briefly mentions the Michigan’s Williams L. Clements Library. suspension of the American captains and the 76 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord assignment of new officers. Most of his to his farm and family in Clermont, not other letters refer to family matters and returning to active duty until 1837. He then requests for more letters about home. As served at sea on five different vessels until she does throughout her book, Buss fills in 1843. While on this tour of duty Stephen gaps between letters with details of the was promoted to the rank of commander. family from additional documents in the He had spent most of his time in the West Wilson papers. Indies and off the coast of South America. Back in New York in 1820, Stephen Assigned to the Boston Navy by was assigned to the USS Washington. He May 1845, he held the post for the next two sat for the lieutenant’s examination but years. Stephen moved his family from the failed to pass due to a weakness in farm in Clermont to the Boston area where, mathematics. By 1822, he had been over the next two years, his letters to his assigned to duty in the West Indies and the family would deal mostly with the problems Gulf of Mexico, serving on three different of renting proper quarters in Boston and the vessels chasing pirates. In 1821, between leasing and maintenance of the Clermont cruises, Stephen retook the lieutenant’s farm. examination and this time succeeded. The In August of 1847, Stephen was promotion, however, was not made official detached from the Boston Navy Yard and until early 1825. He was given command of given a sea command. He and Margaret the USS Grampus and returned to duty in had decided to sell the Clermont farm and the West Indies. Stephen remained at sea move to Hudson, New York, where the until 1827 when was ordered to shore duty children would be able to attend good in Baltimore, Maryland. The next year was schools. During the Mexican War Stephen an eventful one with his marriage to commanded five different vessels Margaretta Sanderson in May of 1828 and blockading both the east and west coasts of the death of his father in December of the Mexico. Back in New York, his brother same year. Many of Stephan’s letters from negotiated the sale of the Hickory Hill farm. 1829 deal with the settlement of his father’s Much of the correspondence relates to the estate. transactions necessary for the sale. In early In 1831, Stephen and Margaretta 1850, Stephen was transferred from sea decided to purchase a farm, finally settling duty to command of the receiving ship in on Hickory Hill in Clermont, New York. New York. Again he moves his family, this Whenever Stephen was assigned shore duty, time to Poughkeepsie, New York. Ordered Margaretta and his ever growing family back to sea, Stephen left New York in would move to a residence near his duty October of 1854 and remained at sea until station. That June, Lt. Stephen Wilson was 1855. His last command was the Cyane ordered to the frigate USS Potomac for a until September of 1855. He returned to three-year cruise around the world sending Poughkeepsie and while awaiting new only one letter to his family over this entire orders was promoted the rank of captain. voyage dated 1832. The author fills in the His final letter found in the Wilson Family history of the cruise with excerpts from Papers is dated 8 July1857, indicating that Jeremiah N. Reynolds’ 1935 book The he was on his way to Washington, DC, to Voyage of the United States Frigate serve as a witness at a trial of an officer who Potomac. had formerly served under him. Detached from USS Potomac in To follow the final years of Captain late May of 1834, Stephen was granted a Wilson’s career, the author has assembled six-month leave of absence. He went home sources outside of the Wilson family papers. Book Reviews 77 Stephen was assigned to the command of combustible circumstances. This is, in part, the USS Constellation in May of 1859 and exactly what occurred in the Indian took along his son, Bayard, Jr. to serve as Rebellion of 1857 that resulted in the ship’s clerk. Shortly before their departure nationalization and demise of the East India for Boston, where Constellation was docked, Company. Penelope Carson provides an Stephen slipped on some ice and fractured exceptionally well-written and well- his thigh bone. He continued the trip with researched volume on a century and a half Stephen, Jr., but could not continue of efforts by the East India Company to command and asked to be relieved. His son address the religious concerns of those it remained with Constellation and served on employed (mostly Christian, Muslim, and her on the African Station. In January 1861, Hindu), ecclesiastical and social leaders in Stephen, Jr., took part in the capture of the Britain, and the Muslim and Hindu slaver Triton on the Congo River and, while populations in which the Company part of the prize crew sailing Triton to operated. She capably demonstrates how Norfolk, Virginia, Stephen, Jr. apparently the religious dynamics in Britain, especially contracted coast fever from members of the evangelicalism, both within the Church of captured crew. He died at the age of England and within nonconformist churches eighteen on 2 June 1861. His body was affected the political and economic buried in Bonetta Cemetery on Ascension dimensions of British life reaching far into Island where a modest tombstone was India, the crown jewel of the colonial erected. Sixteen months later, on 15 March empire. The question that quickly arose for 1863 Captain Stephen Bayard Wilson passed the East India Company was – on a daily away and was buried in the cemetery of St. and practical level – how should religious Luke’s Church in Clermont, New York. issues be addressed in the far-reaching and Buss presents an intimate look into multi-faith empire in which the Company the private life of Captain Wilson and the operated? The East India Company, steeped entire Wilson family. Using both letters and in Christianity, operated in a region where relevant documents from the family papers, multiple faith traditions, among them Jains, she outlines the captain’s naval career, but Parsis, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews, Muslims, perhaps more importantly, the everyday Christians, and what Company officials trials and tribulations incurred by a termed “Hindoo.” Although the main nineteenth-century naval family managing a purpose of the company was trade, religion life interrupted by duty at sea. It is a view and matters of religious freedom and of military families that is not often related. accommodations quickly became concerns of policy and practice as the company dealt Fred Hopkins with its own employees and those under its Baltimore, Maryland governance. Whatever balance was achieved by the company was challenged as Penelope Carson. The East India Company the nineteenth century progressed and and Religion, 1698-1858. Rochester, NY: Evangelicals increasingly called for free Boydell Press, www.boydellandbrewer.com, access of Christians of all denominations in 2012. 277 pp., notes, appendices, India with a view to greater missionary bibliography, index. US $120.00, hardback; efforts that would end “barbaric” religious ISBN 978-1-84383-732-9. views and practices by Hindus and Muslims and others in India. Christians wanted to Religion, military force, and nationalism or evangelize India under the auspices and politics readily mix for volatile and with the help of the East India Company 78 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord and directors of the company were fearful chaplains aboard ships of 500 tons or more. that proselytizing would create enormous There were also diplomatic challenges with social and economic instability that would respect to the political loyalties of Roman ignite conflict in India and company efforts. Catholic Portuguese priests and priests of The author skillfully presents the other nationalities who ministered in story of the tensions faced by Christian geographic regions under company control officials who were repulsed by the religious and to Roman Catholic employees who practices and beliefs they found in India, but were Irish, Spanish, and French. Concerns who also wanted to keep their Indian regarding religious disaffection among the territory and resources stable and secure. sepoys or Indian soldiers employed to Once the company became a sovereign defend British India were high within the power with an economic monopoly in the company and frequently at odds with the mid-eighteenth century, the stakes were desires of political and religious leaders even higher and pressures were greater in back in England, as well as with Christian both India and Britain as the British missionaries seeking to work in India. government wrestled with British control in Behind policies and politics were India. The story told in the volume is that personalities with strong values and views of the integration, separation, and and the book does an excellent job of disintegration of religion, economics, and explaining the relationships, actions, and public policy. In 1813, when the company’s attitudes of such people. For example, charter was under negotiation for renewal, chapter three surveys the religious and Parliament was asked to consider whether political alliance and efforts of friends or not the acquisition of empire entailed a William Wilberforce and Charles Grant. duty of Christian evangelism and Through their friendship and positions in propagation of Christianity in the empire. Parliament and for Grant, as a director and In national policy and actions, answers were later chairman of the company, enormous sought to second-century Christian influence was exerted for Christianity apologist Justin Martyr’s questions “What within the company and India. has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” And In the aftermath of the Indian within this question there was further debate Rebellion of 1857 (also known as the Indian regarding what expression of British Uprising or Indian Mutiny), it was clear that Christianity would be pursued – the the religious policies and practices of the Established Church or all expressions of East India Company failed to please any of Protestantism (and some tolerance of the interested parties. Any perceived or real Roman Catholicism). connections between the Christianity and The volume contains 19 chapters the State were viewed as a liability with structured chronologically around the respect to the governance of India. Even company’s history and presence in India. though the numbers of missionaries was Into that history, the ebb and flow of the small in comparison to the population (360 religious dynamics and policies and their Protestant missionaries working among 180 effects are skillfully navigated. Chapters million Indians in 1858), there were are nicely balanced, giving the reader a enormous social and political ramifications blend of history, policy, personality, and of their work. consequences for the actions of the What began in the late 1600s and company in India. Early in the company’s early 1700s as a question of providing history there were evasions of the chaplains aboard company ships, developed requirement by Parliament to provide over the next century-and-a half into a much Book Reviews 79 larger debate about the role of religion and mistrust for Cristol’s claims. the British Empire. This is a remarkable Constructed along the lines of a legal and important historical study that stands as argument, the book is heavy with facts and, reminder to all to consider the interplay of while written exceedingly well for a legal religion, economics, politics, and power. To document, it makes for poor reading. The fail to do so can be tragic because values reader is so quickly overwhelmed by facts that have consequences. it is difficult to maintain any level of interest for longer than a handful of pages. Political Timothy J. Demy correctness is obviously of great importance Newport, Rhode Island to Cristol, for he heavily emphasizes the accidental nature of the incident and works A. Jay Cristol. The Liberty Incident very hard to avoid placing blame on any party. Revealed. The Definitive Account of the As a study of international military law and 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy international relations, The Liberty Incident is Ship. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, an excellent tome; as a volume of historical www.nip.org, 2013. xiv+392 pp., fact, it is an ideal text for specialists in Near illustrations, maps, appendices, notes, East studies; as a book for undergraduates and bibliography, index. US $36.95, UK £ arm-chair historians, however, it fails … 23.78, cloth; ISBN 978-1-61251-340-9. unless the reader has a high tolerance for slow, (Originally published 2002) pedantic, and rhetorical prose. This is not to say Cristol’s work is not excellent or Written by a former federal court interesting, rather, it is merely indicative that judge and former United States Judge Cristol is not the world’s most engaging Advocate General officer, The Liberty writer. Incident Revealed: The Definitive Account of To support his assertion that the the 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy incident was entirely accidental, Cristol Ship (The Expanded and Revised Edition) includes detailed and interesting maps, purports to offer the reader the entirety of illustrations, charts, and the like. This is facts pertaining to the accidental attack by solid material for scholars interested in the Israeli air force aircraft and naval assets on a Near East. Cristol also provides United States ship testing new radio comprehensive comparisons of audiotapes surveillance methods just outside Israeli and other materials from the Israelis and the waters. Captain Cristol states that 27 years United States naval records, an excellent after he began researching the incident, all inclusion. He provides only a selected the facts are now available. Unfortunately, bibliography, however, a practice this he contradicts this in several places, usually reviewer finds frustrating. Nevertheless, his by some variation of “some of the intercept index is adequate and his substantive end technology of 1967 probably still requires notes are remarkable. security classification …” (30), or “for In sum, The Liberty Incident reasons unknown …,” both of which refute Revealed: The Definitive Account of the his earlier assertion that he has gathered all 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy extant information pertaining to the attack. Ship is worth the time and effort required to Despite the remarkable amount of research read it, but is neither for slouches nor for Cristol has obviously undertaken, these casual historians. inconsistencies, coupled with his frequent appeals to authority, left this reader Ambjorn L. Adomeit dissatisfied and with a certain amount of London, Ontario 80 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord Sören Dannhauer. Deutscher Reishandel rice cultivation and its use in society, to 1850 bis 1914: Die zentrale Rolle Bremens delve, finally, into his own research und der Familie Rickmers auf einem methodology. Dannhauer’s adherence to weltweiten Nahrungsmittelmarkt. Bremen: “Globalisierungsgeschichte,” or H.M. Hauschild Verlag, 2013. 285pp., “globalization history,” centres on the illustrations, maps, tables, bibliography, essential categories of political decision- index, English summary. 39,00 €, making; economic change, technological hardback; ISBN 978-3-89757-535-6. development, communication, and market (Available only from the German Maritime adjustment. All of these reflect Museum, www.dsm.museum) Dannhauer’s objective and serve as pillars supporting and connecting all facets of the At first glance, Sören Dannhauer’s book, Rickmers’ business. translated as The German Rice Trade from The background history begins 1850 to 1914: The Central Role of Bremen with early rice cultivation practices in North and the Family Rickmers in a world-wide America, where rice became an integral part Food Market, seems to appeal to a select of the colonial economy in South Carolina audience of historical scholars and trade and Georgia, employing slave labour for enthusiasts. Dannhauer, whose labour of commercial gains. Although Dannhauer love originated as his doctoral dissertation, does not discuss the North American studied political science at the Carl-von- contribution in depth, he notes the shift in Ossietzky University at Oldenburg and the epicentre of rice cultivation to Southeast history at the University of Bremen, where Asia by the early nineteenth century, mainly his passion for nineteenth and twentieth due to the new American nation’s economic century political, social, and maritime estrangement from Europe. Land and history flourished, influencing his research maritime exploration directed European methodology and approach to history. attention to the Asian trade as western Aside from chronicling the lifetime entrepreneurs sought to exploit various achievements of three generations of commodities, such as rice. While rice Rickmers and their family business in cultivation was certainly possible in regions Bremen and northern Germany, such as Siam, India, and French-Indochina, Dannhauer’s book presents, in exquisite it was the fertile lands of Burma (now detail, how German (or Bremen) Myanmar) that succeeded in meeting the entrepreneurs came to dominate the world- demand. As the British began annexing and wide rice trade throughout the later colonizing parts of Burma, western nineteenth century. The book combines a businessmen seized the opportunity to grab myriad of thematic approaches with the a piece of the empire. Eventually, capital author’s own interests to create a scholarly cities like Rangoon became imperial contribution to the developing hotbeds of international trade and business, historiography of trade, in this case where professionals and skilled workers “Globalisierungsgeschichte.” converged based on the promise of work Dannhauer’s earlier chapters and possibly, a better life. As Dannhauer provide a detailed background to many of points out however, while the British amply the histories within the book. Beginning provided Burma with administrative