BOOK REVIEWS

David M. Williams and Andrew P. White as well as those from the humanities. The (comp.). A Select Bibliography of British and section on Maritime Law lists work on Irish University Theses About Maritime pollution and the maritime environment, and History, 1792-1990. St. John's, Newfound• on the exploitation of sea resources. It is land: International Maritime Economic particularly useful to have the Open Univer• History Association, 1992. 179 pp., geo• sity and the C.NAA. theses listed. graphical and nominal indices. £10 or $20, The subjects are arranged under twenty- paper; ISBN 0-969588-5. five broad headings; there are numerous chronological geographic and subject sub• The establishment of the International and divisions and an author and geographic British Commissions for Maritime History, index to facilitate cross referencing. Though both of which have assisted in the publica• it is mildly irritating to have details some• tion of this bibliography, illustrates the times split between one column and the steadily growing interest in maritime history next, the whole book is generally convenient during the last thirty years. However, the and easy to use. The introduction explains increasing volume of research in this field the reasons for the format of the biblio• and the varied, detailed work of postgradu• graphy, its pattern of classification and the ate theses have often proved difficult to location and availability of theses. This has locate and equally difficult to consult. This recently much improved and an ASLIB bibliography provides access to this "enor• number is helpfully listed for the majority of mously rich resource" (p. iv) in British and post-1950 theses. Irish universities. It developed from an The editors are to be warmly congratu• information technology programme involving lated for producing what will quickly the production of a database without which become an essential work of reference. If it the formidable mass of material presented provokes scholars of other countries to here could scarcely have been marshalled emulate them it will prove a doubly valuable and categorised so effectively. It ranges from work. It is also an excellent inauguration to a Glasgow M.D. thesis on scurvy of 1792 to a new series, which the International Mari• a Keele Ph.D. thesis of 1990 on documen• time Economic History Association is to be tary evidence for medieval maritime technol• commended for sponsoring. Professor Fisch• ogy in England and Wales. er, the series editor, hopes to publish two Taking the widest definition of maritime titles annually, free to members of the history as "the study of all things associated IMEHA, including original monographs, with man's relationship with the sea," (p. v) research guides and reprints. All maritime the editors have abolished the invidious historians must wish the venture a fair wind. distinction between maritime and naval history, and, it is hoped, addressed the needs P.K. Crimmin of future as well as current historians, in• Englefield Green, Surrey cluding science theses with relevant subjects

65 66 The Northern Mariner

Joel Mendes & Theodore J. Karamanski Society is particularly frustrating. (eds.). The Maritime History of Chicago; A The second part of the guide is a par• Guide to Sources. Chicago: The Chicago tially annotated bibliography in seven sec• Maritime Society, 1990. xvii + 132 pp. US tions ranging from General Histories to the $19.95 + $3.50 postage and handling, paper. Modern Lakefront. It is complemented by a set of brief essays by Joel Mendes which This major contribution to the study of introduce the volume. Particularly useful is Great Lakes history is arranged in three sec• the attention paid to environmental studies tions. The first profiles thirty-two "research of the Chicago waterfront, perhaps hardly depositories" with collections of interest to surprising, given the controversial nature of the Chicago waterfront. These range from the long-proposed ship canal/sewer. The the standard historical "resorts" (the Chicago bibliography offers fairly good coverage of Historical Society, the Illinois State early government publications on the Chica• Archives, the National Archives' Great go Sanitary District as well as the Illinois Lakes office), to the rich diversity of univer• and Michigan Canal. More attention might sity and public libraries and their special have been directed to those critical primary collections, to the offices of the Board of sources: the local newspapers. Which papers Trade, the Naval Air Station, and the Cus• ran significant marine columns? toms Station. While some have virtually The final section of the guide offers a nothing to offer (e.g. the Customs Service), slightly amended version of the Great Lakes others offer surprises. For each, the guide timeline derived partly from a 1985 issue of provides information on address, names or Inland Seas. While it may fill a gap for contacts, admission policies, transportation Chicago area school children, it offers much to the site, duplication facilities and costs, less to the Society's members than the first finding aids, as well as the scope of collec• sections of the guide. As the compilers have tion as well as major or minor holdings. noted, "the definitive maritime history of What the difference was between major and Chicago remains to be written." (vii) What• minor holdings was never clear to this ever projects its members may produce in reviewer, nor may it have been to the volun• the ensuing years, the Chicago Maritime teers collecting the information. It is a Society has ensured that they should be well distinction which might well be dropped. grounded in the appropriate primary and The sorts of information which might be secondary material located in the region. reported was eclectic indeed. Thus, we learn that the Cudahy Library at Loyola holds a Walter Lewis copy of American Secretaries of the Navy Acton, Ontario (Naval Institute Press, 1980). If this were the only copy in Chicago, it would undoubtedly Colin Howell & Richard Twomey (eds.). be of some interest to naval historians in the Jack Tar in History: Essays in the History of neighbourhood. However, like several other Maritime Life and Labour. Fredericton, NB: items, its relevance to this guide is unclear. Acadiensis Press, 1991. 275 pp., figures, The cartoon stereotype of historians often revolves around an unnatural obsession with photographs, tables. $21.95, paper; ISBN 0- dates. Our compilers have drifted to the 919107-32-X. other extreme. Perhaps it is the fault of the finding aids in the various depositories, but This collection of fine, revisionist studies of the reporting on inclusive dates for various various groups who plied the oceans or who collections is wildly uneven. The information were socially, culturally, or economically on the holdings of the Chicago Historical intimately attached to those who did-men, women, African-Americans, seamen, master Book Reviews 67 mariners, captains, bachelors, and married the prevalent wages and hen system and its men-provides both depth and breadth to demise in 1832. Cadigan emphasizes that our understanding of maritime life and such laws little affected emerging industrial labour. Though not all-encompassing, here capitalist relations between planters and is nevertheless maritime and social history at servants in the early nineteenth century. its finest and most provocative, painting Perhaps the most innovative section portraits of maritimers whose faces have consists of four separate essays headed often been left only caricatured, if not blank. "gender, family and the world ashore." Citing Boasting an impressive array of scholars, cases of women disguised as men who went this book illustrates the apt use of many to sea, Dianne Dugaw traces changing qualitative and quantitative tools including notions of femininity as evidenced in ballads, court records, oral history, popular literature memoirs, diaries, and other personal and and folklore, statistics, and official accounts public records thereby opening up hitherto and frequently conceptual borrowing from neglected but historically significant dimen• the most current interpretations of class, sions of maritime history. Margaret S. gender, and race. Creighton in her look at American sailors The book consists of thirteen articles and mid-nineteenth century rites of man• arranged in five sections, together with the hood pursues a similar theme in examining editors' foreword and an afterword by social and sexual objectification of seamen labour historian Greg Kealey. Peter Line- and seawomen. Through her study of the baugh and Marcus Rediker provide an New England whalefishery between 1790 elegant and provocative look at interrelated and 1870, Lisa Norling looks at the working class and slave revolt, in which institutionalization of culturally based gender labourers at sea who shared a common stereotypes and divisions and their accom• consciousness as well as an anti-authoritar• panying sentimentalization. Lastly, Valerie ianism that often transcended nation and Burton deconstructs the myth of Bachelor race played a visible role in the late-eight• Jack in the context of class, gender and eenth century North Atlantic revolutionary power. Burton shows how the image of the world. Julius S. Scott contributed an illumi• seafarer reinforced not only notions of nating study of Afro-American sailor New• masculinity but capitalist labour relations in port Bowers, whose working life at sea took the merchant marine. him into Spanish America and the anti- This collection then sails into the realm colonial struggles of the early nineteenth of reconstructing the physical and social century. The next section examines "resis• profile of sailors through the meticulous tance, punishment and the world of law." reconstruction of quantitative data gleaned Nicolas Rodgers analyses opposition to the from naval records. James Pritchard exam• impressment of English sailors in the Amer• ines the ill-fated French expeditionary force ican revolutionary era and gives a very sent in 1746 to recapture Louisbourg; he useful background on the broader context of reassesses the size of the fleet and provides this controversial practice of naval recruit• a wealth of information on the composition ment. The way in which the British naval of all French naval ranks, their origins, their mutinies of 1797 illustrate the tensions of age, and their military status, as well as the class conflict and social hierarchy is the available existing pool of seaman in France focus of Joseph Price Moore III. A solidly as a whole. In turn, Ida Dye offers physical researched paper by Sean Cadigan explores and social profiles of American seafarers the social relations of production in the during the War of 1812—age, rank, race, Newfoundland fishery between the passing stature, physical appearance, and birthplace - of the Palliser's Act (1775), which defined and provides a composite portrait. A final 68 The Northern Mariner section in this collection consists of two very government-inspired studies of the Atlantic different studies of seafaring labour in the fishing industry. Their chief criticism is that industrial world, with special emphasis on other studies have been either weighted on Canada. Eric Sager offers a thoughtful and the anthropology of the primary producers, compelling argument based on his study of or else inordinately focused on the econ• the twentieth-century Canadian Seamen's omics of the industry. To understand fully Union to augment more traditional docu• the industrial structure of the fishery a mentary sources. Finally, Del Muise rounds myriad of social and cultural factors must be out the volume with a deeply researched taken into account. This was the goal of the examination of social and economic changes researchers; the result is a worthwhile book. in Yarmouth, an important nineteenth cen• Yet this is more than just another aca• tury port in eastern Canada, and its seagoing demic exercise. It advances a different and workforce in the face of the industrialization refreshing approach to the badly needed of shipping in the late-nineteenth and early long-term restructuring of the fishing indus• twentieth centuries. try. At the outset it dismisses the view that In recovering the hidden and complex recent expansion in the industry occurred dimensions in the records of sail and the only in the major processing companies. On diverse, yet ordinary people who participated the contrary, the phenomenal growth in in its history, the articles in this book, both many smaller independent enterprises have individually and collectively, deserve accol• brought new life to numerous rural coastal ades for charting the largely uncharted communities. This is demonstrated through reaches of our understanding that transcend an in-depth case study of Clare Municipality, national boundaries and encompass wider which takes into account the entire social questions relating to work, race, gender, and fabric of this unique area and illustrates how change. it is inseparable from the economics of the local fishing industry. By way of contrast, a Rainer K. Baehre community in Cape Breton with its own Corner Brook, Newfoundland unique but different characteristics is afforded the same in-depth treatment. Both Richard Apostle and Gene Barrett. Empty• case studies go beyond arm's-length surveys. ing Their Nets: Small Capital and Rural The researchers in fact spent considerable Industrialization in the Fishing Industry of time on site gaining valuable insights sup• Nova Scotia. Toronto: University of Toronto ported by documented data. Indeed, the en• tire book tapped sources frequently omitted Press, 1992. xix + 393 pp., maps, tables, by Task Forces and other investigative end• figures, appendix, notes, sources. $65, cloth; eavours; small boat captains and owners, 0-8020-5894-9. $24.95, paper; ISBN 0-8020- plant workers, buyers and brokers, fishing 6831-6. families. All were surveyed by the research• ers. Another factor frequently ignored is the This is a book that needed to be published. role of women in the industry. This study It is the work of a group of academics illustrates how important women are to the whose views are sometimes disapproved by economics of the fishery. the fishing bureaucracy. Several contributors have had their opinions printed in newspa• The contributors make no bones that pers. This book will provide greater perma• smau, while not necessarily always beautiful, nency. is flexible, innovative, and can be economi• It is a commendable effort, the culmina• cally prudent as well as sociologically desir• tion of a six-year research project designed able. In contrast, large plants can be both to address serious shortcomings in many inefficient and unprofitable. The researchers Book Reviews 69