with the introduction, Dannhauer draws us a oversight, German entrepreneurs thrived on clear road map, shifting from the early the day-to-day trade. historiography and origins of the Rickmers Unlike the British, the German family and their business, to world-wide perspective on maintaining commercial Book Reviews 81 operations involved seeking a cultural the book with excruciatingly keen detail understanding of the indigenous population. about late-nineteenth century German German traders learned the local languages commerce. He supplements his analysis of by living alongside the Burmese, which early global exchange with a discussion of allowed the creation of better working the economic fluctuations of the German relationships and, ultimately, enabled them rice trade, the multiple uses of rice in to dominate the market. Rickmer Classen textiles, cosmetics, and animal fodder, Rickmers, a Bremen native and father of the changes in the corporate and labour climate Rickmers enterprise, got an early taste for between Europe and Asia, and lastly, the life on the open seas during the Napoleonic future of the German rice trade post-1918. wars, smuggling goods between Heligoland With comprehensive tables and charts and Bremen. Soon after, Rickmers’ derived from extensive legwork throughout professional life evolved from working as European state and family archives, an employed ship’s carpenter and builder to Dannhauer’s book is indeed a running his own ship-building firm, “Gesamtkunstwerk” of research, producing top-quality vessels such as the methodology, and genuine interest. Overall, first German clipper, Ida Ziegler, which was Dannhauer’s scholarly contribution to showcased at the 1867 Paris International “globalisation history” provides further Exposition. Oddly refusing to adopt or discourse for the ever-changing field of adapt to technological changes in ship- history. building, such as the conversion from wood Christopher Pearcy to iron and sail to steam, Rickmers saw his Virginia Beach, Virginia sales stagnate so significantly that, as Dannhauer remarks, he couldn’t give his ships away. Fortunately, a new business Bernard Edwards. Convoy Will Scatter. The adventure materialized in 1872 when Full Story of Jervis Bay and Convoy HX84. Rickmers bought into the former Konitzky Barnsley, S. Yorks: Pen & Sword Maritime, rice mill in Bremen with Eduard Ichon. By www.pen-and-sword.co.uk, 2013. viii+184 1878, Rickmers had bought out Ichon’s pp., illustrations, appendices, bibliography, half-share, fully intending to establish his index. UK £19.99, US $39.95, cloth; ISBN own rice mill between Bremerhaven and 978-1-78159-376-9. Geestemünde. After Rickmers’ death in 1886, his three sons, Andreas Classen, Peter The traditional story of convoy HX 84 is Andreas, and Wilhelm Heinrich Rickmers, well known to those interested in the naval along with grandson Paul Henry Rickmers, actions of the Second World War. This was assumed leadership of the family enterprise. the first convoy to be attacked by a surface Each brought his unique skills from ship raider and history has immortalized the construction to administrative oversight to action between the convoy’s only escort, the the establishment of new rice mills in the Armed Merchant Cruiser (AMC) HMS towns of Hannoversch Münden and Jervis Bay and Admiral Scheer. Captain Osterholz. This ultimately transformed the E.S.F. Fegen, commanding Jervis Bay, was Rickmers enterprise into an all-inclusive awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for corporation, the German Aktiengesellschaft, his gallant attempt to halt the raider in a or the 1901 Rice and Trade AG, which short and sharp action whose results were allowed the Rickmers to dominate the inevitable. Once the AMC was sunk, the Bremen rice trade by the First World War. raider ran wild in an attempt to sink as Dannhauer fills the remainder of many ships as possible before continuing on 82 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord with what would be become one of the most Admiral Scheer’s forward radar and thus successful raids on commerce by a German eliminated the raider’s night advantage. surface warship. What has been seriously With this in mind, it is quite overlooked in previous literature is what conceivable that with such an important and transpired as the raider descended upon the well-known action during the Battle of the 37 fleeing ships. The Canadian Pacific Atlantic, there was little new material to be steamer Beaverford, commanded by Captain presented. Bernard Edwards shatters this Hugh Pettigrew and armed with nothing illusion with his latest book providing a more than the typical 4-inch gun on the plethora of new aspects to the story in a stern and a single 3-inch on her bow, very engaging fashion. The author does a decided not to go quietly. One of her shells fine job of explaining the strategic backdrop landed close enough to the raider that her to the convoy action and the events leading full attention turned to the merchantman. up to it. Readers are introduced to both Captain Pettigrew had, in fact, made the sides and are familiar with the situation conscious decision to become HX-84’s before battle is joined. protector, taking his ship out of cover and It is well known that Admiral engaging the German warship. This he did Scheer’s B-Dienst intelligence team knew with considerable skill as the Beaverford’s of HX 84 and the interception was no action lasted an unbelievable four hours accident. For the German raider, running before she finally succumbed to shellfire. across the merchant Mopan, steaming After the sinking of the Beaverford, independently was an unwelcome delay, but Admiral Scheer achieved only one more the latter’s captain chose to save the lives of success that night, largely by chance. his crew rather than be sunk while Having been in action for ten hours and broadcasting an RRR warning. forced to expend one-third of his Nevertheless, the smoke from the sinking ammunition thanks to two gunnery duels, Mopan was sighted by the convoy which Theodore Kranke made the decision to went on alert. Interesting to note is that this break off action with his raider and steamed was not the first warning that not all was on into the South Atlantic. well in the area. A third officer of one of Two more “unknown” merchant the merchant vessels had spotted a float ships made a great contribution to the battle. plane, Admiral Scheer’s – which could not The Swedish Stureholm, commanded by be identified as such, but was known to be Sven Olander, rescued the survivors from from a warship for certain. For one reason Jervis Bay, many of them having spent ten or another, this information was never hours in the water, and decided to return to passed on to the Admiralty by either the Halifax. Gloucester City, a convoy rescue commodore or Captain Fegen. ship of the dispersed OB 237 steamed as Initially mistaken for a British R- fast as she could and the day following the class battleship, Admiral Scheer was soon action rescued seven boatloads of survivors made out and Jervis Bay swung out to from four ships, totalling 92 men. The engage as HX 84 scattered behind her. author also mentions that while a single Although there could be no question of the merchant vessel was able to accomplish outcome, considering the impossible odds, this, a group of “four-stacker” Royal Navy the author notes that Jervis Bay lasted over destroyers that were ordered to the scene 20 minutes in action and even more after the Admiralty received the initial importantly, forced the raider to expend 335 reports, reported finding nothing in the shells. Furthermore, the firing disabled same area. Book Reviews 83 It is these contributions by the deeply engaging story. Fortunately, that is merchantmen that the author wants to what Greg Flemming has produced with At ensure are not forgotten and, indeed, he the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, recognizes the Beaverford, Stureholm, and Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of Philip Gloucester City for their key roles. Given Ashton. Based chiefly on Ashton’s own Edwards’ background in the merchant navy, account, published nearly 300 years ago, it is evident that his focus is on the history Flemming’s book details the capture, ordeal, of the merchant ships. Nevertheless, the and eventual return of Massachusetts research in this book is excellent and the fisherman Philip Ashton between 1723 and quality shows despite the absence of 1725. Along with Ashton’s amazing tale of footnotes. The only thing that this reviewer survival, Flemming captures a sense of the can point out is that although Edwards golden age of piracy. The reader is hauled mentions Admiral Hipper’s abortive effort up and down the east coast of North to attack convoy WS5A, he does state that America, circled around the Caribbean, and no ships were sunk. According to Arnold even transported to Europe and Africa Hague’s work on Allied convoys, the tracing the movements of some of the most convoy was dispersed and did not reform notorious pirates of the age. until several days later. Besides these minor In the first chapter Flemming nagging comments from a naval historian, introduces the main character, Philip there is little else to critique. Ashton, as well as the pirate who captured Edwards promises to tell the “full” him, Edward Low. The two meet when story of the battle of HX 84 and this he has Low’s crew captures the small fishing achieved with skill. The biggest vessel containing Ashton and other contribution the book makes is bringing the fishermen off the coast of New England. merchant ship’s sacrifice out from the Mainly from Ashton’s account, the depths of history and making their story following chapter tells of Ashton’s known within the greater story that was the resistance to joining the pirate crew and his Convoy battle of HX 84 on 6 November harrowing experiences on board as a 1940. captive. Ashton finally finds himself with a split-second decision to make as an Christopher Kretzschmar opportunity arises to leave the ship for the Upper Hampstead, New Brunswick island of Roatan (off the coast of modern day Belize). Ashton boards a longboat with Gregory N. Flemming. At the Point of a seven pirates sent to shore to retrieve fresh Cutlass. The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, water. In one of the more detailed sections and Lonely Exile of Philip Ashton. Lebanon, of the book, Flemming recounts Ashton’s NH: ForeEdge from University Press of careful manoeuvering away from the pirates New England, www.upne.com, 2014. 256 and into the thickness of the island jungle. pp., illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, Once free from the pirates, Ashton index. US $29.95 cloth; ISBN 978-1-61168- faces starvation and mosquitoes, and even 515-2. (Ebook, 978-1-61168-562-6, $26.99) encounters the occasional passerby. Unbeknownst to him, Roatan sits along a Too often, the study of history is considered path taken by ships transporting logwood just an endless succession of names, places, from the mainland to various parts of the dates, and battles. Good history is more Caribbean and beyond. This trade was also than a chronicle or a simple accounting of part of a territorial dispute between the impersonal events. Good history can be a Spanish and English. The Baymen, sailors 84 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord and labourers who cut and hauled the narrative as a guide, Flemming “plugs the logwood, were just as wary of pirates as holes” so to speak, regarding the people, they were of ships bearing the flag of an places, and events that weave in and out of opposing country. Despite being marooned Ashton’s story. Incorporating quotes from on a deserted island, Ashton found himself Ashton’s original narrative, Flemming in the middle of an international tug-of-war. provides the reader with a consistent In April 1725, a British warship, HMS contemporary voice from the era. Through Diamond, along with several brigantines Ashton, the reader also gets a sense of some bound for New England, anchored just off of the other individuals who played a Roatan. Ashton spotted the vessels and significant role in his story. We learn of the shortly thereafter made contact with a few cruelty and barbarity from the mouth of sailors who had taken a longboat to shore to pirate captain Edward Low and his fill their water casks. Ironically, the same quartermaster Francis Spriggs. We get a need that had driven the pirates to shore to sense of the worry of the Baymen hiding on allow Ashton’s initial escape also granted Roatan from their leader dubbed “Father him his freedom from the island. The Hope.” From Ashton himself, if one is to emaciated Ashton was allowed passage take his published narrative as his own back to New England on one of the words, the reader is privy to his struggles brigantines. By May 1725, Ashton had resisting Low’s pirate crew and his moral returned home. reasons for doing so. Ashton’s ordeal became known to A story with so many characters, New England minister John Barnard, who places, ship names, and locations could facilitated its writing and publication. easily get confusing. At times, the book Barnard’s motivation was to show how the struggles with this but Flemming always godly Ashton had survived due to his faith manages to bring his reader back to Ashton in God and his resistance to the unsavory and the main trunk of the story before the and immoral pirates. Without Barnard details become overwhelming. A few times, spearheading the publication of the work, Flemming introduces segments that seem Ashton’s Memorial may never have been tangential to Ashton’s story. An anecdote published. Flemming strongly claims that about the infamous pirate Henry Morgan, or the published work was read by Daniel the experiences of Boston minister John Defoe and influenced Defoe’s novel, The Barnard, appear at first to have little to do Four Years Voyages of Capt. George with Ashton. To Flemming’s credit, Roberts, published in 1726. The follow-up however, his use of these passages fills in to that most famous of shipwreck narratives, yet more gaps and leads the reader to a The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, deeper understanding of the individuals who George Roberts includes several details that interact in Ashton’s story. could only have been taken from Ashton’s There are few details regarding the Memorial. Defoe even names the pirate end of Ashton’s life. Flemming states that captain Ned Low. The similarities had been he returned to fishing and likely died at sea noted by scholars long before the sometime in his 40s. As for his captor, publication of this book, so Flemming Edward Low, the existing records do not stands on solid ground here. reveal his fate. This paucity of facts could What this book does well is frame easily be over-romanticized, but Flemming the capture, ordeal, and return of Ashton does a good job of sticking to his evidence within the larger narrative of pirate in making conclusions. activities. Using Ashton’s published With a tale involving widespread Book Reviews 85 locales and little-known islands, a more Palgrave Macmillan has embarked on a comprehensive map would be a welcome series of volumes entitled “Britain and the addition. Flemming includes a few World” which covers empire and cultural tantalizing photos of Roatan Island, but themes, largely within the past two these provide only scant imagery to go centuries, and is edited by the British along with the fantastic story. The Scholar Society. Barry Gough’s latest book, reproductions of eighteenth century maps of Pax Britannica, forms an important and Nova Scotia and the Caribbean are too impressive part of the series, which includes small to be of much use in tracking events volumes such as Imperial Endgame, of the story. In attempting to flesh out a Ordering Independence, Sport and the personal story with ship’s logs, court British World and British Images of records, and newspaper articles, the Germany. Most readers would be familiar, narrative can appear a bit disjointed at times in an offhand way, with the term Pax and an overall map of Ashton’s journey Britannica, without any clear idea of what it would be a useful way to track the events in really means. A typical view might be: “It the book. Even a careful reader will have to is part of that ancient time during which occasionally backtrack to double-check Great Britain dominated the world, usually names and places. to the detriment of everyone else, and which For an academic reader, is thankfully, safely in the rear-view Flemming’s synthesis of information is well mirror.” That this is facile and ill-informed done. Gleaning the necessary details from is no doubt axiomatic for members of the records three centuries old is never an easy CNRS, but its rebuttal by Gough is an task and those who study the period will important addition to the literature and he appreciate Flemming’s attention to detail clearly articulates the reality of the term and and thorough endnotes. For any reader, At what it means for us today. the Point of a Cutlass is an amazing tale of Gough covers the period from the adventure, danger, and survival. Philip end of the Napoleonic wars to the outbreak Ashton really was captured, lived among of the First World War. This century was pirates, escaped, and became a castaway on certainly not as peaceful as some might a remote Caribbean island. Even more have it, but the upheaval it experienced was remarkably, he made it back home to tell the not as all-consuming as the French tale. Ashton himself likely never knew the Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic impact his story would have even in his period. The wars that occurred after own lifetime. We are lucky someone in our Napoleon’s were either of short duration, lifetime came along to situate Ashton in his such as the wars of German and Italian rightful place in maritime history. unification or the Crimean War, or were the minor colonial scuffles of a G.H. Henty Shane Bell adventure in scale and flavour. One must Atlanta, Georgia exclude the bloodletting of the American Civil War, since that conflict’s relevance to Barry Gough. Pax Britannica: Ruling the the wider world was marginal. And, one Waves and Keeping the Peace before might also wonder at considering the Boer Armageddon. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave War and the Russo-Japanese War in the last Macmillan, www.palgraveconnect.com, years of the peaceable century as being 2014. xxi +408 pp., illustrations, notes, “minor,” but compared to the vast European index of ships, index. CDN $36.00, cloth; conflict at the turn of the nineteenth century, ISBN 978-1-137-25843-4. and the one to come at the conclusion of 86 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord Gough’s period, they were indeed of a lesser achievements were very real none the less. order. It is in this context that the Pax Gough has organized his thorough Britannica was established and imposed, analysis of the Pax Britannica topically and and this is Gough’s subject. geographically rather than chronologically. Pax Britannica arose out of the He commences with a preface that struggle with France that ended at Waterloo introduces his themes, a prologue that sets in 1815. The preceding 60 years had seen the scene, and then opens with a chapter on British naval predominance grow until it what the Pax Britannica was – notably by was unrivaled and its control of the seas observing that the term is retrospective, and unchallenged. Britain’s early industrial- was of organic growth and establishment ization, sophisticated finance and insurance rather than a coherent and consistent markets led to a trading behemoth that national strategy. Gough then provides leveraged its naval dominance and kept the chapters on the Royal Navy of the period, sea routes open and safe. These factors along with an outline of the empire as it were underpinned by an intellectual existed and grew throughout the century. preference for free trade with anyone, Of interest, and contrary to the common combined with the readily available markets view, Gough notes that much of the within the formal empire. Britain used its empire’s growth was reluctant, with many navy to impose its will on the seaborne examples of London repudiating the forces of rivals, as well as using the inherent acquisitive actions of the “man on the spot,” flexibility of its warships to land troops to largely on the grounds of expense and the deal with troubles wherever they arose. At desire not to provoke hostile reaction the same time, Britain also adopted policies without cause. (For example, on visiting that were more neutral, such as the active Hawaii, one might notice that the state flag surveying of coastal waters around the incorporates the Union Jack as a legacy of globe, building on the legacy of individuals the British presence, although ultimate such as Captain James Cook in the middle possession was conceded to the United to late decades of the eighteenth century. States. This need not have happened had More aggressively, and with a strong moral Britain been more aggressive.) If trade and ethical foundation, Britain also could be maintained without formal empire, endeavoured, with mixed results, but it was much to be preferred. ultimately with success, to suppress both Next, Gough examines surveying simple piracy and to end the slave trade (in the seas and coastlines, an activity that was both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans). constant throughout the period and a benefit Closely associated with the latter matter, that remains to this day. Chapters on the Britain strongly supported its missionary informal empire of the Americas, activities activities and actively spread the Christian in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and gospel to the four corners of the world. dealing with piracy and the slave trade Underpinning the entire enterprise was an follow. It is a complex story that suits the unwavering commitment to law, to justice, organizational approach adopted by Gough and to British institutions, ethics and well. culture. The ultimate outcome of the Pax The final chapters deal with the last Britannica was a prosperous, advanced, decades of the Pax Britannica period and largely peaceful world that was open to the competition with Germany that provided commerce and ideas to an extent never the impetus for the breakdown of the entire before experienced. Was all this self- structure. There are many elements to the interested? Of course. But the story of the rivalry with Germany, but the Book Reviews 87 key for Gough is to note how it forced and Imperial history, and has successfully Britain into the alliance system that pulled together a wide range of seemingly dominated Europe and led to the continental disparate topics into a coherent whole. commitment. In turn, the resulting First Future students of the empire in general, as World War crippled Britain’s financial and well as those focusing on naval policy, economic power and led to the Pax diplomacy and trade will have much with Britannica’s eclipse and decline. which to engage. I have no trouble in Admittedly, there was a flowering in the recommending this book accordingly. between-war decades, but it was a last gasp. Ian Yeates The trident was unambiguously passed to Regina, Saskatchewan the United States after the Second World War, and the unravelling of the empire accelerated in the 25 years that followed to Geirr H. Haarr. The Gathering Storm. The its ultimate demise into the rump that Naval War in Northern Europe, September remains (and likely always will). Gough 1939-April 1940. Annapolis, MD: Naval leaves the question open as to whether the Institute Press, www.nip.org, 2013. x+550 American version will be as significant and pp., illustrations, maps, appendices, notes, enduring. references, index. US $52.95, cloth; ISBN The book is thoroughly researched, 978-1-59114-331-4. making use of both primary and extensive secondary resources, with detailed chapter Geirr Haarr’s first Naval Institute volumes notes, as well as an annotated bibliography. on the battles for Norway in 1940 have been The only maps included in the book are the described as “monumental and end papers, which show the empire in 1815 unsurpassed.” This volume, to some extent and then in 1914. It would have been of a widening of those volumes’ history, some benefit to have provided more extends that deserved praise. Covering just detailed regional maps at the appropriate the first seven months of the expanding points in the narrative. This is not a major struggle at sea with meticulous research (his omission. The photos included are very references cover seven and one-half pages, well chosen, and the selection clearly from primary documents to newspapers of indicates the author’s Canadian nationality, the day, with 38 pages of notes, many worth with many coming from the archives in reading in themselves), Haarr tells in careful Esquimalt. Having this focus on the and impartial detail both the wider story of Canadian element of the Pax Britannica the growing U-boat battles, the new air war period is a nice touch; however, there are at sea, and the world-wide German many other illustrations from other corners panzerkreig of the heavily armed raiders. of the empire, so nothing is truly neglected. He intersperses this extensive picture with a My only complaint with the book’s careful re-telling of such exploits as the production is the selection of the font, sinking of the Athenia, Prien’s attack on which is rather small. This might be a sign Scapa Flow, the Norwegian side of the more of advancing decrepitude on my part “Altmark affair,” and several early U-boat than anything else, but I would have attacks and counter attacks. His narrative appreciated a larger font at the cost of style is both carefully crafted and yet increased book length. No doubt the mesmerising. Even though one tends to publisher had different priorities. know the stories in general, his expanded Gough has produced a fine history research makes each a new assessment. of a poorly understood feature of British Possibly the most illuminating and 88 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord valuable pages, even for historians familiar far-too-early start of the conflict for their with the field, are Haarr’s appendices. I had preparations, could never have won the not really appreciated how much had been Battle of the Atlantic. happening in the “war at sea” even in those This is a difficult book to read first months, often referred to as “the straight through, but a most rewarding one phoney war.” In fact, 232 merchant ships to dip into at any point and re-think one’s were sunk in the fall of 1939 alone; 35 assessment of individual actions or the German ships were captured; 26 Allied sweep of events from such an often- warships were sunk in the seven months. neglected period. There are many There were 11 German destroyer mine- photographs, often unique and of high laying operations off U.K. estuaries and quality, while the charts of a few actions are convoy routes, resulting in the probable loss both clear and readable. The reader gains of 64 ships. Other appendices list the the impression that, even though the names and some details of the RN’s 49 Norwegians became allies, Haarr has taken Armed Merchant Cruisers in operation a relatively neutral stand in not only his during the period, and the German and narrative but his assessments. This book British mine-layers in commission, a detail would be well worth acquiring for any naval usually glossed over in previous histories. library. Other details include the tonnages of iron Fraser McKee ore shipments (one of the two basic reasons Toronto, Ontario for the German invasion) and Norway’s protective minefields that were laid or planned. While this detail is available John Jordan (ed.) Warship 2014. London, elsewhere, it is not as carefully tabulated, UK: Conway, www.conwaypublishing.com, and is fascinating in itself. 2014. 208 pp., illustrations, maps, tables, The stories featured in Haarr’s notes, sources. US $59.95, cloth; ISBN 978- narrative are based on many of these tables. 1-5911-4923-1.-. (Distributed in North He evaluates the status of the various America by Naval Institute Press, potential combatants just before the war’s www.nip.org) outbreak, and quotes commanders-in-chief regarding their plans and reactions to the The year’s Warship annual follows the enemy’s early operations. There are themes of previous issues, providing chapters on early operations in German technical descriptions of a variety of home waters, on “the winter war,” the interesting warship types, new and old. introduction of anti-shipping air strikes, and Three of these articles deal with aircraft the successes and unexpected shortcomings carriers – Italian, British and Japanese – and of asdic as the anticipated solution to the four with warship classes of the past, German adoption of U-boat warfare. Haarr German, Japanese, French and Russian. not only recounts these many stories but There is an analysis of fire control in the links them to the wider and rapidly Royal Navy in the post-Second World War changing struggle, and impartially assesses period, and a very interesting account of the the results. The book ends with two escape of the uncompleted French battleship chapters, “Storm Warning” and Jean Bart from St. Nazaire in June 1940. “Conclusions,” the latter reflecting Haarr’s There are also the usual “notes,” book opinion that by failing to win the early naval reviews and gallery of photographs. war quickly, the German Navy, partly For the aircraft carrier articles, hindered by maintenance difficulties and a retired Italian Navy Commodore Michele Book Reviews 89 Consentino in his first contribution to As a sequel to his article in Warship 2011 on Warship provides a very detailed description the Dupuy-de-Lome, Luc Feron has of the versatile Italian aircraft-carrier provided a full description of the Amiral Cavour, which can operate Harrier jets and Charner class French cruisers which helicopters of various types besides being immediately followed that ship in the early able to embark assault troops with their 1890s and were much more successful, vehicles and equipment and having a dock three of them giving useful service in the for landing craft; all this on a displacement First World War. Stephen McLaughlin of 27,500 tonnes. The evolution of its continues his series on early Russian design from the earlier and smaller ironclads with a description of four turret Garibaldi is described and the article is ships named for famous Russian admirals. illustrated with excellent photographs, Combined with his previous articles on the plans, cross-sections and perspective Pervenets class floating batteries, the ten drawings. Rather similar treatment is given Ericson monitors and the three Coles by Ian Sturton to “CVA-01: Portrait of a monitors, this completes his coverage of the Missing Link” but this time the few early coast defense ships and we should photographs are only of the aircraft she next expect him to turn his attention to the would have embarked, because the ship was seagoing ironclads of the 1870s. A fourth never built. CVA-01 would have been the such article by Kathrin Milanovitch first post-war designed carrier for the Royal describes the eight Japanese armoured Navy but her size and complexity was cruisers that fought in the Russo-Japanese almost too much for a British shipbuilding war (1904-1905), with some interesting industry in decline and none of the comments on the reasons behind their shipbuilding firms was anxious to take it on, design. even in consortium. The project was At the end of the Second World cancelled in February 1966. Hans Lengerer, War, the Royal Navy found itself well who has contributed many articles on the behind the United States Navy in anti- Japanese navy, describes the third carrier aircraft fire control. “Post-War Fire Control featured, the Japanese Second World War in the Royal Navy” by Peter Marland, a light carrier Ryujo. Again the detailed former weapons engineer, describes the descriptions with plans and illustrations take RN’s efforts to catch up to the USN. It was the reader through the initial design and two well into the 1960s before anything near a reconstructions. Ryujo was lost in August comparable level was reached. The 1942. photographs and diagrams show the bulky Turning to the more historical equipment and consoles of that pre-digital features, The Last of the Line by Aidan age. Dodson is a history of the last two classes of With his two recent books on the German pre-Dreadnought battleships. It is French battleships and cruisers of the inter- not a detailed technical description but an war period, Warship editor John Jordan has account of their service and changing established himself as an authority on that appearance illustrated with many country’s navy. Here he tells how, as the photographs and elevations. In the post- German army closed in, the uncompleted First World War period, four of these battleship Jean Bart escaped from St. obsolete ships were all that were allowed to Nazaire, managed to rendezvous with a the German Navy by the Versailles treaty small tanker to get just enough fuel and, and, in fact, two of them were operational with some destroyers as escort, made her right to the end of the Second World War. slow way to Casablanca where she stayed. 90 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord In November 1942 when the Allies invaded “causality between migration and [its] North Africa she was able, with her single transport mechanisms,” by focusing “on the heavy gun turret, to fire from her berth at oceanic crossing” (xvi). While analyzing the invasion fleet until disabled by heavy why immigrants voluntarily migrated across American bombing. The Jean Bart the Atlantic, he attempts to “address the eventually ran her trials in 1949 and it was fundamental causes of modern mass 1955 before she was finally completed. migration, through systematic explication of Each Warship volume is interesting its fundamental processes” (xix). His larger in itself, but it is as a series that it is most purpose is to offer insights into valuable and is well worth the shelf space a contemporary migration movements, a set of them occupies. project that he supplements with his “Business of Migration” website, at C. Douglas Maginley www.business-of-migration.com. Unlike Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia other histories that focus on either business or migration, Keeling’s book avoids Drew Keeling. The Business of covering any specific company, industry or Transatlantic Migration between Europe ethnic group. Instead, he produces an and the United States, 1900-1914. Zurich: innovative approach to understanding the Chronos Verlag, wwwchronos-verlag.ch, forces that affected migration between 2012. xix+345pp., illustrations, maps, Europe and the United States in this 14-year tables, bibliography, index. US $44.00, period. The result is a text that is accessible CHF, 34.00 €, hardback; ISBN 978-3-0340- to the general reader as well as the seasoned 1152-5. scholar. In seven chapters, Keeling At first glance, Drew Keeling’s The examines the pushes and pulls, the risks and Business of Transatlantic Migration appears rewards that motivated immigrants and to be a comprehensive, tedious volume of shipping companies to make these early twentieth-century shipping statistics transatlantic crossings a common and immigration figures. Upon closer occurrence in the early twentieth century. examination, though, Keeling’s work is a Chapter one describes the influences of rich, creative study of the intersection of European migration and the rise of the migration, business, and policy in the North steam ship industry in the nineteenth Atlantic from 1900 to 1914. Keeling makes century. Chapters two through four explore important connections among the shipping the economics, shipping capitalists, and fare companies, the migrant passengers using wars of the era. Chapters five through them, and the role of governments in seven examine immigration policy on both controlling that migration. The author sides of the Atlantic, the emergence of brilliantly conceives a framework to analyze “repeat migration” and the modification of the risks of transatlantic shipping and the onboard berthing to improve passenger ways shipping lines, immigrants and nations accommodations. Throughout the book are mitigated those risks in the first