have therefore stated what has become an important contribution to a number of obvious in recent years. While the major debates: about the role of women in fishing players in the fishing industry have communities; about the consequences of foundered, the small enterprises have not "economic development" for women; about only navigated troubled waters but many how women construct their lives in different have gone on to thrive. It is also evident that (and sometimes hostile) circumstances and modern technology and the ever-present about how traditional disciplines, including drive for increased productivity can be self- anthropology, have got things so plainly defeating. wrong by ignoring what women have to say. This book requires a prior knowledge of Cole begins, traditionally enough, by economics to weigh its thesis intelligently. presenting the history and current dimen• Neither is it an easy read. This is unfortu• sions and something of the conditions under nate because once again, important informa• which women live in Vila Cha, a small tion is unlikely to filter down to those most fishing village a few miles north of Porto, in likely to be affected by changes in the indus• Portugal. She also identifies her central try-fishers and plant workers. It will there• theoretical concern to "integrate the voice fore rest with university students who will be and experience of actual women into a assigned this book (and there are likely to discussion of women and socio-economic be many in the Atlantic provinces) to convey change. Almost equally critical of traditional the core of its contents to residents of male ethnography of Southern (Mediterra• coastal communities. nean) Europe, with its stress on the concept The book has excellent tables (although of "honour and shame" and its consequent very much dated), copious notes and helpful perception of women as "victims of their chapter summaries. Surprisingly though, sexuality" and a certain form of feminist there is not one word of former federal development theory that also tends to ignore Minister of Fisheries Romeo LeBlanc who the activity and interpretation of actual tackled the same problem a few years ago women, Cole chooses to focus on the wom• with equal vigour and vision. en's work and economic activities and the way that helps them to shape a more auton• Gregory P. Pritchard omous and powerful construction of gender. Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia She carries out her project using a skilful blend of description and analysis with Sally Cole. Women of the Praia: Work and case studies (life stories) of five differently Lives in a Portuguese Coastal Community. situated women-Alvina, an older fisherwo- Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, man; Maria, also an older woman, who had 1991. xvii + 189 pp., maps, notes, bibliogra• been skipper of a fishing boat; Laura, a few phy, index, photographs, tables, glossary. US years younger, whose husband had emi• $39.50 cloth; ISBN 0-691-09464-0. US grated to find work; Adelia, a young factory $12.95, paper; ISBN 0-691-02862-1. worker; and finally Fatima, a young stay-at- home wife, a traditional dona de casa. The dustjacket correctly describes this book The women of Vila Cha, like the men, as a "richly sensitive ethnographic work," for indeed like the members of most inshore this is one of the best ethnographies I have fishing communities the world over, were read. Sally Cole demonstrates a thorough and are very poor. Throughout the book, the and intimate knowledge of her community, lives and conditions of the Pescadores are allowing us to trust both her description and contrasted with those of the more prosper• her analysis. It is her analysis, of course, that ous farmers, lavradores in the surrounding is so interesting, and which makes this book communities. Cole makes the point that the 70 The Northern Mariner

harshness of the battle for economic survival open about the contradiction they find freed the Pescadores women from many of themselves caught in. For sure, Cole is right the traditional restraints of their richer sis• to assert that they are as capable of negoti• ters. The result was a much more egalitarian ating satisfactory lives for themselves as arrangement between the sexes, both within their mothers were, but it also seems clear the family and in the community, bordering, that they have a tougher job on their hands. Cole suggests, on female dominance of im• So, for that matter, does feminist analy• portant spheres of activity. The women had sis. Sophisticated, sensitive and theoretically used their role as hard and essential workers alert ethnographies like this one show us (Trabalhadeiras) to renegotiate much more how far we have come in the last two dec• satisfactory lives for themselves. However, ades. They also show us the range and com• the implied contrast with the lavradores plexity of questions we have yet to answer. women leads one to the unhappy conclusion that such autonomy can only be achieved in Marilyn Porter conditions of economic privation. St. John's, Newfoundland The problem surfaces more acutely when Cole turns to more recent changes in Âlands Nautical Club. Sjôhistorisk Àrsskrift the community, exemplified in the stories of for Aland 1989-90. Mariehamn: Âlands Sjô- her two younger women - the factory worker fartsmuseum, 1990 [Hamngatan 2, PB 98, and the dona de casa. It is one of the SF-22101 Mariehamn, Finland]. 136 pp. strengths of Cole's work that she does not ISBN 952-90-2529-7. abandon her ethnography in the nostalgic mists of the past, but resolutely confronts Considering its rich maritime past, it is no the unfinished and much more awkward surprise that the Aland Islands boast both a present. Cole describes what are clearly very pleasant maritime museum and an significant changes in the conditions within active nautical association {Âlands Nautical which women negotiated their lives as the Club). Both organizations are responsible traditional fishery disappears and more and for the publication of this maritime history more Pescadores of both sexes find them• journal, which was started in 1989. This is selves working for wages in factories. As the therefore the second volume in the series. household moves from an essentially pro• The book contains eleven articles, of ductive unit to one focused on consumption, which most are of more than just local as women cease to be savers and guardians interest. The first, by Allan Palmer, is an of the hearth and become instead spenders account of the 1990 season of the Albanus, and creators of the idealized TV advert a replica of a late nineteenth-century galeas home, and as the successful household which was built in 1987-89 in Mariehamn. becomes more clearly dependent on the She is now used for chartered cruises for male wage, so many of the conditions of school classes, business companies and other Vila Cha powerful, autonomous women fall groups. In 1990 she visited Lakes Màlaren away. Cole does her best to present this and Visby and proved an able and seaworthy change in the most positive light possible, vessel. Allan Palmer acted as her skipper on using the perspective of the younger most of these voyages. women's preferences. Yet I remain uncon• Marcus Lindholm takes us to a far more vinced by this aspect of the book. By Cole's distant past. His article examines the wrecks own account, the older women are highly critical of what they see as a loss both of the located in one of the main entrances to the values they hold important and of then- Aland archipelago, the fairway past Flisô independence. Even the younger women are and Degerby. They were found during a diving expedition in 1964 and were assumed Book Reviews 71