decade and useful statistical tables, hand-drawn charts, a half of the twentieth century. As a result, cartoons, and photos. Each subsection is The Business of Transatlantic Migration annotated with an outline number and title, serves as a major contribution in the fields and Keeling’s footnotes are a treasure trove of business history, immigration history, and of primary and secondary sources complete shipping history. with descriptive notes for those wishing to Keeling seeks to understand the investigate further. At the end of the book Book Reviews 91 are over 40 pages of appendices that these shipping giants. Just as refreshing is supplement Keeling’s observations and Keeling’s ability to make the immigrants an conclusions. All of these features make The equally significant human force in this Business of Transatlantic Migration a story. He astutely observes that the navigable narrative that can also serve as a migrants, shipping line executives, and the reference for further research in twentieth- governments managed all of the risks of century shipping and immigration. transoceanic travel save one—an implosion If there are any shortfalls to this of the global system that occurred during history, they may result from Keeling’s the First World War. The Great War ended a approach of merging statistical analysis unique period of “mass relocation as a with an historical narrative, occasionally major global travel business,” but as the giving his chapters the look and feel of a author concludes, the march of population shareholder report for a major company. By relocation globalization has endured (268). the middle of the book, however, Keeling’s This book is an important contribution to style and method effectively convey the understanding that march. relationship between supply and demand for Jon Scott Logel transatlantic passages, and the ability of the Portsmouth, Rhode Island prospective travelers to afford the cost of migrating from Europe to the United States. The author supplements discoveries derived Roger Knight. Britain Against Napoleon: from his primary research by placing them The Organization of Victory, 1793-1815. in context with the larger narrative of London: Allen Lane, www.penguin.co.uk, previous efforts in the field of immigration 2013. xxxviii+678 pp., illustrations, maps, history. The seminal works of J.D. Gould, appendices, chronology, glossary, notes, Oscar Handlin, and John Higham are all bibliography, index. UK £30.00, CDN included in the bibliography. $54.00, cloth; ISBN 978-1-846-14177-5. Keeling’s central figures in this (UK £10.99, CDN $18.00, paper) story create a recognizable touchstone for his argument. In addition to the European Roger Knight’s Britain Against Napoleon: groups that voyaged to America in the first The Organization of Victory, 1793-1815 is decade of the twentieth century, readers will the culminating work of his exploration of be familiar with Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. the British Government’s efforts to preserve Morgan, and the tragic voyage of the the country and defeat the French and their Titanic. Perhaps not as familiar, but clearly assortment of allies during the French among the main characters in this study are Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. the four major shipping lines of that era: the Touching only briefly on the battles that Cunard Line, North German Lloyd (NDL), form the usual narrative of the story, Knight White Star, and the Hamburg places the efforts of the people and Amerikanische Packetfahrt Aktien- departments that ran the war for Britain in Gesellschaft (HAPAG). Shipping the foreground; the politicians, appointed executives Albert Ballin and Joseph Bruce heads of departments, secretaries and clerks. Ismay are also important to understanding He lays out the development in government the business interests of the transatlantic bureaucracy, the organization of the army industry on the eve of the First World War. and navy, and the growth in industry to The Business of Transatlantic meet the scale of production necessary to Migration wonderfully recounts the wage the 22 years of war that swept across successes and shortfalls experienced by Europe, spilling over to spots around the 92 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord globe. Knight turns the focus from the in turn, resulted in the hiring of additional manoeuvring and combat on the field of secretaries and hundreds of clerks to process battle to the struggle of politics and logistics the information needed to conduct the war. to send, maintain, and operate British and Knight devotes a chapter to discussing how allied forces. The book makes clear the developing intelligence about enemy massive scope of the effort to defend the movements (both martial and political) island nation between 1793 and 1815. became crucial. Of critical importance was The book is divided into four the construction of a telegraph system to sections. The first sets out the context and communicate vital information quickly from early preparations that Britain made for the ships arriving in England to London. future wars in the decade prior to 1793. The next two chapters outline the victualing After the American Revolution, Britain and transportation needs and stretch the turned its attention to the balance of power section’s narrative to 1812. Feeding both in Europe and worked to secure new the navy and army required the sources of materials needed to maintain its accumulation, processing, packaging and navy and develop new commerce. A naval transportation of a significant portion of the competition between France and Britain led island’s food resources, not without local to increases in naval funding and creation of protest. Coordinating the effort to send the a sufficiently prepared fleet to readily meet appropriate amount of supplies to a continental threats. William Pitt’s squadron at sea or an army fighting on the willingness to finance the navy in a time of continent was continually refined, perhaps peace (among other revisions to British best exemplified by Britain’s success in finances) is seen as the key to Britain’s maintaining Admiral Saumarez in the Baltic preparedness at the outbreak of the French between 1808 and 1812. Transportation Revolution. also involved moving regiments around the The second section focuses on the coast of Europe and into the far colonies. first eight years of conflict between Britain This logistical nightmare was gradually and France but two chapters do extend the smoothed into more successful operations discussion up to 1812. Knight suggests that as the war continued. Using merchant the war was waged much like other vessels as transports allowed the navy to eighteenth-century wars with battles in amass the required numbers of ships, while Europe, colonies attacked, alliances formed practice perfected the art of landing and and broken, and naval engagements in removing thousands of troops and their tons European waters. The difference is one of of equipment. scale. The French Revolutionary War Section three turns to the political enveloped a much larger geographical area situation in Britain between 1801 and 1815, and required far more resources. At first, the threat of invasion and the growth of the the British were not prepared for war on this armament industry. Rather than seriously new scale, best exemplified by Knight’s impeding the war effort, Knight reveals that discussion of the 1796 effort to seize the during the political turmoil from Pitt’s death French colonies in the West Indies. to the ascendency of Lord Liverpool in Abercromby’s mission to the West Indies 1812, Britain’s ability to wage war steadily stretched British resources to the breaking improved. The threat of invasion served to point. The response to the problems unite most of the British population behind encountered was to revamp how the the war effort. It resulted in the building of bureaucracy worked, stressing efficiencies, massive fortifications and a defensive line timeliness and accuracy of the work. This, of blockhouses along the coast and changes Book Reviews 93 to militia laws to arm the nation to resist war. This starts with a look at the influence French invaders. Changing governments of the War with America taking British led to the uncovering of irregularities within seamen from the European theatre but the Admiralty and Navy Board, the Military quickly leaves this to explore the experience Department and in the Board of Ordnance. of militia units in Britain. More could be Most importantly, this led to improved said about the draining effect the War of accounting procedures – the last necessary 1812 had on Britain’s European effort. The major development in the various third chapter covers events leading to the departments during the period. Battle of Waterloo. An economically The growth of the industrial stressed British government immediately complex needed to arm and outfit the army spends the needed money to field an allied and navy was an essential element in the army against the returned Napoleon. With victory over Napoleon. Large the ever-agile Wellington at the helm, a manufacturing and assembly plants were combined British and German army constructed in British cities, most notably, defeated Bonaparte’s smaller force on a the block mills at Portsmouth. Extremely field in Belgium. An Afterward describes expensive, these various factories allowed the post-war downsizing of the navy, army Britain to supply, repair and replace naval and government and the future careers of and army materiel to maintain their forces at key individuals mentioned in the book. sea or in the field far better than any The reader takes away four key opponent. The production capacity elements. The first is the incredible number repeatedly allowed Britain to supply its of people Knight describes (with detail) allies’ armies with tens of thousands of who played a vital role in Britain’s success. firearms and their accoutrements. France They are an assortment of personalities; never approached this level or production. strong, dynamic, sometimes quirky, The section ends with a discussion of how occasionally self-possessed, stubborn, the government raised funds to pay for the inventive and above all, driven. For war. A range of taxes, including a personal example, Samuel Bentham’s genius of tax, and a banking system that could raise organizing work played a key role in the loans when necessary ultimately met the industrialization which took place in the financial needs. There is overlap between latter half of the war, but his lack of social the second and third sections of the book skills ultimately sidelined him. which could be confusing to the reader as Wellington’s adeptness at choosing and time is passed through in one context and using a battlefield to his advantage and his then again in another with a slightly logistical abilities was enough for Whitehall different perspective on events. to tolerate his exceptional talent for Three final chapters focus on the complaining. Lord Liverpool and those he last three years of conflict. One chapter gathered around him from 1812 to 1815 deals with Napoleon’s disastrous Russian were able set aside their differences and Campaign and the British effort in the work together as an efficient, effective Peninsula in 1812 and 1813. While group. During the course of the period we Napoleon encounters the problems of over- see an old group of leaders and bureaucrats stepping his supply line’s capability, a well- shuffle off the stage in the 1790s and a new oiled system supports Wellington’s efforts more effective and younger group begins to in the Peninsula and into southern France. form as Napoleon wages war. Another explores the manpower shortage A second major element is Britain’s faced by Britain in the final years of the industrial development and the rise of mass 94 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord production, coupled with the capacity to Militia around Britain between 1803 and coordinate raw resources, including food, 1816 (442) is exemplary at driving the point for delivery to the navy or army wherever home. they might be. These critical elements grew Of the two appendices, the first out of the earlier preparations, before 1793, lists the names and dates of service for the and the war spurred them on to new heights. officials involved in government during the Thirdly, Knight identifies the war years 1793-1815. Though all the British government’s willingness to tax and individuals and their service are described the existing economic conditions, in detail within the text, this list does particularly the banks’ ability to help the provide an overall temporal sequence. The government debt. Britain was simply second appendix lists “The Reports of superior to any other nation at the time, Parliamentary Commissions and Enquires most importantly, France. Although close to relating to the Army and Navy 1780-1812” the end of a frayed economic tether by and the commissioners of each one. This, 1815, the British government willingly too, presents a nice overview of the dived further into debt to meet the sequence of commissions and enquires emergency of Napoleon’s return from exile. discussed within the book. The detailed The fourth, and for this reviewer, chronology of major events in the period is central factor in Britain’s victory over a nice addition but not necessary. The Napoleon is the massive growth of glossary of terms (mainly military and government which allowed politicians as naval) is for those with little background in well as military leaders to organize national the era. resources. The huge expansion of a clerical Knight’s bibliography is a solid list bureaucracy, the commitment to of major academic works on the economic, systematically recording, organizing and social, naval, military and government dispatching information and directions, and history of the period. He describes archival the improvement in accounting procedures sources more generally, while including lay at the very heart of Britain’s success. contemporary memoirs, pamphlets and Knight’s description of this expansion is books among the academic sources. The exceptional and will serve as the notes are adequate to locate the source of authoritative account for some time to episodes, quotes and figures mentioned in come. the book. The index is workable and There are illustrations of key thorough. government, army and naval officials, The book will be a valuable asset government buildings, naval yards, and the for those interested in the growth of odd engagement. Their selection reflects government during the late-eighteenth and the focus of the book. Nine maps early-nineteenth centuries. Roger Knight graphically represent various discussions reminds us that wars are not won only on a within the text. The first, the European battlefield but require an immense effort theatre of war (58), drives home the scale from a highly organized government to and difficulty of placing, provisioning and direct and support the effort of those who directing Britain’s armed forces in its fight. struggle with France. Other maps identify Thomas Malcomson British sites of ship building, telegraph Toronto, Ontario systems, and defensive lines. The map which accompanies the description of the convoluted movement of the West Essex Book Reviews 95 Karl Ernst Alwyn Lorbach. Conspiracy On tasks. (This psychological diagnosis is the The Bounty: Bligh’s Convenient Mutiny. author’s speculation.) On the positive side, Cairns, AU: self-published, Bligh was intelligent, a good navigator, and www.bountyconspiracy.com, 2012. ix+366 a creditable cartographer. A clever and pp., illustrations, maps, appendices, successful schemer, he rose to the rank of supplementary notes, bibliography, index. vice admiral – no small feat. US $15.00 (Kindle version): ISBN 978-0- The Bounty’s primary mission was 9806914-1-2. to first harvest, and then transport, viable breadfruit plants to British colonies. The The literature and film industry abound with large melon-like fruit was a good source of tales of the mutiny on His Majesty’s Armed nutrients for slaves working in warm Vessel Bounty. HMAV Bounty (formerly climates where these plants could easily Bethia) was a 90-foot long converted propagate. According to the author, this merchant ship displacing 215 tons. She was mission was a fool’s errand. There was no armed with four 4-pounders and ten swivel vital need for Coral Sea breadfruit. Much guns and sailed on her historic voyage with closer than Tahiti, a seeded species of a complement of 46 officers and men. breadfruit grew in East India. Similar to an Lorbach revisits the oft-told story of the African variety, it was more to the slaves’ events surrounding the mutiny episode and liking. Meanwhile, other species were some subsequent incidents (see Voyage of already growing in the British botanical HMS Pandora by Captain Edward Edwards gardens at St. Vincent and Jamaica. RN). In about 300 sometimes-rambling Secondly, even if one could justify the pages, he proffers his theory about what breadfruit expedition, Lorbach makes a really happened with selective but compelling case that the size and intriguing evidence. configuration of Bounty was a poor choice Bounty’s captain was Lieutenant for a mission designed to transport live William Bligh, an ambitious man who plant specimens for propagation. started life in the British navy as a ship’s Bligh’s secondary personal mission boy (captain’s steward) and, sometime later, was to be the first British naval officer to appeared as sailing master on HMS safely transit the dangerous uncharted Resolution under famed Captain James Torres Strait just north of the Australian Cook. Bligh was the son of a Plymouth Continent. excise and customs official (not the best Such a voyage was unlikely in a background for rising in a class-conscious deep drafted vessel like Bounty, especially Royal Navy). The lieutenant was an when loaded with a cargo of breadfruit enigma. Short in stature with a prominent plants and a full crew. facial scar, he was effeminate in his Lorbach analyzes many of the demeanour, had a curt temper, displayed a characters in this drama, especially Master’s sadistic streak, drank heavily and was likely Mate Fletcher Christian, gardeners