to date from the sea battle between Swedish Shawn Thompson, River's Edge: Reprobates, and Russian naval forces in 1720. However, Rum-runners and Other Folk of the Thou• Lindholm concludes that the documentation sand Islands. Burnstown, Ontario: General of the excavation was so poor that more Store Publishing Company, 1991. 320 pp., investigation in situ will be needed before photographs, maps, index. $19.95, paper; the origin of the wrecks can be determined ISBN 0-919431-46-1. with any reasonable probability. Per-Ove Hôgnàs describes the wrecking River's Edge is a lengthy collection of mem• of a coastal sailer destined for Stockholm in orabilia of people connected with the St. 1811. The accident is quite well documented Lawrence River and Thousand Islands. On and highlights everyday life on such small the surface it provides vivid impressions of craft. Of greater interest to an international life along the river for many local inhabit• audience are the two studies that follow, by ants, based on visits and conversations with Bertil Lindqvist and Gôte Sundberg (the fifty-nine individuals living on the north and curator of the maritime museum). They south shores of the river. In talking with so record the life and business activities of two many different people, Shawn Thompson Aland peasant-shipowners, Axel Erikson realized that there were varying themes and (the uncle of the well-known Gustaf Erik- even close comparisons of experiences along son) and Axel Karlsson. Both lived in the the river. These themes are grouped into second half of the nineteenth century, when nine categories or chapters, such as "The Aland shipping expanded from the coastal Navigators, Rum-Runners and the Law," and Baltic trade to all the seven seas. Both "River Rats and Church Mice," "Catching were masters on several ships and owned Some Sun: Guides and Trappers." Some shares in them as well; the former was even subjects, such as the oil spill on the St. Law• the major owner of a few. These ships rence River on June 23, 1976, end up being included a few Canadian-built craft such as treated several times by several interviewees, St. Julien and Hanna Blanchard. Since both with the result that, though the book is very studies include many excerpts from masters' easy reading, I found it too long. letters to owners, they illustrate quite vividly This is Thompson's second book. River what it was like to run elderly sailing vessels Rats: The People of the Thousand Islands during "the twilight of sail." was published in 1989. While River's Edge For those desiring more information on provides a wealth of personal information Aland shipping history, there is a useful re• and local history that perhaps has not been view of existing Âlandian maritime history previously documented, the book suffers literature by Justus Harberg and a presenta• greatly from very poor indexing, end-notes tion of archival material by John Hackman. improperly numbered, and flawed maps. There is also a presentation of the present A Name Index refers only to the indi• state and future prospects of the Aland viduals interviewed; it ignores many people Maritime Museum, as well as activity reports who appear within the interviews. Thus, it of the Museum foundation and the Alands refers us to an interview with Johanna Law- Nautical Club. renson which in fact is in the middle of a All the articles are supplemented by conversation with someone completely dif• short summaries in English which should ferent, (p. 81) The index refers to the Gefell make them accessible even for those who do family, yet the heading for the conversation not command the Swedish language. lists only Annie Gefell. Similarly, the index mentions only John Bishop, yet Les Bishop Yrjô Kaukiainen is also listed in the main heading above the Helsingfors, Finland conversation. The lack of a subject index 72 The Northern Mariner

forces us to trust in luck to locate items of 310-311. On pages 314-315, #9 (Needles interest. Thus, Bob Liddcll recounts his Eye) is incorrectly placed, while #15 (Cran• childhood experiences (p. 95) and mentions berry Creek) is missing altogether, as is #2 pre-historic Indian burial sites on Gordon (Squaw Island) from the map on pages 316- Island, one of which he dug up without his 317. Don't trust the maps to find some of father's consent, unearthing bones and these people! Furthermore, placing a large arrowheads. An archaeologist might fmd map into the spine at the back of the book such a first-hand account useful in locating is a source of frustration since one has to sites, yet without a subject index, a reader force the book open to see the whole map. cannot fmd this exciting piece of culturally In short, River's Edge is too long, occa• significant information except by accident. sionally repetitive, poorly indexed, and has End-notes for page 156 are incorrectly unchallenged and historically inaccurate numbered. End-note #1 refers to John Gray information. With better indexing and accu• when in fact he is actually found on page racy, I would gladly have paid the price; as 154. He should also have been assigned a it is, River's Edge is too expensive for what different number, for this throws all the amounts to a few nights' interesting reading. other numbers out of order. In the text, Thompson also lists the number one as an Ken McLeod end-note twice (pp. 152 and 154). Osgoode, Ontario At times, Thompson fails to qualify the statements of the people he interviews. He Louis Blanchette. La tradition maritime de never challenges the remarks of Roly Mcin• Matane; suivi d'un hommage aux capitaines tosh, who "helped raise [what] was supposed de bateaux de la région de Matane. 2me édi• to have been a gunboat. It was just really an tion; Rimouski: Histo-Graff, 1992. 198 pp., old barge. The government must have spent cartes, photos, bibliographie. $15.95 ( + thousands and thousands of dollars, down at $2.45 poste), paper; ISBN 2-9802958-0-9. Mallorytown Landing." (pp. 103-104) In fact the Canadian Government, which authorized La première édition était de 1984. De toute the raising of this historic vessel (now on évidence, l'expérience profita à l'auteur: il display at Brown's Bay), prepared an official revient en effet avec un compendium, report of their work on this site which illustré à profusion, de tout ce qui s'est indicates that the wreck exhibits character• passé au port de Matane et dans le golfe et istics consistent with Royal Navy construc• le fleuve en ce qui concerne la mer, les tion and was probably used as a gunboat marins et les navires. Les détails abondent, before ending its service as a barge later in tous positifs, les navires changent de its life. This interpretation is easily verified. propriétaires, de capitaines, de destinations, Nor does Thompson challenge Bob Bert- de rôles et surtout de cargaisons: Matane rand who states that "by 1621, they were reste le port d'attache de toute l'activité livin' in Kingston." (p. 119) Is this an ainsi décrite. Tout y est, semble-t-ik sauf les attempt to change Canadian history? King• manquements! ston was not founded until 1673. Cette scrupuleuse extension renseigne Thompson's maps also leave much to be sans l'ombre d'un doute et rend service à desired. Owen Island mistakenly appears as quiconque recherche le nom d'un navire ou Spilsbury Island (pp. 312-313) and, on the d'un capitaine, la date d'un événement ou same map, his codes of #4 (Sagistawika celle d'une transaction. La vue d'ensemble Island) and #14 (Endymion Island) are not fait défaut mais son absence se justifie par noted on the corresponding map. There is le but même du livre: il vise à faire con• no scale for the map mentioned on pages naître l'histoire locale d'un port et de son Book Reviews 73

rayonnement. Sa force découle de ce qu'il to produce a veritable spate of publications est une deuxième édition, ainsi qu'on l'a of conference proceedings. Many such publi• noté au début: toutes les améliorations cations leave the distinct impression that, qu'on attend dans un tel cas, y figurent. while it must have been exciting to be in L'enthousiasme et la compétence de l'auteur attendance and to exchange views with other devraient entraîner la formation d'une participants, the papers presented could équipe qui poursuivrait, sous son inspiration hardly have been the high point of the les études susceptibles d'approfondir les conference. Such is not the case with Making connaissances en histoire de la mer, dans Adjustments. It contains a number of very tout le golfe et le Saint-Laurent inférieur. fine papers impossible to consider justly in Quoi qu'il en soit, on souhaite que M. a brief review. Some explore new but minor Blanchette se trouve des collègues qui themes in the history of colonial Nova pousseront la recherche dans ce domaine Scotia. Others provide new illustrations of essentiel. Son livre constitue une percée, une older important themes. Still others explicit• première exploration. Le recueil ainsi conçu ly seek to revise standard interpretations. est un peu hétéroclite. Elles n'en indiquent Yet all fit together nicely into a whole. The pas moins la voie à suivre. C'est de la véri• very strength of this collection raises some• table histoire locale. what different questions than the oft-heard Les cinq premiers chapitres constituent complaints about such works. un tout qui, historiquement, se tient. Le At the risk of omission, I was particu• chapitre VI pourrait être qualifié de larly impressed with several contributions. dictionnaire biographique. Il est unique en Gary Hartlen's brief piece on slavery in the ce domaine. Il a donc toutes les qualités et planter migration and Nancy Vogan's dis• tous les défauts du genre: les personnages cussion of a manuscript tunebook from 1766 sont trop près de nous, voire encore vivants, in the Colchester Historical Museum are pour que des jugements soient portés sur both fascinating, the latter suggesting that eux. Les chapitres VII et VIII sur la bataille many more documentary riches are still out du Saint-Laurent pendant la deuxième there to be discovered. For new light on guerre et sur un certain nombre de nauf• traditional themes, I was particularly taken rages apportent vraiment du nouveau. On ne by Gwendolyn Davies' biographical sketch of saurait en dire autant du chapitre IX et des the curious career of the Reverend John deux appendices qui reproduisent des Seccombe and Carol Campbell's outline of articles de journaux. the early settlement of Truro by Scots-Irish from the American colonies (the non-Puri• G.-H. Dagneau tan planters). But the hallmark of this col• Sainte-Foy, Québec lection are pieces of major revisionism. John Reid and Julian Gwyn both argue that we Margaret Conrad (éd.). Making Adjustments: need to put Nova Scotia back into imperial Change and Continuity in Planter Nova or transatlantic perspective; Gwyn insists that war was important to Nova Scotia. Scotia 1759-1800. Fredericton: Acadiensis David Desserud maintains that neutrality in Press, 1991. 280 pp., maps, illustrations, Nova Scotia during the American Revol• tables. $21.95, paper; ISBN 0-919107-33-8. ution was hardly an apolitical stance. Barry Moody explores kinship and inheritance The virtually simultaneous arrival of the patterns in a planter township. Brian Cuth- computer as desk-top publisher and the bertson, in one of several papers that almost automatic publication grant from the extends well beyond the terminal date in the Social Sciences and Humanities Research title of the collection, does something that Council, both in the 1980s, have combined 74 The Northern Mariner