David bisexual. Generally a poor leader, Bligh Nelson and William Brown, and some displayed violent, unpredictable mood minor players such as surgeon John Huggan swings. The author notes that these and steward John Smith. Nelson and symptoms are consistent with bipolar Christian spend the most time at centre disorder or manic-depressive illness, a stage and, after Bligh, are the most disorder that causes unusual shifts in interesting men onboard. temperament, energy, activity, and the Nelson’s job was to obtain the ability consistently to perform ordinary breadfruit plants, care for them once aboard, 96 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord and assure their survival to Bounty’s rather than return to cold, dank England destination. Lorbach spends many pages under the command of an often-tyrannical explaining why this mission was probably captain. doomed from the start and how, once Bligh Because Lorbach frequently shifts apparently realized it, he grew fearful of the focus in his chapters, Conspiracy On The career consequences of such a failure. He Bounty can be a frustrating read. His prose, may then have thought of a dubious way to while excellent at times, is uneven and his salvage his reputation with the Admiralty in digressions are frequently redundant. London. Conan Doyle wrote about theorizing from Christian, the second in command, incomplete data in A Scandal in Bohemia. was popular with the crew and, according to In the novel Sherlock Holmes noted, the author, may have spurned Bligh in a “insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit murky homosexual relationship. The two theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” men had been close for much of the voyage, Similarly, it is sometimes difficult to dining together at least three times a week. distinguish Lorbach’s facts from his In fact, Bligh allowed Christian free access theories. to his personal liquor stash in the captain’s In spite of these flaws, the work is cabin. Before the mutiny, Christian bore far more than just another “Mutiny on the the brunt of several of Bligh’s public Bounty” book. The author takes the reader tirades, which may have helped precipitate on a journey to the realm of breadfruit the revolt against Bligh’s command. There horticulture, as well as what it was like may also have been a hidden twist to the inside this great floating greenhouse. This tale as usually related – a causal arrow is done in richer detail and depth than in pointing in an unanticipated direction. The previous Bounty stories. Lorbach succeeds breadfruit mission was obviously doomed, in capturing one’s imagination about the but a calculated risk might salvage Bligh’s events that may really have happened and reputation. According to Lorbach, the why. The validity of his theories is still an mutiny may have either been agreed upon open question, but it is a thought-provoking between Bligh and Christian beforehand, or read. at least planned by Bligh to take place at a Louis Arthur Norton certain favourable location, so that when West Simsbury, Connecticut given the ship’s launch, a crew and supplies, he would stand a good chance of sailing through the Torres Strait. His 3,618 nautical Carnes Lord and Andrew S. Erickson (eds.) mile, (4,618 statute miles) 25-day voyage to Rebalancing U.S. Forces. Basing and Timor in a 23-foot open boat did bring a Forward Presence in the Asia-Pacific. measure of success from the notoriously Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, aborted voyage. www.nip.org, 2014. xii+226 pp., maps, Lorbach examines many aspects of notes, index. US $47.95, UK £36.50, cloth; the Bounty incident in great detail and, in an ISBN 978-1-61251-465-9. Ebook edition unusual chapter, graphically describes the available. sexual mores of the South Sea islanders, particularly those who inhabited Tahiti. Rebalancing U.S. Forces: Basing and Focusing on the sexual freedoms that were Forward Presence in the Asia-Pacific, the native custom is important because it edited by the Naval War College’s Carnes explains why many of the mutineers wished Lord and Andrew S. Erickson, emphasizes to return to an idyllic South Sea island life the importance of bases and other naval Book Reviews 97 facilities, both ashore and afloat to does China’s anti-access/area denial America’s strategic interests in this critical (A2/AD) capability threaten to limit the region of the globe. The spectre of China’s operational freedom of America’s aircraft growing challenge to U.S. strategic carrier task forces in, for instance, a dominance in the Asia-Pacific hovers over confrontation over Taiwan, but it puts at risk the entire work and indeed suggests why it the bases in Japan proper and on Okinawa. was undertaken. The editors have enlisted eight President Barak Obama’s major distinguished American and Australian foreign policy venture of 2011, the so-called scholars of the Asia-Pacific whose treatises “pivot to Asia,” was supposed to inaugurate detail the historical development of the an era characterized by a U.S. drawdown bases, their current importance, and new from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a strategic approaches to basing both ashore renewed focus on the security situation in and afloat. Individual chapters focus on the the Far East. Events, however, have bases and other facilities on Guam, in conspired to lessen the impact of that Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, rebalancing effort and secondarily the the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, rationale for this study. The Taliban’s and Central Asia. Sam Tangredi concludes resilience in Afghanistan, the Islamic State’s the work with a chapter revisiting the conquest of major portions of Syria and concept of Sea Basing, widely debated Iraq, the Assad regime’s continued earlier in the century, as a possible solution existence in Syria, and Russian adventurism to the base-vulnerability issue. in Ukraine command the Obama Andrew S. Erickson and Justin D. administration’s attention on a daily basis. Mikolay make a convincing argument that In short, other world affairs keep pulling the Guam should be developed as a major United States back in. logistics hub for U.S. forces in the Pacific Nonetheless, Rebalancing U.S. because of its welcoming American Forces reinforces the inescapable population and freedom from political conclusion that America’s military presence problems connected to the bases in Japan in the Asia-Pacific has been and will and elsewhere. The Naval War College’s continue to be vital, not only to U.S. Toshi Yoshihara concludes, after a interests but to the political stability and comprehensive review of Chinese-language economic well-being of the region. The materials, that Beijing regards the base at majority of America’s 750 overseas bases Yokosuka in Japan, host to America’s only and facilities are found there. The forward-deployed carrier USS George overriding message of the book is that U.S. Washington (CVN 73), with great concern. naval bases and other installations in Japan, Influential Chinese commentators believe South Korea, Australia, Singapore, and that this threat could be neutralized through elsewhere provide the foundation for the coercion of the Japanese government or American commitment. The physical direct missile attack, perhaps even a presence of these bases helps reassure their preemptive strike a la Pearl Harbor. And host nations that treaties of alliance and Yoshihara ends with the sobering thought other formal agreements with the United that “no one would know for sure whether a States are no mere pieces of paper. Less Chinese warhead hurtling toward Yokosuka comforting, however, is the study’s was a nuclear or conventional weapon” argument that major advances in Chinese (60). missile and other military technologies have Terence Roehrig details the put these facilities at great risk. Not only evolution of the U.S. basing structure in 98 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord South Korea and the key issue of which also have benefitted from an extended country would exercise operational control discussion of basing possibilities with India of Korean and American forces in wartime. and Vietnam, potential allies in any As of this writing, both governments have confrontation with China. agreed to shelve the contentious subject These points aside, Rebalancing indefinitely. Jack McCaffrie and Chris U.S. Forces presents a wealth of Rahman provide similar coverage of the information and authoritative analysis on a mutually beneficial U.S.-Australia alliance subject of major importance to the United that has facilitated numerous basing States and its future in the pivotal Asia- agreements and combined exercises in Pacific region. Australia. Edward J. Marolda The next chapter, by Rahman, is Dumfries, Virginia especially welcome because it documents a story probably unfamiliar to most observers – the phenomenal growth and maturity of Jean Marteilhe. Galley Slave. Barnsley, S. the U.S.-Singapore military relationship. Yorks.: Seaforth Publishing, www.seaforth He posits that “Singapore has become the publishing.com, 2010. xii+210pp., map, most important partner in the U.S. Pacific notes. UK £12.99, cloth; ISBN 978-1- Command . . . after Japan, South Korea, and 84832-070-3. Australia” (121). U.S. naval facilities in the Galley Slave is a new edition of island nation have become key to U.S. French Huguenot Jean Marteilhe’s (1684- security interests in Southeast Asia. Walter 1777) experiences as a slave in France and C. Ludwig III, Erickson, and Mikolay on French galleys during the 1702-1713 present a large chapter that covers the Wars of Spanish Succession. The first title history and development of Diego Garcia as in Seaforth Publishing’s series Seafarers’ a strategic asset for the United States in the Voices, the book contains a four-page Indian Ocean, and explores similar Indian editorial note and 29-page introduction by and Chinese interests in the region. BBC writer Vincent McInerney, a map Alexander Cooley explores the plotting key locations that concerned vicissitudes of U.S. base development in Marteilhe in France, The Netherlands and Central Asia, making the point that local England, and 39 endnotes. There is no politics have usually been the driving force bibliography or selected reading list. For a with regard to the opening and/or closing of depiction of a galley, readers will need to U.S. military bases. While well-researched make do with the jacket illustration, and written, this chapter strikes the reviewer Cornelis Hendriksz Vroom’s “Spanish Men- as an odd choice for a study of U.S. bases – of-War Engaging Barbary Corsairs” primarily naval bases – in the maritime (undated, but 1615, and incorrectly titled domain of the Asia-Pacific. In addition, the ‘Spanish men-of-war engaging corsair bases in Central Asia supported the conflict galleys’). Marteilhe’s narrative is one of the in Afghanistan, from which the United few surviving captivity accounts from the States is supposedly pivoting. early eighteenth century. Attractively A chapter on the Philippines, with priced, it will appeal to maritime history its long history of hosting U.S. military enthusiasts and those interested in the installations and recent efforts to facilitate impact of the Catholic-Protestant turmoil in U.S. access to the island nation’s basing early modern Europe. resources, would have enhanced the overall Marteilhe wrote his autobiography coverage of the subject. The work would or Memoirs in French, probably in the Book Reviews 99 Netherlands, at some unspecified time in board a French slave galley to that of a the mid-1700s after his release from French slaving vessel. One also wonders captivity in 1713. English readers first whether the outbreak of the Seven Years’ would have learned about his account from War (1756), largely contested between a brief note about it published in the England and France, helped to trigger the London Monthly Review in May 1757. publication of the first English-language The next year, translator James Willington edition in 1757. and London printer R. Griffiths produced Some of the surprise of reading the two-volume Memoirs of a Protestant, Marteilhe’s narrative is lost as McInerney’s Condemned to the Galleys of France, for Introduction quotes several of our captive’s his Religion. Like many narratives with a important passages at length. Thus, one re- maritime theme, there have been several reads key information about imprisonment, reprints of Marteilhe’s Memoirs during the punishment, galley construction, and past 250 years. In 1765, a Dublin edition skirmishes involving the galley slaves. appeared, upon which this Seaforth edition Marteilhe’s 250-word discussion about is based. Most editors abridged how “a Galley cannot be moved without Marteilhe’s theological discussion; Galley Slaves,” for example, is transcribed word Slave reduced the text from 80,000 to for word. Readers should also know that 40,000 words. There are ten chapter titles, they may not be reading Marteilhe’s own but since they do not appear in the 1757 or words. The editorial note states that the 1765 English-language editions, it is volume is an “edited abridgement” and that unclear when they were added. “spelling and punctuation and the use of McInerney’s lengthy introduction capitalised nouns have been modernised” helps place the captivity narrative in (xi). The editor has paraphrased many of historical context. The Revocation of the Marteilhe’s sentences and some passages Edict of Nantes (1685) removed protection in the new edition may differ significantly for non-Catholics living in France, and from Marteilhe’s text, as translated by the prompted anti-Protestant campaigns during first English editors. For example, in both economic crises and European warfare, the 1757 (London) and 1765 (Dublin) such as in 1689-1697 and 1702-1713. editions, paragraph five of his memoirs Captured during a raid in 1702, young Jean reads: Marteilhe was marched along with other During the War which was Huguenots north, from west-central France terminated by the Peace of Ryswick, the to the Atlantic ports of Le Havre and Jesuits and Priests enjoyed none of the Dunkerque, where French galleys were Pleasures of Dragooning the Protestants of moored. To complement and buttress our France, as the King had his Troops Huguenot’s account, the editor locates employed on the Frontiers of the Kingdom; contemporary descriptions of galley life by but no sooner was the Peace concluded, Catholic priest Jean-Francois Bion and than they were resolved to compensate for King Louis XIV’s galley admiral, Jean their former Inactivity. Those merciless Barras de La Penne. A stronger and bloody Bigots now let loose their Fury introduction would have placed the in every Province where they could find Huguenot’s slave status in an Atlantic-wide Instruments upon whom to wreck their context, discussing, for example, the Malice. number of white European slaves and the Though an “abridgement” of this number of slaves from the Mideast or 1765 edition, Seaforth Publishing’s Africa, or comparing the conditions on passage reads: 100 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord During the Nine Years’ War Stephen L. May. Voyage of The Slave Ship. which terminated in the Peace of J.M.W. Turner’s Masterpiece in Historical Ryswick (1697), the Jesuits had not Context. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & been able to indulge in the pleasure of Company Inc., www.mcfarlandpub.com, harassing the Huguenots with the 2014. vii+206 pp., illustrations, notes, King’s troops, because the latter were bibliography, index. US $45.00, paper: needed to guard the kingdom. But no ISBN 978-0-7864-7989-4. sooner was peace concluded that these pitiless soldiers made their rage felt Stephen May’s biography of the celebrated throughout France. artist, Joseph Mallord William Turner, largely focuses upon one of his famous One might question Seaforth paintings titled “The Slave Ship.” This Publishing’s decision to launch their haunting work is a metaphor depicting a Seafarers’ Voices series with an early dreadful event that took place during the eighteenth-century account that contains Middle Passage on the slave ship Zong. In much non-maritime history material. the painting’s dramatic foreground, Readers learn as much about French city manacled slaves are cast overboard into the and town prisons as they do about life on shark-infested water in order to collect board a galley. Those interested in insurance money before the vessel makes Huguenot networks and religious conflicts land. The book vividly describes the will appreciate the new edition; indeed, the floating dungeons, known as slave ships, as Religious Tract Society published an they moved their perishable human cargo to edition in 1864 (and it is now available in the sultry plantations of the Caribbean. full-text online via openlibrary.org), Events like this later sparked a humanitarian confirming the importance of Marteilhe’s abolitionist movement that, in time, swept memoir to the religious history of Western the western world through the roughly 40- Europe. Other seventeenth and early- year efforts of Thomas Clarkson, Granville eighteenth century maritime authors, Sharp, Olaudah Equiano, and William however, are better known than Marteilhe, Wilberforce. As the horrors of slave trading and many of their narratives appeared in and slavery affected the collective contemporary multi-volume collections of consciences of the United States and Great voyages and travels and the more recent Britain, Turner, as a former investor in a Hakluyt Society series. The three other plantation in Jamaica, struggled with his abridged seafaring memoirs published in own evolving moral convictions about the 2010 by Seaforth – George Shelvocke, A treatment of the slaves who lived there. Privateer’s Voyage Round the World (a The story is told from the voyage in 1719-1722); John Newton, perspective of the grime and squalor of Slaver Captain (a Liverpool slaving ship eighteenth and early-nineteenth century captain in 1750-1754); and Robert Hay, London, “awash in gin, sin, and din” (53), Landsman Hay (a landsman in the British contrasted against the brazen elegance of navy, 1804-1811) – centre on shipboard the Royal Academy of Arts; the site of high, experiences and may be of greater interest but often licentious, society. Turner, a to readers. fashionable artist, painted several highly Stephen D. Behrendt regarded maritime works including “The Wellington, New Zealand Shipwreck,” “Peace – Burial at Sea” and the evocative, melancholy painting “The Fighting Temeraire.” According to May, the Book Reviews 101 artist used light as a distinct entity to slapping the moored sailing boats against a produce a dramatic effect. Any observer net-webbed wall. Sunrises . . .prompted will note that Turner’s works are the whole cosmos to blink and yawn frequently enveloped in mist, haze, or awake; sunsets. . . burned with the tempests, yet retain artistic balance, line intensity of a long painful death.” and perspective. The author details the lives of Stephen May uses his gift for vivid those who either influenced Turner in his prose in describing “The Slave Ship.” He art or brought his work to the attention of writes “the molten, blood-red sea, the the art world. In later chapters, he strange ocean creatures devouring human chronicles the history of the painting after flesh, the slave’s hands groping air above the artist’s death in 1851. John Ruskin, an the water while shackles bobbed in the English art critic, had purchased “The flood, the sun’s rays slashing down the Slave Ship” and, in early 1872, it arrived in center of the painting, illuminating a New York for the work’s first public severed, elegant, still shackled human leg. exhibition in America. Ruskin wanted the Here was the sea and sky at their utmost painting to be shown in the United States sublime. Here was pure madness – and because of the huge loss of human life that sheer genius” (13). had resulted from the recent Civil War. It May’s physical description of a was not universally embraced by the young Turner is magnificently graphic. American art world, but many influential “He was dressed casually, almost shabbily, critics found it captivating. Ruskin as if this day meant nothing to him. He displayed it in his London home for many wore an old smock caked in various years, but later sold it to John Taylor pigments; his brown hair, now peppered Johnston, the first president of New York’s grey, curled over his temples; his shaggy Metropolitan Museum of Art. Johnson eyebrows arched gracefully over ruddy bought the painting so those who might see cheeks creased by years of wind, rain, and it would reflect on the human moral sun; and although he courted a wild weakness that contributed to the war’s appearance, his eyes remained steady, cause. It hung at the Metropolitan for confident and knowing” (12). Also, May’s many years. Ultimately, through heiress analytical exploration of Turner’s Alice Hooper and Harvard’s renowned sometimes-tormented mind coupled with professor of art history, Charles Eliot his sense of morality presents the reader Norton, the painting was placed in its with a unique insight into the complex and current home in Boston’s Museum of Fine quixotic psyche of one of Britain’s greatest Arts. nineteenth- century artists; a painter of As to the importance of Voyage of light, but a creature of darkness. The Slave Ship as maritime history, The book’s most successful Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting chapters describe the horrific Middle Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Passage events while presenting a Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship: A painstaking history and critique of “The Human History and James Walvin’s The Slave Ship.” The latter is the equivalent of Zong: The Massacre, the Law and the End an art history masterclass focused on of Slavery deal with the horrors of the J.M.W. Turner through one of his seminal maritime slavery industry more works. The author writes that Turner graphically. Still, May’s extraordinary “longed for the sound of the sea grating on writing ability places this book in their a shingled beach or the slosh of waves company, if not at the head of this select 102 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord class. His erudite scrutiny of this claimed a monopoly on all commercial particular painting and features of trade with her colonies in the New World. nineteenth-century maritime art in general As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, Spain are thought provoking. It is an excellent relaxed its monopoly and afterwards Britain biography of a complex, influential, British was permitted to trade with the Spanish artist and a pleasurably satisfying read. colonies. With the outbreak of the Wars of Independence, however, Britain declared Louis Arthur Norton herself a neutral nation with the right to West Simsbury, Connecticut trade with the insurgent states and admitting only contraband, attempting to run a Matthew McCarthy. Privateering, Piracy blockade, and the transportation of enemy and British Policy in Spanish America property as subject to seizure. Trade with 1810-1830. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, South America was essential to the www.boydellandbrewer.com, 2013. x+184 expansion of Britain’s economy. By 1808, pp., figures, notes, bibliography, index. US this trade accounted for six percent of her $115.00, hardback; ISBN 978-1-84383-861-6. total exports. Politically, the British foreign Secretary, Robert Castlereagh, and his During the Spanish American Wars of successor, George Canning, had to deal with Independence both the Spanish and the the insurgent and Spanish prize taking as insurgent governments employed privateers well Cuban-based pirates. British to supplement their meagre naval forces. merchants claimed their vessels were being Pirates operating from the northwest coast seized by privateers and sent to admiralty of Cuba further complicated the issues of courts that were often capricious in their prize taking. Britain, attempting to avoid decisions as to legal seizures. The new involvement in the Spanish-American insurgent states often had little control over conflict, was challenged to remain neutral their privateer fleets. The foreign and protect its mercantile and political secretaries had to balance interference in the interests in both Europe and Spanish prize courts with keeping on friendly terms America. with the insurgents should these states The author, Matthew McCarthy, eventually become independent. In order to received his PhD from the University of maintain a balance of power in Europe, it Hull in 2011 and is currently research was necessary to keep the support of Spain. officer at Hull University’s Maritime The depredations of the Cuba-based pirates Historical Studies Centre. He indicates that presented British diplomats with the the subject of privateering and piracy during problem of renegades who lived on Cuban the Spanish American Wars of soil and ventured forth only to attack Independence has been largely ignored by merchant vessels and return to Spanish historians, even though the wars had a Cuban soil. To solve the problem strong impact on the diplomatic decisions of effectively would mean landing in Spanish the period and the development of territory. international maritime law. McCarthy’s Chapters two and three deal introduction discusses the deficiencies of respectively with a history of privateering earlier studies of this period and how he and piracy in Spanish American waters and intends to fill in the gaps. In his initial accounts of search and seizures of specific chapter, he reviews Britain’s commercial British vessels and the economic problems and political interests in Spanish America. that merchants and ship-owners had as a From the late-fifteenth century Spain had result of these acts. In reviewing the history Book Reviews 103 of privateering, McCarthy concludes that wish to antagonize the insurgents and hinder both Spain and the insurgent states initially trade opportunities in the present or future. operated by the established international The response to insurgent privateering was rules. Prizes were brought into admiralty to direct the British consuls in each courts and cases adjudicated in the accepted insurgent state to investigate each case of manner. As the wars dragged on, the search and or seizure as the particular case insurgents diverged from accepted standards was adjudicated by the insurgent courts. by licensing non-Hispanic citizens as The consuls, with guidance from the privateers – the most conspicuous being Foreign Office, would then press the North Americans, most often those from insurgent governments to settle the British Baltimore – and by permitting captured claim. In dealing with Spanish privateers, vessels to be brought in and sold in the ports the situation could be dealt with of neutral countries. Spain, on the other diplomatically. Spain claimed their hand, attempted to re-instate its monopoly privateers were acting legally, since Spain on all trade in Spanish American waters, had re-activated its trade monopoly in and as a result, many neutral British vessels Spanish America, blockaded certain were stopped and seized. In the third insurgent ports, and insisted on their right to chapter the author elaborates in great detail seize goods of insurgent merchants carried the financial losses suffered by British on neutral British ships. Britain had two shipowners and merchants. McCarthy’s major considerations in dealing with Spain. research for the years 1817-1820, the height Firstly, Britain needed to retain the Anglo- of privateering and Cuban piracy, indicates Spanish Alliance in order not to upset the that 1688 prize actions were instituted. Of balance of power in Europe, and secondly, this number, 336 involved British ships with Britain needed to enforce its neutral status 227 seizures able to be identified as to the in order to maintain trade with the nationality of the predatory vessel. The insurgents. When appeals to Spain author further analyzes the type of seizure appeared to have no effect on Spanish and its resolution, if any, in foreign prize policy, the Foreign Office played its two courts. Details are given for many vessels “trump cards” – deploying a British naval and merchants by name. In addition to the squadron to Spanish America and then losses suffered by the merchants, McCarthy rejecting neutral status and recognizing the also investigates the increase in insurance insurgent states. The strategy was rates. In his final analysis, however, successful and Spain backed down. What McCarthy comments that the British losses remained, however, was the settlement of to privateering and piracy had minimal British claims against Spain for privateering impact on the overall British economy. actions against British shipping. In January In chapters four through seven 1823, Spain proposed the joint Anglo- McCarthy reviews the British Foreign Spanish Claims Commission to consider all Office response to insurgent and Spanish British claims against Spain. The plan was privateering and Cuban piracy. Foreign accepted in March of 1823 and a four- Secretaries Castlereagh and Canning person mixed commission was established. responded with different strategies to each By October 1823, while the commission of the three problems. Britain had not was slowly establishing rules, procedures, recognized any of the insurgent countries as and methods of payment, France invaded independent and, therefore, had a problem Spain and re-established the monarchy. dealing with the insurgents government-to- Ferdinand VII immediately cancelled all the government. In addition, Britain did not commission’s agreements. Not until August 104 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord 1824 did the commissioners finally begin from no lack of scholarly attention. work and all of the settlements were not Historical narratives began immediately reached until 1829. As with the insurgent after the event, followed by a host of privateer settlements, McCarthy gives academic, official, popular, controversial detailed analyses of the individual claims and specialized works with contributions brought before the commission. from C.P. Stacey, Terrence Robertson, John Britain’s’ response to Cuban piracy Campbell, Brian Villa, Brereton Greenhous, presented a third type of problem. The Hugh Henry, the Whitakers, and Beatrice pirates were not a fixed state but were Richard among others. The U.S. Army inhabiting Spanish soil. To subdue the Command’s 2012 bibliography lists over 56 pirates, Britain would have to invade articles and books, citing Dieppe as an Spanish territory or establish a naval example of a military disaster. Since 2012, presence. Not wishing to endanger the another popular history and several new Anglo-Spanish Alliance, Britain sent a naval scholarly articles have appeared. One might squadron which with the cooperation of a wonder what fresh interpretations or new United States squadron soon solved the facts could possibly be offered by David problem without violating Spanish territory. O’Keefe. Matthew McCarthy’s text is deftly One Day in August surprises and researched and well written. His footnotes rewards its readers with a sophisticated, are extensive, covering sources in Spain, original interpretation of the raid, drawing Great Britain, South America, and the upon recently released intelligence United States. A reader seeking stories of documents, enhanced by a complex analysis ship against ship engagements and lively which highlights the importance of the biographies of privateers may not find this Battle of the Atlantic and the desperation book to their liking. Readers interested in faced by Churchill and other authorities the diplomatic and economic problems who tried to keep open the sea lines of caused by the privateers and pirates and the communication in face of a formidable solutions developed to assure a degree of German U-boat campaign. When the stability will want to add McCarthy’s work Germans adopted a four-rotor Enigma to their libraries. machine for communications, they began to dominate at sea. O’Keefe’s argument is that Fred Hopkins the overriding requirement for a four-rotor Linthicum, Maryland Enigma machine to enable decryption of the German ULTRA intelligence provided the David O’Keefe. One Day in August. The driving force behind the raid – that the raid Untold Story behind Canada`s Tragedy at covered a pinch operation to secretly Dieppe. Toronto, ON: Alfred A Knopf, a capture, or “pinch,” such a machine. This division of Penguin Random House Canada, conclusion is controversial. Given the www.randomhouse.ca, 2013. 496 pp., secrecy of this operation and the continued illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, sensitivity of related information, O’Keefe index. CDN $35.00, cloth; ISBN 978-0- is the first serious scholar to uncover and 345-80769-4. analyze its importance as a motive for the raid. O’Keefe pitched this case in the 2012 The Dieppe story about the unsuccessful film Dieppe Uncovered. The book provides allied raid on the German-occupied town of more nuanced argument and detailed Dieppe, located on the French coast of the documentation than was possible in the British Channel on 19 August 1942, suffers film. Book Reviews 105 O’Keefe does his interpretation O’Keefe has changed the boundaries of the justice – dedicating a large part of his work debate, making a key contribution to the to careful analysis of the Battle of the scholarship. Atlantic, its overall importance to the war If some question his assessment, effort, and the role of intelligence to there is no doubt about the opinion of the underpin his conclusions. Previous versions surviving veterans. For those like Private of the Dieppe jigsaw puzzle did not include Ron Beal, who fought in the raid and who the central placement of these large pieces suffered the loss of friends, One Day in because prior to O’Keefe’s discovery, they August, provides valued closure. Although seemed no more than background bits – not the pinch failed, O’Keefe’s explanation of directly related to any motive for the the over-riding need for intelligence has decision-making. His discussion of earlier satisfied Beal about why his friends died in raids is intelligent and pointed – especially what had previously seemed only a the failure of Lord Louis Mountbatten’s senseless tragedy. One Day in August gives Combined Operations to learn appropriate the last word to Beal. lessons from the one at St.-Nazaire. He My inner curmudgeon objects to briefly describes the Dieppe planning and his characterization of various historical operations, stressing the role of a actors as “dashing,” “brave,” and misleading message in reinforcing the “handsome,” seemingly reflecting wartime disaster and exposing the prior and propaganda, but his description of Ian subsequent carnage with short, poignant Fleming’s, John Hughes-Hallett’s, and quotes. Readers will find thorough Mountbatten’s overly ambitious and ruthless accounts of the general plans and the determination is fair enough. Dieppe was a tactical successes and failures of Dieppe nasty business. No one should dismiss this elsewhere and O’Keefe spends little time work with quick perusal of the introduction reiterating the work of others. He and conclusion – so often the practice of acknowledges, however, that Dieppe graduate students, professors, and others appeared on the long list of possible sites with burdened schedules. O’Keefe’s entire for allied raids before the idea of the pinch text and the many footnotes citing a wide operation for the four-rotor machine arose. array of primary sources merit attention and He concedes this is not a “monocausal” appreciation. argument, noting the contribution of other This work brings the Dieppe raid to factors, such as American and Soviet life, telling a compelling story and pressure for a Second Front, the need for supporting a complex interpretation with battle experience and action for restless, careful analysis based upon years of original bored Canadian and other troops, the painstaking research. Read the book and requirement to test and probe German buy a second copy to give to a young defences, to gather intelligence, to take the person. This is a history that will motivate offensive, and to deceive the enemy, others to challenge what they know, to think possibly achieving surprise, in his carefully, to research broadly, to argue with concluding chapter. Thus, his interpretation their elders, and to produce new accounts allows strategic, political, and military about old events. And what could be better factors a secondary role in the decision- than an historical debate which makes us making. Experts in the field will vigorously rethink what we thought knew? debate the relative importance of these Isobel Campbell factors compared to the added pinch Ottawa, Ontario operation in driving the Dieppe raid, but 106 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord Karl-Heinz Reger. Dann sprang er über historical documentation of the individual Bord–Alltagspsychologie und psychische cases. To a certain extent, the book lacks an Erkrankung an Bord britischer Schiffe im historical narrative and reads much more 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen, Germany: like a modern medical research publication Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, www.v-r.de, than a typical maritime history book. 2014. 