many scholars have spoken of as important at, beautifully laid out and remarkably free but few have actually attempted, tracing the of textual error. The editor is to be con• patterns and influences of the planters in the gratulated on an excellent piece of work. So, nineteenth century, in this case in terms of too, are all the contributing authors. It is elections in planter constituencies. E. Jenni• rarely that one enjoys a whole collection of fer Monaghan offers a wonderful keynote essays but, while I have my favourites, I address on literacy and gender in colonial found all of these offerings interesting and New England, with some obvious questions some of them quite fascinating. One of the for colonial Nova Scotia, she even discusses great strengths of this work is its interdisci• the diary of a Boston schoolgirl of 1771 who plinary range, authors being drawn from had been brought up in Cumberland, Nova history, geography, English studies, institutes Scotia, although she does little with the and archives. The result is that the reader is apparent fact that the precocious young lady subjected to fruitful shifts in analytical focus had somehow received considerable educa• and methodology from essay to essay, heigh• tion in handwriting and exposure to books in tening one's awareness of the complexity of an isolated frontier community before her marine-based economies over a long stretch arrival in the Massachusetts capital. of time. Surprisingly, too, for a book that Although (perhaps because) this collec• covers such a wide theme as Scotland and tion is so strong, I have reservations about the sea, the volume hangs together remark• its format, indeed about its very existence. ably well. Chronological organization helps: Surely the many fine essays would have one has a sense of evolution and of logical found a wider audience in a major journal, consistency which contributes to the overall such as Acadiensis, which must have been "flow" of the book, provides an (unwritten) substantially weakened by its inability to subtext which permits the reader to make print these pieces. The chief justifications the mental shift from topic to topic and age for a separate publication apart from a jour• to age, and does (as the editor claims) nal—lengthy synthetic editorial introduction, "bring into focus the immense significance bibliography, and especially a careful index- for Scotland of being a maritime nation." are absent from this book. Making Adjust• Although born in Scotland, and on Clyde- ments is the second major collection of side at that, and although I practised mari• essays on the Nova Scotia planters in recent time history for a while, I had not before years. Their publication has certainly rejuve• thought of all Scotland in these terms. I will nated "Planter Studies." One must wonder, in future. This volume quietly and effectively however, whether any further segregation of makes the case that, from Roman times to planter studies from the mainstream histori• North Sea Oil, marine-based resources have cal journals—and from the mainstream been of vital importance to the Scottish historical conferences, for that matter—is, in economy and to Scottish society. the long run, really such a very good idea. I have been using the term "marine" rather than "maritime" because the book J. M. Bumsted deals not only with what is normally taken Winnipeg, Manitoba to comprise maritime history (ships and shipping, seafaring, shipbuilding and ship- T.C. Smout (ed.). Scotland and the Sea. owning) but also with offshore oil, fish and Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1992. fishing. Indeed, for scholars like myself who vii + 232 pp., photographs, maps, figures, live and work in Atlantic Canada, the topics tables. £25, cloth; ISBN 0-85976-338-2. of oil, fish, what one author refers to as "maritime sharecropping" and the interface This is a charming book, attractive to look between domestic and commercial econo- Book Reviews 75 mies as illuminated by bait fishing, are all devoted to the development of the lumber familiar. However, new insights are provided trade and the transition, in the period after when they appear in the context of the the birth of Kotka, from sail to steam. north-east as opposed to the north-west This report of the seminar is distin• Atlantic. Indeed, I have been made aware of guished by some excellent papers. A splen• how valuable~to both the authors of these did example of the remarkable work done essays and to scholars in Atlantic Canada- by Lewis Fischer and Helge Nordvik is comparative work on the history and econ• provided by using the material in the British omy of the North Atlantic rim would be. We crew agreements now housed in the Memor• need to get together, or at least to read one ial University of Newfoundland to examine another's work. We have much to discuss. the case of the maritime wages paid by I have two slight complaints to make sailing tonnage in the Baltic trades in the about this book. One is that a bibliography late nineteenth century. It concludes with a of recent work on Scotland and the sea comment widely applicable to maritime would have been invaluable, but there is no historical studies, "a better comprehension bibliography at all; only chapter notes. The of the maritime sector as a whole is only other is that the volume would have bene• going to come when we know more about fitted enormously from something more the economic history of the entire region...as generous than the one paragraph introduc• ...more research is completed we should tion by the editor, especially given the have a much better framework with which to wealth of wisdom that T.C. Smout has to situate maritime questions." (p. 254) offer. This works cries out for an epilogue Yrjô Kaukiainen's study on profitability to encompass and reflect on what has been of sail and steam in Finland in the late achieved in its pages. But perhaps that will nineteenth and early twentieth centuries come in a companion volume on "The Sea: comes to the very ably presented conclusion a North Atlantic Rim Perspective," which is, that the existing primary sources do not I hope, something that T.C. Smout might provide an answer to the question of the now consider for a future endeavour. relative profitability of sailing and steam vessels. His description of shipowning ac• Rosemary E. Ommer counting methods in Finland in the late St. John's, Newfoundland nineteenth century is probably widely appli• cable internationally. On the other hand, Yrjô Kaukiainen (ed.). The Baltic as a Trade Sarah Palmer's study of "Sail v. Steam in Road: Timber Trade in the Baltic Area; 19th century Britain" would have benefitted Competition Between Steam and Sails. from a deeper analysis of the technical and Papers of the VII Baltic Seminar, Kotka, shiphandling problems which beset early August 1989. Kotka, Finland: Provincial steamship ventures. British merchant paddle Museum of Kymenlaakso, 1992; Publication steamers were, incidentally, driven usually by #16. ii + 254 pp., tables, figures, 45 FIM, side-lever and not by the very different paper; ISBN 951-96183-3-3. beam engines Palmer attributes to them. There are two interesting papers by Est• In August 1989 a two-day seminar devoted onian contributors. One, by Urmas Dresen to Baltic trade and shipping was held at of the Maritime Museum of Tallinn, deals Kotka, a Finnish town on the coast just west with the development of the port of Narva of the border with Russia. Kotka began in in the late nineteenth century and draws on the 1870s as a sawmill town and port of material not previously accessible to Eng• export of lumber. It was therefore entirely lish-speaking scholars. appropriate that the seminar should be The report is a most useful document 76 The Northern Mariner

and should be in the libraries of every ation in response to changed market condi• historian with an interest in the maritime tions. France makes an interesting and affairs of Northern Europe. revealing comparison, more so perhaps than the obvious success stories, Japan and, Basil Greenhill latterly, Korea. From a much smaller base Saltash, Cornwall of production in the late nineteenth century the French were to match British production Edward H. Lorenz. Economic Decline in in the 1970s and '80s. Lorenz ascribes this to Britain: The Shipbuilding Industry 1890-1970. inherited systems of labour organization, the Oxford: Clarendon Press and New York: key difference being the craft basis of Brit• Oxford University Press, 1991. x + 166., ish shipbuilding. French nineteenth-century tables, figures, appendices, bibliography, shipbuilders made use of large amounts of index. $63.95, cloth; ISBN 0-19-8288502-7. casual labour, often indeed employed part- time in agriculture. Management accordingly This is not the definitive history of the had a greater part in the direct organization decline of the British shipping industry for it and supervision of work. In Britain, by is conceived and executed as a speculative contrast, craft production tailored to the piece. Nevertheless the book has an import• customized requirements of British and ant place in the historiography. It is a timely foreign shipowners left shipbuilding trade exercise in stocktaking, incorporating a unions with greater autonomy and authority critical review of the existing secondary at the work place. Lorenz emphasizes mana• gerial preference for a system which secured literature on Britain's twentieth-century maximum value from cheap apprentice economic performance as well as titles more labour and self-motivated team work. Only specific to the shipbuilding industry. As in the post-war period when market condi• comprehensive as one might reasonably tions changed were demarcation lines and expect for a text of this length, the brevity customary work practices seen as a restraint and lucidity of Lorenz's exposition suggests upon innovation. By then both management it will be well received by specialist and non- and unions were unwilling to contemplate specialist alike. It merits a place on every the upheaval contingent upon a transition to teaching bibliography of twentieth century techniques of mass production. European maritime and comparative econ• omic history, though the price may militate Ultimately Lorenz's argument resolves against its adoption as an undergraduate itself into a Chandlerian paradigm for the text. Undoubtedly, however, its greatest shipping industry and, by extension, British impact will be upon researchers for, while manufacturing industry in general. But he his thesis is neither wholly original nor presumes rather than demonstrates the entirely convincing, Lorenz raises significant efficacy of managerial hierarchies in co• issues and offers a challenging perspective ordinating production to the demands of the on the comparative performance of the twentieth century market economy. The task British and French shipbuilding industries. of providing detailed evidence is postponed In essence the argument is a familiar to a future date, while questions posed in one: from a position of preeminence in the the final chapter reinforce the tentative late nineteenth century British shipbuilders nature of the thesis. We can look forward to failed to maintain even a respectable share a lively debate ensuing from Lorenz's book. of the market in new tonnage into the latter part of the twentieth century because dis• trust between management and workers Valerie Burton militated against innovation and reorganiz• St. John's, Newfoundland Book Reviews 11

S.K. Al Naib (ed.). European Docklands: factors such as changes in building mater• Past, Present, and Future. London: Thames ials, ship sizes, modes of power transmission and Hudson, 1991. 85 pp., illustrations. ranging from mechanical to compressed air, £5.95, paper; ISBN 0-901987-82-4. hydraulic and electric, along with varying modes of land transportation and cargoes S.K. Al Naib. London Docklands: Past, from opium and tobacco to petroleum. Present, and Future. London: Thames and Both books should be read by planners, Hudson 1990. 130 pp., illustrations. £5.95, politicians, developers and community activ• paper; ISBN 0-901987-81-6. Canadian dis• ists looking for guidance as they consider tributor, Douglas & Mclntyre, Toronto, the fate of other docklands now becoming Ontario. idle or grossly underused as a result of changing patterns of manufacture, trade and The Reichmann Brothers have made Lon• transportation. There are also lessons, or don's Canary Wharf world famous. How• implied questions, for maritime historians. ever, it is more than a story of developers Often regarded as scruffy, even embarrass• getting caught on the downside. London ing, industrial wastelands of the sort better Docklands and European Docklands present people do not talk about, docklands are at Canary Wharf and other reuse projects as the heart of maritime history and our history part of a larger story of significant techno• is richer for them. Should maritime histor• logical change and its aftermaths. ians pay as much attention to docks as they These well-illustrated books are labours do to vessels and people? Dr. Al Naib and of love by Dr. S.K. Al Naib of the Depart• the reviewer think so. As an engineering ment of Civil Engineering, Polytechnic of professor, and historian, whose major area of research and teaching is understanding East London. They blend appreciation of technological change and its interaction with historical development, surviving artifacts, society—be it past, present or future~I find structures and sites with an understanding of works such as European Docklands and the challenges facing planners, politicians, London Docklands very useful indeed. corporations and individuals worldwide as they wrestle with the problems of what to do Ships without docks are like ideas, with docklands rendered obsolete by techno• artifacts or structures, without context. The logical and communications revolutions. written history and appreciation of ships There is also the story of achievement and seems to be growing faster than that of successful conversion and adaptation. docklands. It would be tragic if the appreci• Both books follow a similar pattern of ation came only after most of the world's historical analysis beginning with how and great old historically significant docklands why the need for larger docks arose, how had been levelled and converted to high they were built, financed and operated plus priced condominium heavens. Canada has what is happening now they are no longer much to learn in this respect. needed in their original roles. European We owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Al Docklands covers Antwerp, Copenhagen, Naib for writing these books; let us hope it Cherbourg, Rotterdam and Duisborg- will be repaid by careful reading, more Ruhort. London Docklands understandably research and wiser planning for the future of goes into more detail. In each case we are the magnificent cultural and historical given enough historical and technical infor• resources of our aging docklands. mation to understand some of the forces, products, social patterns, technical problems Norman R. Ball and achievements which the docklands em• Waterloo, Ontario body. We are introduced to the role of 78 The Northern Mariner

Peter Turnbull, Charles Woolfson, and John ernment had been in power for a decade Kelly. Dock Strike: Conflict and Restructuring before it felt able to declare war on this in Britain's Ports. Aldershot, UK and Brook- "avant garde of the working class," and even field, VT: Avebury Publishing Company, then not until technological change had 1992. x + 270 pp., figures, tables, maps, opened up breaches in labour's ranks. When appendices, references, index. US $59.95, the state entered the battle it brought huge library binding; ISBN 1-85628-176-0. sums to pay to workers as a means of secur• ing a victory over the union. As a govern• In the 1989 national dock strike, British ment representative later conceded, "The dockworkers, falling into a pattern already decision by Ministers was that ex-registered evident in the fate of coalminers, printers dock workers who were made redundant by and seafarers, suffered an historic defeat. their employer would qualify for these The National Dock Labour Scheme of 1947, payments without any cash limits on these which had enabled the Transport and Gen• payments." (p. 233) Over £250 million were eral Workers Union (T&GWU) to exercise allocated by the government and employers considerable control not only over the lab• as direct and indirect payments to upwards our process but more importantly over the of 6,600 workers involved in these "liquida• process of hiring and firing, was abolished; tion redundancies." The price of defeating thousands of workers became redundant. the T&GWU was thus one that the Dock Strike accounts for this defeat by Thatcher government was willing to pay "whatever the cost." The authors persuasively examining the way in which the technologi• argue that, in the UK case, this concentra• cal revolution in cargo handling associated tion on developing coercive management has with containerization created a surplus of meant that too little attention has been labour, generating inexorable pressures for placed on long-term investment in the ports labour force restructuring. With the atrophy themselves. The results are likely to be of the National Dock Labour Scheme under devastating as Britain's ports fall behind the force of these changing conditions both those of other European nations. labour and management sought to alter the political regime governing the industry. Dedicating their book to the great Labour sought "total regulation with the unofficial dock leader Jack Dash, the Dock Labour Scheme extended to all the authors make no pretence of detachment. country's ports, and a new, wider definition Yet, no one reading this book could fail to of dockwork; the employers... called for total be impressed by the analytical clarity, wealth deregulation of the industry." (p. 109) In the of documentation and intimate knowledge of end, after a bitter fight, the employers won. the industry, which together make this one For those aware of similar events earlier of the best works of its kind. in North America much of this will seem familiar. Nevertheless, the struggle in Britain John Bellamy Foster occurred on a larger canvas, since the battle Eugene, Oregon lines were drawn on a national scale, rather than on a port by port basis as in Canada, Iain Ward. 5M/ Geng: The Hong Kong Mar• or a coastal basis, as in the U.S. Moreover, ine Police, 1841-1950. Hong Kong: Hong the assault on the unions in Britain was ini• Kong University Press, 1991. xx + 214 pp., tiated and organized by the state as part of maps, photographs, bibliography, index. US the Thatcherite revolution. One of the $19.50, paper; ISBN 962-209-286-1. contributions of Dock Strike is thus that it demonstrates the power and militancy of Some kind of emergency is always happen• British dockworkers. The Conservative gov• ing in Hong Kong and the Marine Police Book Reviews 79 are usually in the thick of the action, enfor• ernment in accordance with American policy cing the law, suppressing piracy, or dealing and would have been taken over by the with the effects of natural disasters or wars. communists in 1949. As communist and This book, by a senior Marine Police officer, nationalist forces fought on the mainland, is about the formation and history of the Hong Kong's pre-war population, which had force, from the founding of Hong Kong as a been reduced to a third of its 1941 size British colony to 1950. A similar sized vol• during the Japanese occupation, came flood• ume would, no doubt, be needed to cover ing back at the rate of 100,000 a month. the period from 1950 to the present day. Both piracy and policing instantly returned. From extempore beginnings the Water At first the latter was provided by naval Police had, by the 1880s, become a disci• personnel under Commander Gick; a Cana• plined force with a fine headquarters over• dian, Lt. Timothy L. Bayliff, was a promi• looking the harbour. Rowed boats gave way nent member of the group, known as "Gick- to steam pinnaces and eventually to pur• force." The regular force was soon reconsti• pose-built launches commanded by British tuted and was able to make use of a selec• and Commonwealth NCOs, all forceful and tion of war-built craft, including naval tugs unconventional characters attracted by and fast Search and Rescue launches. action and excitement, including frequent This is all exciting stuff and Superin• gun battles with pirates. The Chinese con• tendent Ward has set it out in a clear and stables and crews were well trained, profes• readable manner, with excellent pictures, sional and long serving. maps and appendices. Only an insider can In the 1840s, pirate fleets of armed put together this type of account. Presumab• junks and lorchas controlled the coasts of ly Ward is now at work on a companion Fulien and Kwang Tung and major naval volume to cover the period since 1950. actions were required to defeat them. Later the problem became one of raids, robbery, Douglas Maginley extortion and hijacking, all of which, in the Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia nautical context are defined as piracy and controllable, more or less, by police action. Alan D. Watson. Wilmington: Port of North The book contains many accounts of actions Carolina,. Columbia: University of South to protect or recover pirated vessels, in• Carolina Press, 1992. x + 213 pp., map, cluding large steamers. tables, photographs, bibliography, index. US Major new problems arose out of the $29.95, cloth; ISBN 0-87249-778-X. Sino-Japanese war after 1937. Then came the Japanese attack in December, 1941. The George R. Buker. Jacksonville: Riverport— Chinese personnel assisted in the evacuation Seaport. Columbia: University of South of forces from Kowloon, then were released Carolina Press, 1992. viii + 192 pp., map, to look after their families while the Euro• illustrations, bibliography, index. US $29.95, peans joined in the final but hopeless cloth; ISBN 0-87249-790-9. defence. The survivors were interned in Stanley Camp. These two books purport to deal with the When Japan surrendered in August history respectively of "North Carolina's 1945, the pre-war Colonial Secretary, Frank• principal port" and Florida's "major automo• lin Gibson, proclaimed himself Acting Gov• bile import center." Neither is a patch on ernor, hoisted the Union flag, and informed similar Canadian port studies that never the British Consul at Macao. Had he not dared aspire to become full-length books. done so, Hong Kong would have been If one wanted to be charitable one handed over to the Chiang Kai Chek gov• could argue that neither of the ports was 80 The Northern Mariner ever particularly successful. Indeed, had York, 1992) in which the distinguished nature been allowed its course the evidence American railway historian was less than is that they would not have been developed complimentary about the acumen and enter• at all. Had it not been for the demands of prise of his fellow-countrymen south of the wars (yes, right up to and including the Gulf Mason-Dixon Line. There is certainly noth• War—these books are nothing if not current) ing in these two books that would do any• and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, both thing to change this opinion, and, indeed, ports, one suspects, would long since have the lack seems somehow to have spilled over silted up and been forgotten to all but a few into the habits of the two historians. About who might have designs to continue their all that can be said of the books is that, as sometimes clandestine past and sneak into examples of the art of book printing and the U.S with illegal cargoes. publishing, they are satisfactory. Only in this Buker, erstwhile historian of the afore• regard should the University of South said Corps of Engineers, should have stuck Carolina Press feel satisfied with these two with them: except for the last pages of his "Studies in Maritime History." 165-page monograph we learn nothing about Jacksonville as a viable port for merchant Kenneth S. Mackenzie shipping. Watson on the other hand at least Ganges, British Columbia has the idea of what constitutes the history of a vital and active entity that a good oper• James P. Delgado and J. Candace Clifford. ating port is. But he needed the sure hand Great American Ships. Washington: The of an editor to put him on track and keep Preservation Press, 1991. 312 pp., photo• him there. Thus on pages 133-5 he discusses, graphs, figures, appendices, bibliography, however briefly, some of the essential fea• index. Cdn $25.50, US $19.95, paper; ISBN tures of the human infrastructure necessary 0-89133-189-1. Canadian distributor, Fitz- to keep a port functioning smoothly. henry and Whiteside, Richmond Hill, Ont. Both books fail to give anything to entice Canadian readers to follow up on the In 1985, the US National Park Service was research. Although both make fleeting directed by Congress to conduct a national reference to Canada (largely in connection survey of maritime heritage resources. Great with blockade-running), and Watson hints at American Ships represents one of the most factors that would have made Wilmington at tangible results of the work of the National least a problem for Canadian naval supply Maritime Initiative, as the programme came shippers to be aware of, we are left dangling to be called. One of a series of guidebooks without any suggestion that there might be published by the National Trust for Historic more there to discover. Watson blithely Preservation, Great American Ships presents acknowledges the existence of an icebreaker condensed histories (and in most cases, an based at Wilmington without so much as a illustration) of selected vessels from the blink (p. 137) whilst Buker dismisses in two National Maritime Initiative's "Inventory of pages the cessation of activities at Jackson• Large Preserved Historic Vessels." ville during World War II due to the The guidebook follows the generally- untrammelled rampages of German sub• accepted definition of large ships as those marines, (pp. 150-1) being more than forty feet LOA. Vessels in• It so happened that this reviewer was cluded in the volume either have been res• reading these books at the same time he tored or were at time of writing the subject was perusing Albro Martin's Railroads of a preservation effort; most are available Triumphant; The Growth, Rejection and for viewing. Many are open to the public, Rebirth of a Vital American Force (New and a fair number are also still operational. Book Reviews 81

The guide is organized regionally. Each Edwin L. Dunbaugh. Night Boat to New state or region is given a brief introduction. England 1815-1900. Westport, CT: Green• The vessel descriptions range from the very wood Press, 1992. xvii + 370 pp., maps, brief (a one-paragraph entry for the wooden photographs, appendix, bibliographical essay, steam tug W.O.Decker at South Street Sea• index. US $49.95, cloth; ISBN 0-313-27733-8. port in New York) to quite lengthy (two pages for the USCGC Taney in Baltimore). Approximately two hundred passenger and The vessel histories outline the salient fea• freight steamers (and their captains) which tures of the ship's career and her current ran between New York and the ports of status. The descriptions often focus on the southern New England or between Boston reason for the ship's nomination to the Nat• and the ports on the Maine coast during the ional Register, such as "the last surviving" or nineteenth century are identified in this "one of the best preserved examples of." book. Of particular interest to the author Two prefatory chapters are well-organ• are the assignments and schedules of the ized and useful. The first, "A Maritime Long Island Sound night boats, culled from America," gives a broad outline of American the maritime press. These are rehearsed maritime history by ship type, ranging from almost on an annual basis. schooners to steamships to ferries. "Preserv• In addition to the mind-numbing ac• ing Ships" outlines the history of maritime counts of steamer arrivals and departures preservation. The story of efforts to preserve and of vessels actually fulfilling schedules or maritime history is of almost equal interest under repair or used as back ups, this work to that of the vessels themselves, and is has some information which is fascinating worthy of fuller treatment elsewhere. and some which is significant. It carefully Many of the vessels in this book have establishes the links steamer operations had faced more dangers in their second careers with railroads. Starting in 1835, passengers as heritage artifacts than in their voyaging took rail service from Boston to a river or days. For those with some knowledge of the coastal port such as Hartford, New London maritime preservation field, there is a great or Fall River to make the connection with deal between the lines in the descriptions of, New York. Passengers from New York also for instance, the historic ships at San used these water and land routes. The com• Francisco Maritime National Historic Park. bination allowed businessmen to leave one In fairness to the authors, such issues are city in the afternoon, sloop aboard a properly outside the scope of a guidebook, steamer and be on hand for work in the and they do candidly treat the problems of other the next morning. These links not maritime preservation in "Lost Ships and infrequently led to railroad companies con• Losing Battles," their epilogue. trolling steamers or shipping companies with Great American Ships is a useful guide a view to advantaging their owners. But to America's preserved vessels, and takes its after 1889, when one could travel by rail place along side other works such as Nor• between Boston and New York, and even man Brouwer's International Register of after the turn of the century when the night Historic Ships and Alexander McKee's A boats were taken over by a single railway Heritage of Ships. The book is marred only company, they still did a brisk business. By by some small errors, as when a photo of then, however, such unscrupulous transport the Gloucester schooner Adventure's wind• magnates as Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay lass is identified as her steering gear. Gould had left their mark on the business ethics of steamer services.

John Summers Innovative technology was not much Oakville, Ontario used after the formative years of coastal 82 The Northern Mariner passenger service. Even when metal hulls New York with 596 passengers and crew on and compound engines were available, vul• the Atlantic segment of the New York to nerable wood hulls and fuel-hungry beam San Francisco gold rush sailing route, engines were preferred. Dunbaugh suggests foundered in a severe hurricane some 160 that availability of timber and cheap fuel ac• miles southwest of Charleston, South Caro• counts for this backwardness. Ship owners' lina. 435 lives were lost. Normand Klare, a penchant for reducing competition and ac• descendant of two of the survivors, recounts cepting identical rates and indifference to the loss of the ill-fated vessel in this well passenger safety may also have reinforced written volume. the status quo. Accidents were endemic. Proceeding chronologically, Klare Hundreds of passengers and crew members carries the tale of the Central America tra• were killed or hurt. Dunbaugh fully analyses gedy from the building of the three-masted collisions, boiler explosions, groundings, side-wheel steamer in 1847 to present-day burnings and sinkings, their causes and attempts to salvage the vessel, lying in 8,500 casualties. feet of water, to recover the millions of Steamers diverted to tasks in the Civil dollars worth of gold she carried. Along the War are identified. The characteristics and way he introduces us to William Lewis schedules of a number of steamers marginal Herndon, the ship's captain, already famous to sound or Marine Coast services such as for his exploration of the Amazon basin; the Hudson River vessels and others working vessel's passengers, some well-known, others into St. John, New Brunswick and Yar• obscure; the effects of the hurricane and the mouth, Nova Scotia are mentioned. Vessels attempts of the officers and crew to avoid, taken off their schedules to provide day trips or at least delay, the sinking of the ship in for leisure-seekers are noted. Very little order to save as many on board as possible; information on capital formation, freight the only marginally successful attempts at tonnage and passenger numbers is provided. rescue by other vessels that came to her Even boiler pressures and ship tonnages are assistance as the storm drove them and the seldom cited. However, if you want to know Central America farther and farther apart; the schedules of, say, the Providence, a and the effects of the tragedy on the sur• wooden-hulled, beam-engined vessel built in vivors and on the nation. The loss of the 1867 and obtained by Gould and his flam• gold bullion was at least partially responsible boyant partner, James Fisk, for a sixth of its for the Panic of 1857. construction cost, this book has the answer. Although Klare's research into the It also has a fme photo and illustrations of greatest loss of life on a commercial vessel seventy other coastal steamers. in the nineteenth century has left no stone unturned, his narrative emphasis is on the Robert Kubicek sinking itself and the heroic attempts by the Vancouver, British Columbia crew to save the ship and its passengers. Here the story stands in obvious contrast to Normand E. Klare. The Final Voyage of the the loss of the Arctic off the coast of New• Central America, 1857. Spokane, WA: foundland three years before. In that earlier Arthur H. Clark Company, 1992. xiii + 278 calamity, 350 persons had died as a result of pp., maps, appendices, photographs, illus• panic and cowardice on the part of the crew, trations, bibliography, index. US $32.95, a maritime disaster well documented in cloths; ISBN 0-87062-210-2. Women and Children Last by Alexander Brown (1961). In contrast, and as was recog• In 1857 the paddle steamer Central America nized at the time, the officers and crew of (ex-George Law), sailing from Panama to the Central America upheld the finest tradi- Book Reviews 83

tion of bravery at sea as the hurricane beginning with the full story of the wreck, overwhelmed their ship off the Carolina the writer opens with a history lesson con• coast. cerning the future German Chancellor Bis• Readers will appreciate not only Klare's marck's life and rise to power and his subse• diligent research efforts but also the fact quent domestic policies, with special empha• that the publishers have placed his footnotes sis on his suppression of Catholics and at the bottom of the page—where they Jesuits. We then must plod on through the belong! They will also value his appendices life and times of five German Franciscan containing an account of the ship's treasure nuns who were among the unlucky casualties and attempts since 1988 at its recovery, the of the shipwreck. Theirs is a sad story but lives of the survivors in the aftermath of the hardly much of a nautical theme. sinking, and a complete listing of the pass• Sean Street is a skilful writer and makes engers and crew of the Central America. excellent use of research material at his As a model of diligent research and disposal, including the report of the inquest lucid prose, Klare's volume belongs in every held by the North Essex coroner in Har• maritime collection and collegiate library. wich, where the casualties were brought Laymen and scholars alike will find it a solid ashore. He also discusses charges of wreck• investment in time and knowledge. ing brought against some of the local fisher• men, and quotes from the official inquiry of James M. Morris the wreck by the British Board of Trade. Newport News, Virginia Since Street is a poet, we can forgive his use of some lubberly expressions in the text, Sean Street. The Wreck of the Deutschland. such as "ceiling" for the overhead, "weight" London: Souvenir Press, 1992. xiv + 208 pp., for displacement, and that common redun• maps, photographs, figures, bibliography, dancy "knots-an-hour." After finishing the index. £15.99, cloth; ISBN 0-285-63051-2. story of the shipwreck, Street continues with more religious rhetoric and a discussion of This slim volume is the story of the wreck of Hopkins' poem about the wreck. It is obvi• a North German Lloyd emigrant steam ves• ous where the author's interests he. sel with 215 persons aboard, including the For those interested in maritime crew of ninety-nine and three pilots. The research, this book is not recommended ship departed Bremerhaven 5 December, until it is perhaps remaindered. It is much 1875, outward bound for New York, with a too expensive when considering that roughly planned stop at Southampton before head• a third of the material has no bearing on the ing into the Atlantic. Overnight the weather loss of the vessel and does not enhance deteriorated, with strong winds and snow. maritime studies. During the early dawn of 6 December the The story of this wreck, as with many vessel far off the intended course down wrecks, reminds us that when handling a Channel, fetched up hard aground on the vessel the prime consideration at all times is Kentish Knock, a well-known sand bank to good seamanship. As a Turkish admiral seaward of the Goodwin Sands near the once remarked to that intrepid nineteenth Thames estuary. Forty-two persons perished. century traveller Lady Hester Stanhope: The author, a freelance poet and play• "Allah is Allah, but I have two anchors wright, was led to researching the stranding astern." of the Deutschland after becoming interested in a poem about the vessel's loss by the Moreton J. Ensor nineteenth century poet Gerald Manly Hop• Brewster, Massachusetts kins, a Jesuit priest. Consequently, instead of 84 The Northern Mariner

Vimala Begley and Richard Daniel De vessels to be distributed inland by Indian Puma (eds). Rome and India: The Ancient merchants. Other important stations were Sea Trade. Madison: University Press of Arikamedu on the Coromandel coast of the Wisconsin, 1991. xix + 226 pp., maps, photo• Bay of Bengal, and Mantai, a port of great graphs, figures, notes, index US $40, cloth; antiquity astride the East-West sea route to ISBN 0-299-12640-4. the Far East at the northern tip of Sri Lanka, investigated and described in detail Perhaps the most significant aspect of by the archaeologists. Rome exported a Rome's ancient trade with India was that it great variety of goods, including gold and was established without conquest in an age silver coins as bullion; Pliny remarked that when Roman power was at its height. Fol• "in no year does India absorb less than fifty lowing the destruction of Carthage, Rome million sesterces." This caused the Emperor was enjoying an unprecedented monopoly of Tiberius to complain to the Senate "of the sea-trade in the Mediterranean; its suprem• reckless exportation of money to foreign acy was unchallenged. Yet the first attempt nations and even the enemies of Rome" in to take over the Red Sea-India trade route exchange for gew-gaws. Yet the evidence had failed in 26 BC. General Aelius Gallus seems to indicate that Indian luxury goods, lost most of his army in an unsuccessful pearls, precious stones, ivory, ebony, spices, attack on Marib with the object of seizing exotic animals and slaves may have been control of the spice trade and South Ara• obtained by barter. bia's age-old East African commerce. As a Thirteen eminent scholars combine result, Rome elected to avoid further con• forces to re-assess both the literary, and frontation and obtained an agreement to archaeological evidence uncovered during trade by inviting Arabian and Indian the past four decades. This makes the col• embassies into the Roman diplomatic world. lection of essays in this volume a valuable In an open market, the Romans found contribution to the history of the period. It themselves in competition with Arabian and should be seen in perspective against the Indian merchants in the south, while expan• thousands of years of trading by land and sion north was blocked by the powerful sea which preceded it. Central Asian empire of Kushan, which con• trolled the overland caravan trade route to Edmund Layland China. Permanent trading stations were est• Cape Town, South Africa ablished however on the sub-continent of India and trade flourished for four centuries, Richard W. Unger. The Art of Medieval with Byzantine Romans continuing to trade Technology: Images of Noah the Shipbuilder. into the 6th century AD. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Muziris was the principal trading station Press, 1991. xviii + 168 pp. + 77 drawings, on the southwest Malabar coast. More than photographs, bibliography, index. US $45, a hundred ships sailed down the Red Sea cloth; ISBN 0-8135-1727-3. from Myos Hormos or Berenice to India every year, leaving in July to catch the In many ways, this is a sequel to Unger's strong southwest monsoon winds for a fast well known earlier book on medieval ship• run across the Arabian Sea to Muziris, and ping, The Ship in the Medieval Economy: Broach further north, arriving in September 600-1600 (Croom Helm, 1980). In this new and returning with the milder north-east work he has used a specific source, the monsoon from November to April. Goods iconography from the medieval and early were trans-shipped at the trading stations renaissance periods showing Noah and the and ferried around the coast by Indian building of the ark, and employs this Book Reviews 85 material to develop a better understanding frames and wales, followed by caulking, is of both the way in which ships were built, said to require less skill than the cutting and and the role of the ship in the socio-econ• fitting of dozens of mortices and tenons omic changes in the medieval period in along the plank edges. different parts of Europe. The change is broadly reflected in the A subsidiary theme of the book is an depiction of Noah as shipwright and ship• examination of the understanding that artists builder. In the north he appears working on of the medieval period had of technical mat• the vessel with simple shipwright tools, the ters, and how this was reflected in their T-axe and occasionally the adze, either by illustrations of ships and shipbuilding. The himself or with a few helpers. In the south medieval artist portrayed shipbuilding as he he becomes the overseer of a more complex knew it from his own local observation, both system with a larger and more specialised temporally and geographically. The depic• work force. He is the well dressed bourgeois tions of Noah and the ark show shipbuilding in flowing garments, directing the work of a and social organization at different locations number of shipwrights stripped down to and times in medieval Europe. Nearly all short tunics, and wielding a wide range of works showing shipbuilding involve Noah tools, axe, adze, chisel, saw, maul and auger. and the ark. The book makes fascinating reading for The earlier chapters in the book are anyone interested in medieval shipbuilding. mainly given over to a discussion of the It uses unusual sources, the depictions of religious role of most medieval art, the Noah and the ark, investigates them careful• status of manual labour, and the place and ly, and uses the results to construct a picture symbolism of Noah in early Christian theol• of both shipbuilding methods and the differ• ogy and art. Chapter 4 discusses the differ• ing and changing role of the various partici• ences in the methods of hull construction pants in the building of a ship. Although a between northern Europe with its clinker or scholarly work, the style is lively and the lap-strake construction, with overlapping book should appeal to the educated layper• planks providing both strength and flexibil• son. For anyone with a specialist interest in ity, and the early Mediterranean construc• medieval ship construction, it should be seen tion with planks fitted edge to edge and as a supplement to Unger's earlier work. joined with mortices, tenons and dowels along the edge, giving a more rigid hull. By RJ.O. Millar the tenth century skeleton building began to Vancouver, British Columbia replace shell construction in the south, and over the next few centuries came to domi• Duane A. Cline. Navigation in the Age of nate large hull construction in the north. Discovery: An Introduction. Rogers, AR: Unger examines the transmission of ideas Montfleury, Inc., 1990 [Box 697, Rogers, and ship types between north and south. A Arkansas 72757]. xiv + 214 pp, illustrations. change in social organization is postulated US $17.50, paper; ISBN 0-9627213-0-1. with the change in techniques. Shell con• struction requires individual highly skilled All right, we've been using the phrases dead workmen, with the overseer filling an organ• reckoning all our lives, but where does izing role. With skeleton building the over• "dead" come from? That's just one little seer or master shipwright determines the puzzle which makes this book so interesting form of the hull by bis choice of the frame to modern mariners. Another question, why and mould sections used when setting up the does an Arkansas writer have an interest in skeleton of ribs and stringers. The shaping an early navigation study? The answer to the and fitting of planks to the skeleton of first question is that it arose from deduced 86 The Northern Mariner

reckoning, which then was abbreviated to first summarizes early explorations by mari• ded. reckoning. You know the rest. The ners of the Pacific, Europe, the Arab world second is explained by Duane Cline-his and Asia, and the intense antagonism of remote relative, Christopher Jones, came Portugal and Spain as they expanded their over on the Mayflower. In fact he was the commercial empires. The second is devoted captain! Duane is the National General to Magellan's early life, his youth as a page Education Chairman of the Mayflower at court, his eight years spent as a seagoing Society. He also did graduate work at soldier in Portuguese campaigns in the Northwestern University and is a member of Indian Ocean which introduced him to the the US Power Squadron. He not only writes fortune to be acquired in the spice trade, about historic navigational instruments, he and finally his defection to Spain after his makes them! public humiliation by King Manuel in reject• My interest in this book arose from the ing his appeal for support. The third part fact that the Mayflower crossing occurred in examines the tribulations mounting the the same era as Champlain's twenty-three expedition after obtaining the enthusiastic crossings and his exploration and mapping support of Charles I. Such support was vital; of the Great Lakes. Champlain wrote his not only did Charles' advisors try to under• own book on navigation techniques, but it mine his confidence in Magellan but Portu• was written from the point of view of an guese agents attempted to sabotage the experienced captain of the early seventeenth venture. The predicament faced by the century, some points of which are incompre• Portuguese soldier-mariner serving a Span• hensible to today's readers. Cline clears this ish king at a time of intense rivalry is a all up, with well-illustrated chapters on constant thread: suspicions as to his loyalty, maps, lighthouses, quadrants and astrolabes, difficulties he faced when obliged to recruit compasses, log-lines, and lead lines. Spanish captains and pilots when the Portu• guese were among the best and more readily Navigation in the Age of Discovery is a available, the need to keep plans secret from refreshing relief from the theories of Portuguese spies and, in the end, to avoid LORAN-C. and Sat Nav. The book is quite Portuguese shipping routes. The fourth and easy to read, and tells us from whence we longest part, devoted to the voyage, gives came—nautically. particular attention to Magellan's passage through the Strait. Joyner knows these Theodore D. Wakefield waters from his days as an oceanographer in Sewall's Point, Florida the US National Maritime Fisheries Service.

Tim Joyner. Magellan. Camden, ME: Inter• Joyner doubts that Magellan deliberate• national Marine Publishing, 1992. xviii + 365 ly set out to circumnavigate the globe. His pp., maps, illustrations, appendices, bibli• primary objective was to find a westerly ography, index. US $24.95, cloth; ISBN 0- route to the Moluccas which he calculated 87742-263-X. (incorrectly) to lie on the eastern side of the antemeridian line of the Treaty of Tordesil- This is the first scholarly biography of las. As the route to the Indies around the Magellan since the publication of Lagoa's Cape of Good Hope belonged to Portugal, untranslated two volumes in 1938. It is an Magellan sought an alternative to guarantee impressive piece of research, drawing on Spanish access to the spice trade and deny primary and secondary sources, and a mine Portugal's monopoly-and assure himself a of information on every conceivable aspect fortune. Magellan had a "stubborn confi• of his famous voyage. It is also a joy to read. dence" (p. ID) in his ability to carry out his The book is divided into four parts. The purpose despite two mutinies, the wreck of Book Reviews 87 one ship, the desertion of his stores ship, se, Ashin Das Gupta, and Anthony Disney. losses from scurvy, a harrowing voyage As with any collection of this type, the across the Pacific, and other disasters. A fundamental problem for the editors was to complex man, it is ironic that this character• focus the vastly different research interests istic which ensured the success of his enter• of these scholars around a central theme or prise also prompted the rashness which led themes. Ptak and Rothermund seek to ac• to his death in the Philippines. complish this by grouping the papers around This work deserves to take its place three fundamental questions: the debate beside scholarly and absorbing maritime concerning the function of emporia in the biographies such as Morrison's Columbus, Asian maritime trade, the flow of specific Beaglehole's Cook, and Kennedy's Bligh. commodities, and the role of Asian and European entrepreneurs in the trade. The Freeman M. Tovell editors also promise that this volume will go Victoria, British Columbia beyond earlier collections by fleshing out the "very general terms" that have hitherto char• Roderick Ptak and Dietmar Rothermund acterized the study of traders and commod• (eds.). Emporia, Commodities, and Entre• ities, and by presenting emporia not as "iso• preneurs in Asian Maritime Trade, c. 1400- lated case studies," but in the context of 1700. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991. larger trading networks. xiii + 509 pp., maps, tables, graphs, illus• While space precludes even a cursory trations, discussion of papers, bibliography, summary of the articles, a brief overview of index. DM 102, paper; ISBN 3-515-05962-8. the volume seems in order. Part I seeks with some success to define and construct a As Adam Smith once noted, the discovery of model for Asian emporia and larger trading the New World and the maritime route to networks both before and after the arrival of the East Indies constituted the "two greatest the Europeans. Consistent with recent and most important events recorded in the historiography, this section frequently reiter• history of mankind." For obvious reasons, ates the revisionist case for the strength and the Colombian exchange has received the resiliency of indigenous economic structures, bulk of scholarly attention over the past few "despite a background of increased Euro• years. This, however, may change as the pean power and militarism." (Arasaratnam, quincentennial of Vasco da Gama's epic p. 37) Based on solid archival work, Part II voyage approaches. The fact that a wide provides a plethora of welcome detail on the range of scholars have been researching the flow of products throughout the Indian implications of the economic, social, and Ocean basin: Bengali textiles to Ming China, cultural interchange that largely began with the opium trade in India during the Portu• da Gama's arrival in India is admirably guese period, the bulk trade in salt in Indo• demonstrated in this volume. nesia, to name a few. This section should prove valuable for scholars working in rela• The book is the latest in a series pub• ting fields. Part III attempts to define the lished under the direction of the South motivation of indigenous entrepreneurs in Asian Institute at the University of Heidel• pre-colonial India (not surprisingly: profit) berg. It contains twenty-three revised papers and, despite limited sources, gives specific from a 1989 Symposium focusing on the case studies on Asian merchants like the Indian Ocean and South China Sea trades Persian trader Khwaja Shams-ud-din Giloni, during the early modern period. Many lead• and Europeans like the German trader Fer• ing scholars in these fields attended and dinand Cron operating (for profit) in Portu• contributed to the volume, including N. guese India. Perhaps the most interesting Steensgaard, S. Arasaratnam, Leonard B lus• 88 The Northern Mariner case study, however, is Disney's examination Thomaz. Although Portuguese monarchical of the "aristocratic entrepreneurship" of the capitalism aborted, trade to Asia and Viceroy Count of Linhares in 1630's Goa. "country trade" in Asia increased throughout Overall, this volume offers the reader a the century, providing a major source of useful, if at times uneven, summary of the royal revenue and private profit. After the state of the historiography on the Indian 1580 union of the Iberian crowns, Portu• Ocean trade, which defines the major lines guese merchants controlled the pepper trade of research and issues that will dominate and gained a role in the Spanish American this field in the years heading to 1997. empire. José Jobson de Andrade Arruda's complex essay considers the entire Luso- Glenn J. Ames Brazilian empire as an investment. From the Toledo, Ohio initial brazilwood, through the sugar trade, and on to the gold mines, Brazil paid the James D. Tracy (ed.). The Political Economy royal coffers well. While Brazilian markets of Merchant Empires: State Power and World expanded by a factor of five with the gold Trade, 1350-1750. Cambridge & NY: Cam• rush of the 1690s, the English had become bridge University Press, 1991. viii + 504 pp., the major beneficiaries. tables, figures, annotated bibliography, Dennis O. Flynn's very suggestive com• index. US $49.50, cloth; ISBN 0-521-41046-0. parison of the Tokugawa Shogunate and Habsburg Spain as silver exporting empires This second volume of essays derived from demonstrates that this was a staple trade a 1987 University of Minnesota conference like any other, once the phenomenal Chi• on "The rise of merchant empires" concerns nese overvaluation of silver ended in the the reasons for the dominance of European 1640s. Unlike some other contributors, merchant enterprises, particularly in the Flynn describes Japanese society as decen• powerful indigenous empires of Asia. tralized, capitalistic, and profit-oriented from Douglass North sketches transaction the early seventeenth century. costs, with familiar emphasis upon politics. The use of force in determining terms He sees England and Holland as affording of trade is presumed by James Tracy's intro• the best atmosphere for their monopoly ductory essay concerning the ruthless Dutch trading companies. M.N. Pearson provides a entry into the spice trade. Geoffrey Parker wide-ranging survey of the influence of summarizes and supplements his earlier politics on commercial opportunity. The work on western weapons and organizational Asiatic powers were evidently less interven• advantages; he claims that military advan• tionist in merchant affairs than those of the tages were the key to western conquest. west. Although the Spanish was never Anne Pérotin-Dumon explores legal and intended to be a "merchant empire," Pearson commercial aspects of the relationship and North both execrate it as a case-study in between pirates and power. Belligerent failure. Thomas A. Brady's insightful contri• extortion was an early phase in many new bution also focuses upon new European trades, and part of the merchant's alliance political organization as a major advantage. with their states. While piracy was tolerated Merchant companies were allies and agents on the peripheries where new trades were of their governments, running their com• beginning, it was usually superseded. panies as they would have run the state. Readers interested in more northerly A much-needed revision of perceptions venturings will fmd two interesting essays by of the Portuguese eastern empire in the leading authorities. Russell Menard finds no sixteenth century is developed by Sanjay revolutionary reduction in shipping cost for Subrahmanyam and Luis Filipe F.R. the English wine trade, the European spice Book Reviews 89 trade, or the English Atlantic staples trades. discovery than England. In the sixteenth Jacob M. Price focuses on the Atlantic century London's population soared from trades in his masterful survey of transaction 50,000 to 250,000. In 1550 Bristol, the great costs, including agency, insurance, credit and West Country port on the estuary of the the understudied matter of bad debts. Severn, had a population of perhaps 9,500 to K.N. Chaudhuri surveys traditional 10,000; in 1700 it was over 20,000. explanations for western dominance, con• This was a time when the narrow gates cluding that mutual benefit was essential to in the walls that closed medieval Bristol off trade. China and Mughal India, like Venice from the countryside, the kingdom and the and the hosts of the Hanse, allowed extra• world opened wide to new global influences. territorial enclaves. The armed forts and The once dominant wool trade with western naval squadrons were reactions to prohibi• Europe gave way to a wide range of new tive protection costs. commodity trades reflecting growing com• Since these eleven essays collectively mercial ties with the Americas and Northern discuss scholarship in seven languages, the Europe. The number of occupations prac• annotated bibliography is a welcome bonus. tised in the city grew significantly, while the The book reaches no conclusions, but forms growing importance of rural manufacturing an exciting introduction to relatively recent and the complexity of overseas trade and exotic discoveries in early modern weakened the monopolistic elements in the economic history, and to the broad issue of regulation of production and trade and western economic dominance. caused important shifts in the system of municipal governance. Ian K. Steele The subject of David Sacks' book is London, Ontario attractive and timely; the themes he takes up—trade and occupational diversification, David Harris Sacks. The Widening Gate: shifting social base of municipal authority, Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450-1700. new relationship to the state, the growing Berkeley: University of California Press, importance of the countryside—are essential. 1991. xxvii + 464 pp., illustrations, tables, However, his treatment of these themes will notes, index. US $45, cloth; ISBN 0-520- seem to many readers allusive and tangen• 07