525 pages, illustrations, maps, tables, Nonetheless, the organization of the book notes, bibliography, index. € 59.99, cloth; and its medical analytical approach is also ISBN 978-3-525-30066-4. its strength, allowing Reger to not only evaluate the diagnoses of the surgeons and “Then he jumped ship – Folk Psychology doctors based on modern medical and Mental Illness onboard British Ships in knowledge, but also to evaluate their the 19th Century” is a most unique and respective medical treatments. welcome contribution to the literature about Overall, the study clearly shows everyday-life and more importantly, that most of the historical diagnoses were medical conditions on board naval and more or less correct, and that medical merchant vessels during the transition treatments and procedures were appropriate period from sail to steam. given medical knowledge of the nineteenth Due to his double qualification as a century. In fact, the analysis clearly shows practising medical doctor and psychologist that mental illnesses were not only a and academically-trained historian, Karl- substantial problem aboard the ships, Heinz Reger is not only extremely well particularly overcrowded naval vessels, but prepared for such a study, but he delivers it also, they were often not understood by with an analytical depth far beyond most surgeons and doctors. Finally, the study published works on everyday life, medical illustrates that the function of surgeons and conditions and mental illnesses aboard doctors was by no means limited to medical ships. procedures of all kinds, but that medical Contrary to most historical personnel played a crucial role within the publications concerning shipboard naval social construct of the ship, serving as a medicine and health conditions, Reger uses bridge between the world before the mast an analytical approach that is predominantly and the officers. Some remarks on the based on a substantial number of medical arrangements of the hospitals or wardrooms histories of individual patients and their aboard Royal Navy ships and a description respective records of onboard treatment by of the most common medical procedures on surgeons and naval doctors. These case board round out the study. studies are extracted from Royal Navy Overall the book deserves high medical reports, particular records related to praise for the light it sheds on an aspect of ships operating in the Far East. everyday life aboard sailing ships that was Reger’s book is divided into three of crucial relevance, but has thus far been parts: the first part providing a detailed, overlooked by most naval historians. While carefully researched overview of various the language is sometimes a little dry and aspects of everyday life relevant to health overly scientific, the book is often a real and mental health onboard ship; the second, page-turner. It is definitely a most welcome consisting of case studies, is organized by addition to the literature about maritime and medical conditions; and the third part, naval history of the transition period from analyzing the case studies based on modern sail to steam and can only be highly medical knowledge, uses modern diagnostic recommended to maritime and naval assumptions based on the respective historians interested in this particular Book Reviews 107 period. If there is one point of criticism, it The Poseidon incident, at least is that the book has only been published in prior to Schwankert’s efforts to publicize German, despite dealing more or less the three-quarters-of-a-century-old disaster, exclusively with the situation on board was not the most studied part of maritime ships of the Royal Navy. Understandably, history. A small, peacetime disaster in a with the author being a German native nondescript corner of the empire would not speaker and the book being a PhD thesis at be the stuff of rousing reading so frequently a German university, it is appropriate that associated with the medium. This is, the first edition of the book be published in however, something the author is trying to German. But if a German maritime history change. In his new book, Poseidon. publication deserves a translation into China’s Secret Salvage of Britain’s Lost English, it is without any doubt this book. Submarine, Steven R. Schwankert tells the Ingo Heidbrink story of HMS Poseidon, a Parthian-class Norfolk, Virginia submarine that sank while on exercise near Weihai, China in 1931. All told, the sinking Steven R. Schwankert. Poseidon. China’s cost the lives of 21 people. Surprisingly, for Secret Salvage of Britain’s Lost Submarine. the serious nature of the topic discussed, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, this book is not a standard monograph. www.hkup.org, 2014. xix+219 pp., notes, Rather, Schwankert divides the text into two bibliography, index. U.S. $40.00, UK separate narratives; one that describes the £27.50, cloth; ISBN 978-988-8208-18-0. submarine’s construction, outfitting, (Distributed in the US by Columbia crewing, stationing, sinking, the escape of University Press, www.cup.columbia.edu) survivors and subsequent court-martial of the skipper, Lieutenant-Commander When considering submarines, one more Bernard William Galpin, and another often than not thinks of silent stalkers, detailing Schwankert’s own odyssey, in a lurking below the waves to either torpedo style reminiscent of Tony Horowitz, in an enemy ship or act as a forward launching uncovering the history of this little- base for missiles. Few, especially in the remembered submarine. early days, thought of how dangerous these Schwankert, a Beijing-based boats were to the people who manned them. journalist with a fondness for scuba diving, A crack in the pressurized hull, a broken makes no claims to being an expert on valve or vent, an immobilized plane or subsurface vessels and, as such, he writes rudder and the whole boat can be lost to the for an audience that may not be familiar sea. For the early pioneers of subsurface with the jargon associated with submarines warfare, these risks multiplied as the or the maritime service more generally. standard practice and expertise on which This is one of the book’s strengths. It future generations of submariners came to makes the first section of the book, the part rely had to be stumbled upon through a that describes the development of the process of trial and error, often at the cost of submarine up to and including the lives. This danger was increased when Parthian-class; Weihai, where Poseidon operating in foreign ports and colonial was stationed, and its environs; the incident harbours, where locals did not necessarily of the sinking itself; and the subsequent adhere to European standards of traffic courts martial of Galpin, readily control. Such was in the case when the understandable by persons at all levels. HMS Poseidon collided with the SS Yuta This part of the book is so well researched off the coast of China in 1931. that the reader comes to believe that all the 108 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord information that can currently be found subject to the limitations of technology of about the Poseidon, its sinking and its the interwar period, is something that could sailors is on display in the text; certainly, a still occur today. If the 2000 sinking of the rare characteristic among books. From Russian submarine K-141 Kursk reminds Lieutenant- Comnander Galpin on down, it one of anything, it is that those members of is clear that Schwankert took great pains the subsurface service are still subject to the researching everything to the last detail, an same risks and dangers that their astounding feat given the geographical predecessors faced, even in the nuclear age. dispersion of documents between China and Ultimately, Schwankert, through this book, the United Kingdom. contributes an important chapter to the It is this search that constitutes the history of subsurface warfare. rest of the book. Told entirely in the first Zachary Kopin person, something unusual among Chicago, Illinois university press books aimed at scholarly historians, it details the story of how Schwankert happened upon the story of the Christine E. Sears. American Slaves and Poseidon. He was interested in possibly African Masters. Algiers and the Western diving the wreck, something it quickly Sahara, 1776-1820. New York, NY: became apparent he would be unable to do, Palgrave Macmillan, www.palgrave.com, and his journey in researching the boat, its 2012. xi+240 pp., illustrations, notes, crewmen, and the remains of those lost in bibliography, index. US $100.00, cloth; the disaster. Utilizing photographic ISBN 978-1-137-26866-2. evidence, Schwankert and a rotating cast of friends search the forests of Weihai in an Writing a review of a study of American effort to find the old colonial graveyard. captives in Islamic territories in the autumn They ultimately learn of the Poseidon’s fate of 2014 inevitably brings to mind the through a lucky find of an article in the terrible recent events in Syria. Also popular Chinese magazine Modern Ships. It inevitably, a study of captivity offers a was a find that would eventually drag the deeper insight into the society into which House of Commons and the Chinese the unfortunate men had fallen prisoner. government into a battle over the sanctity of (No transatlantic women suffered this fate war graves abroad. Although Schwankert in the period under study, 1776-1820). It is frequently abandons his main topic in an also a means of examining the deeper effort to maintain his narrative (London’s assumptions of the captive, and how these Arsenal football-club connections that often assumptions were challenged or brought to have little to do with the Poseidon make a the surface by the experience, nearly always frequent appearance throughout the book), traumatic, of losing his freedom. Captivity ultimately these diversions prove a light was also a societal balancing act for all hearted distraction in what otherwise is a concerned. The slave-master was depressingly deadly affair. disinclined to punish his human Schwankert’s text should interest merchandise too severely, as each slave or anyone fond of subsurface warfare, salvage captive was a valuable commodity; on the operations, interwar British naval policies, other hand, some sort of fear had to be the complexities of imperial war graves in a instilled in the captives, most of whom were decolonized world, or imperial history more almost guaranteed to try to escape. generally. Schwankert’s tale is something Captives nearly always formed some sort of that, although its subjects were uniquely community. This was certainly the case for Book Reviews 109 those unfortunate Americans who found foreign slaves, as well as on language and themselves in Algiers. On the other hand, forms of communication, sexual mores, this community tended to reflect the costume, health and cleanliness. divisions and hierarchies of their home The other great strength of this society, specifically in the sense that hard- study lies in its discussion of the working and well-educated figures could phenomenon in relation to American secure for themselves a relatively history. Were these men captives or slaves? comfortable job, especially if they had a If the latter was the case, how does the thick-skin or a capacity to overlook the experience of Americans in Algiers and the scruples of conscience. Most slaves Western Sahara correspond with the life of expressed little but resentment and hatred of slaves in the plantations in the United States the religion in which they found themselves itself? At numerous points the author brings (the perception of the majority of her knowledge of American history to bear, Americans was that “Africans’ lack of offering revealing insights and points of compassion, hatred of Christianity, and comparison. The separation of European barbarism stemmed from Islam” (153)). A and American history, and the dividing line few prisoners, in contrast, tried to that habitually separates the early modern understand the world into which they had and the modern periods, means that Sears’ fallen and set its qualities and failings in work offers a lot of interesting perspectives comparison with the conditions prevalent in and insights. One day an enormous their homeland. The far-sighted and multi- conference will be organized on the history lingual James Riley was able to see that the of slavery and the discussion set out in phenomenon of slavery in “Barbary” was chapter one might almost serve as a only different in degree to the system used template for a discussion of the in the plantations of the United States. phenomenon over the centuries. James Leander Cathcart, who had used his The major weakness of the study is time in Algiers to forge a remarkable career directly related to this. A small army of for himself as an official in the pay of the research students are currently working governor-general or Dey, condemned Africa away on the phenomenon of Mediterranean and Islam in the strongest terms, but slavery, while more senior researchers dreamed of one day being a plantation (Bartolomé Bennassar, Salvatore Bono, owner himself. Michel Fontenay, Géraud Poumarède, Christine E. Sears’ study of Miguel Ángel de Bunes Ibarra, Mercedes American Slaves and African Masters offers García-Arenal, Gerard Wiegers, Beatriz an insight into the outlooks and character of Alonso Acero, Arturo Morgado García, individual captives – Riley and Cathcart Ismet Terki-Hassaine, José Antonio feature prominently – but also into the Martínez Torres, with collected volumes collision of two different worlds, thus edited by Fabienne P.Gullén, Salah Trabelsi exposing all sorts of comparative and Wolfgang Kaiser) have contributed a perspectives on progress, tolerance, and great deal to the understanding of the economic and social organization. Most business of piracy and captivity in Algerian slaves rarely interacted with their “Barbary” and the western Mediterranean owner; the precise opposite was the case for (broadly understood) and the socio- northwest Africa, were they often ate economic relations that underpinned it. together (152). Forms of slavery were very Sears’ bibliography is almost entirely different. There are some fascinating details constrained to works in English, and much on the environment and its perception by more might have been made of the studies 110 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord of Algiers and its world throughout the and European slaves distinguished between sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth “wild” or “wandering Arabs” and the centuries. Bartolomé and Lucile “trading Arabs,” who were settled and Bennassar’s study of the “Christians of thoroughly capitalistic. On the other hand, Allah” features only sporadically, and its the Muslim culture of Barbary had – or pages might have allowed more progress to seems to have had – a curiously ambivalent have been made to differentiate between attitude towards sodomy, while the letters rhetoric and reality, confessional polemic, and accounts bequeathed by American and social norms. Bridging this gap is captives is permeated by a sense of a society extremely important because it allows us to that was more conscious of its environment view the relationship between Islam and the and, in particular, of the need to make the Christian West for all its complexity: most of its streams, pools and rivers. Islam certainly, Algiers witnessed acts of extreme certainly had slavery, but its point of brutality, and many of these acts can only be definition was confessional, rather than attributed to the contemporary interpretation racial. All Muslims were brothers, of Islamic tradition, but there was always a regardless of their colour of their skin: one human dimension, a tendency towards common assumption was that African- tolerance or forgiveness which mitigated the American seamen who found themselves in harsh strictures of the law. Barbary would chose to convert to Islam Sex is one case in point. Here and marry Arab women. In this way, the some pertinent examples are offered of the rival interpretations set down by Riley and harsh punishments given to Muslim women Cathcart continue to offer insights and and Christian male captives who engaged in points of debate and polemic two centuries sexual congress (32-3). Using the studies after they were penned. mentioned above, it would be possible to set Philip Williams these episodes in a much broader context, in Southsea, Hampshire, UK which business interests coincided with religious teaching. Certainly the legal code set down death for those couples who began Billy G. Smith. Ship of Death: A Voyage a physical relationship, but this law was That Changed the Atlantic World. New very often used to coerce skilled Christian Haven, CT: Yale University Press, captives into “taking the turban.” Having www.yalepress.yale.edu, 2013. xviii+306 said this, Sears does make the extremely pp., illustrations, maps, notes, glossary, interesting observation that American bibliography, index. US $35.00, cloth; captives seldom interacted with Muslim ISBN 978-0-300-19452-4. women: many, indeed, seem seldom to have set eyes on a female Muslim. I am not sure if Billy Smith is right. In the In this respect, as in some others, Ship of Death, he argues that the great Christian captives already seemed to reveal yellow fever epidemic that swept the the assumptions derived from a more Atlantic in 1793 began with one ship sailing recognizably tolerant or modern society. from the West Coast of Africa. Although The Catholic-Protestant division was, for Smith offers some compelling example, of little importance in the minds of circumstantial evidence to support this American slaves, whose assumption was argument, I remain unconvinced. But even that Christians of all denominations should if I have my doubts that one ship was help one other (40-41). African society was responsible for the havoc wreaked by still organized along tribal lines; American yellow jack in 1793, Smith has written a Book Reviews 111 powerful book that offers us a compelling a new Eden, the island turned into a chart to navigate the turbulent waters veritable Hell. Initially the natives were churning the revolutionary Atlantic at the hostile, and although the colonists end of the eighteenth century. ultimately gained a tenuous peace with the Smith’s story begins with the African owners of Bolama, there was no Hankey setting sail from Great Britain in negotiating with the microbes that assaulted 1792 packed with reformers and heading for their immune systems. Debilitating the island of Bolama in what is now sickness and death awaited those who tried Guinea-Bissau – although no one on the to keep the dream alive. Several diseases ship, or the two other vessels that besieged the colonists. Yellow fever was accompanied it, actually knew where among them – a yellow fever caught by Bolama was. These idealists hoped to eating infected monkeys and, of course, demonstrate that it was possible to be spread by the ubiquitous mosquitoes that successful colonists in the heart of slave thrived in the environment altered by the country by using free African labour. The clearing of trees. If yellow fever struck moment was propitious. The United States with a potent virulence, malaria and other had gained its independence less than a agues also beset these would-be reformers. decade before. France was in the midst of Almost a year and a half after the first its revolution for liberty, equality, and colonists arrived, the handful who were left fraternity, but had not yet killed a king nor abandoned the enterprise and headed back gone to war with Great Britain. to Great Britain. Revolutionary ideals were sending tremors A year earlier, the Hankey had throughout the West Indies which were sailed away from Bolama with colonists already erupting into bitter racial warfare in who did not take so long to make up their St. Domingue – the French colony which minds and had decided to escape with their would become Haiti in 1804. In Great lives while they could. They, too, faced Britain, an abolitionist movement was misfortune. Several of them already had gaining traction leading to the establishment yellow fever pulsating in their veins, and of a haven for freed slaves in Sierra Leone. aboard the vessel were unwanted passengers Anything seemed possible, or at least so hovering around the water casks – disease- thought the Bolama colonists. bearing mosquitoes that found new hosts in Smith, in a masterful narrative, a crew recruited in the Portuguese colony of devotes over half of Ship of Death to the sad Bissau. Rather than heading for the colder tale of the Bolama experiment. Indeed, this climes of the British Isles, the ship of death saga is the true heart of the book as we learn sailed for the Caribbean, intending to join a of this ill-fated expedition. Smith’s skill as British convoy since war had just broken a historian and as a writer comes to the fore, out with the French revolutionaries. As the successfully capturing the voices of the Hankey crossed the Atlantic yellow jack colonists as well as the Africans they spread, killing crew and passengers alike. encountered. Regardless of the relationship Once in the Caribbean, the disease became of Bolama to yellow fever, this book could an epidemic. The Hankey visited St. be read for this story alone because it tells Domingue and then sailed to Philadelphia, us so much about the Atlantic world and the docking in late July. At this point Smith possibilities and impossibilities confronted takes the book on a slightly different tack, by those who lived in it. As it turns out, and writing two splendid chapters on the unfortunately for the colonists, they found terrifying experience of the yellow fever Bolama. Unfortunately, because instead of epidemic in Philadelphia that broke out that 112 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord summer. After offering his “Journal of the ships of death, and before we can be Plague Months” (the title of one of the two absolutely sure that the Hankey alone was chapters), Smith concludes the book with an responsible for the tragic spread of yellow epilogue that traces the end of the Hankey’s fever in 1793, we would need to look at doleful voyage. Although no one knew how their history – a task that might be nigh on yellow fever was transmitted, several impossible. contemporary commentators identified the In the end, it does not matter if outbreak of the disease in 1793 with Smith is right or wrong about the Hankey. Bolama and the Hankey. By the time the By bringing to life the history of this one ship of death arrived in Great Britain that ship of death, and the woeful tale of the lost fall, the Privy Council had ordered that it be colony of Bolama, Smith has taken us on a sunk to insure it would not bring yellow wondrous voyage into the Atlantic world in fever ashore. the age of revolution. As this narrative suggests, there Paul A. Gilje does seem to be some correlation between Norman, Oklahoma Bolama, the Hankey, and the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. And Smith might be right in his insistence on the connection. Mark Strecker. Shanghaiing Sailors: A Yet, whatever the circumstantial evidence, Maritime History of Forced Labor, 1849- there are other mitigating factors. First, 1915. Jefferson, NC: McFarland yellow fever was not new to Philadelphia Publishing, www.mcfarlandpub.com, 2014. and had visited the city several times before, vii+252 pp, illustrations, maps, notes, even if it had not wrought such devastation bibliography, index. US $39.95, paper; for decades. Second, and more importantly, ISBN 978-0-7864-9451-4. yellow fever was a persistent pestilence in the tropical climes of the West Indies and Readers of this journal know very West Africa. Thousands of ships passed well that there has been an effusion of between the two hot-house regions in the maritime labour histories since New Left decades before 1793. Loaded with slaves academics began bottom-up history in the who no doubt had been exposed to yellow 1960s. These studies have collectively fever, slaver ships had large crews of explored issues surrounding two central Europeans ripe for infection. These vessels, questions: Who worked at sea? And under too, had mosquitoes swarming around water what conditions was the work done? Much casks eager to suck blood and transmit of this scholarship has demonstrated that a disease. Trade between Philadelphia and substantial number of seafarers were the West Indies expanded rapidly during the compelled to work in the wooden world. early years of the French Revolution. Marcus Rediker has argued that merchant Therefore, there were plenty of mariners and pirates were primarily opportunities to carry the contagion. dispossessed and exploited labourers who Finally, we must remember that during the were pushed into seafaring by harsh summer of 1793 there was a vast wave of economic circumstances as a way to keep emigrés sweeping into American ports, body and soul together. Daniel Vickers and escaping the racial bloodshed in St. other fisheries historians have examined the Domingue. Thanks to Smith, we now know ways in which chronic debt obliged men to a great deal about the Hankey and how go on fishing expeditions for the same some people at the time associated it with employers season after season. A host of yellow fever. But there were many potential scholars including Jesse Lemisch, Nicholas Book Reviews 113 Rogers, and Denver Brunsman have author details the various dimensions of the demonstrated that a certain percentage of shanghaiing business. Strecker refers to the the British navy was comprised of pressed unscrupulous entrepreneurs who coerced men who did not go to sea voluntarily. and captured maritime labourers before Mark Strecker adds a discussion of selling them to ship captains as “crimps.” shanghaied mariners to our knowledge of (4, 63) For Strecker, this is a useful catch- the unfree characteristics of seafaring. all phrase that applies to all the various Shanghaiing Sailors is a popular people who shanghaied sailors at history based largely on a combination of boardinghouses, brothels, shipping offices, newspaper evidence and secondary sources. and taverns in waterfront districts around Strecker explores the process by which men the world. The tactics crimps employed to were coerced into work in commercial get mariners to captains desperate for shipping between 1849 and 1915. The manpower included financial blackmail, author explains the book’s chronology by intoxication, and physical assault. Strecker arguing that shanghaiing “peaked” at this details their activities in ports around the time. (1) Desperate maritime employers United States and Canada, including San went to great lengths to get workers quickly Francisco, Portland, and Quebec. The and without raising wages. Men and following chapter discusses the debauched women around the world made it their aspects of life for Jack in port cities. Here, business to fill these positions with warm readers find the stereotypical mariner bodies. engaged in drinking hard liquor and The book is organized thematically frolicking with loose women. The author into a series of short chapters. In chapter could have nuanced this portrait with one, Strecker identifies causes of the accounts of married mariners’ life on shore. nineteenth-century spike in shanghaiing. Chapter six provides accounts of people The California Gold Rush heightened who were shanghaied. Victims included demand for ships and crews to man them. men with little or no maritime work Great Britain repealed navigation acts that experience. For example, Edward Miller, a had restricted international trade with violinist, and Lester B. Willett, an interior British possessions. The Treaty of Nanking designer, were taken against their will and further opened the possibility for forced onto a commercial vessel when they international trade with China. Each of visited San Francisco in 1907. (105) these factors generated a great need for Anyone, it seems, could be shanghaied in mariners. Chapter two explores the port cities. The author shifts gears in working lives of the maritime labourers chapter seven and discusses British naval who filled this void, willingly or no. impressment. This odious practice involved Strecker discusses the exotic nature of the state appropriation of labour. But, the sailors’ tattoos. He notes that motley crews linkage to shanghaiing in the private sector of African and Chinese workers were fairly is never elucidated. Chapters eight and nine common. Working conditions at sea provide accounts of maritime labourers entailed poor food, disease, and the ever being shanghaied into working in the present risk of fire and pirate attack. manpower-hungry oyster and whaling Chapter three focuses on the negative industries. The final chapter details the aspects of work in commercial shipping, passage of the 1915 Seaman’s Act, which including flogging, which necessitated the effectively ended shanghaiing. use of shanghaiing. Chapter four is, in Non-academic lovers of maritime many ways, the heart of the book. Here, the labour history will appreciate this 114 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord fascinating examination of a little-studied blunder that grew out of the Peace of Paris but important component of seafaring. in 1783. The British claimed the islands in Strecker is to be praised for his unyielding Passamaquoddy Bay after the treaty was sensitivity toward the plight of the maritime signed and interpreted the construction of labourer. Academic readers will wish for a Fort Sullivan in 1808 on Moose Island as an historiographic introduction and footnotes. act of encroachment. “So when war was Further research will have to be done on the declared in June 1812 Moose Island was a history of maritime labour recruitment fair target for British capture and before we know the full extent to which possession”(xiii). coercion was responsible for making men When a combined British military work at sea. But, Strecker’s book is an and naval force appeared off Eastport on 11 interesting, well-written entry point into the July 1814, the garrison of Fort Sullivan world of shanghaiing sailors. commanded by Major Perley Putnam capitulated. Although Putnam had Christopher P. Magra considered making a token resistance, he Knoxville, Tennessee decided against it when he found his escape blocked by the HMS Borer and the town’s George F.W. Young. The British Capture residents opposed to it. Once the residents and Occupation of Downeast Maine, 1814- of Eastport had signed the terms of 15/1818. Stonington, ME: Penobscot books, capitulation, the British agreed to protect www.penobscotbaypress.com, 2014. 124 their property. Young cites the fact that pp, illustrations, maps, notes, index. US most of the signers of the terms of $17.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-941238. capitulation had only been in Eastport for 30-32 years since the Island had only been Most histories of the War of 1812 focus on settled after the treaty concluding the the major battles fought on the border American Revolution had been signed. between New York and Upper Canada. The Eastport secured, the British turned their plight of Maine rarely merits a chapter and attention to the eastern side of the frequently consists of no more than a few Penobscot River. During the Revolutionary pages. Although George F.W. Young is a War, Britain had attempted to establish the Canadian historian, he has written a brief Loyalist colony of New Ireland at Castine. but thoroughly researched and engaging Thinking the Penobscot River the logical account of the war in Maine. boundary between the United States and In order to comprehend Young’s British North America, they decided to contribution to the historiography, it is implement this policy by seizing Machias. necessary to examine the words he uses in On 26 August 1814, a second his title. Young’s book is appropriately expedition under Lieutenant General Sir named The British Capture and Occupation John Sherbrooke and Rear Admiral Edward of Down-east Maine, 1814-1815/1818. He Griffith were heading from Halifax to describes the military conquest and Machias until an unusual opportunity occupation of the area of Maine that had presented itself. When expedition fell in been settled by people catching the with HMS Rifleman, they learned the USS prevailing west wind or traveling down- Adams had run aground and traveled up the east, from the time of the occupation of Penobscot River for repairs. Unable to Eastport until its evacuation in 1818. resist capturing a valuable warship, the According to Young, the British decided to expedition altered its course for Penobscot occupy Eastport to rectify a diplomatic Bay. Book Reviews 115 As the expedition arrived at complied with regulations enacted by Castine, the American garrison commanded General Gosselin. Trade quickly resumed by Lieutenant Lewis fired one shot, spiked after Sherbrooke appointed Henry Newton their guns and fled. With Castine in their as Castine’s customs collector. Many possession, Sherbooke and Griffith residents were content to provide the British dispatched a smaller British force upriver to occupiers with provisions. The resumption capture the USS Adams. On the morning of of trade, however, created opportunities for 3 September 1814, a combined British American privateers. Despite widespread military and naval force arrived in collaboration with the enemy, Governor Hampden, Maine. Their progress up the Strong’s complacency eventually convinced Penobscot River was blocked by a battery many Maine residents they needed a state of composed of the USS Adams’s guns on their own. Crosby’s Wharf under Captain Charles Although Young’s book is brief, it Morris, militia led by Brigadier General is well researched and engagingly written John Blake, and Lieutenant Lewis’s which makes it appropriate for academic soldiers. According to Young, the battle and general readers alike. He incorporates turned into a rout when the militia panicked local landmarks from Eastport, Castine, and and fled. Once the militia broke ranks, Machias into his narrative, making it an Captain Morris was forced to spike the guns ideal companion for anyone who wants to and burn the USS Adams. Afterwards, the take a self-guided walking tour of the places British proceed to Bangor where they began where these events occurred. looting the town. Although the British Edward J. Martin burned the vessels moored in the Penobscot Orono, Maine River, the selectmen of Bangor and Hampden saved their communities by offering to deliver the vessels under construction to the British at Castine and agreeing to pay them $42,000. With the USS Adams destroyed and Castine in their hands, the British turned their attention back to their original objective. On 11 September 1814, Sherbrooke and Griffith dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Pilkington to seize Machias. At 10:00 p.m., Pilkington and his men landed at Bucks Harbor and made their way through the woods to take Fort O’Brien during the night. Once they drove in the pickets, however, they found the fort empty. “The sheriff in consultation with some of the leading men proposed a formal capitulation for the civil officers of the county, to be followed by a similar capitulation by the militia”(65). During the British occupation of Downeast Maine, there was no official resistance. Most of Castine’s residents 116 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord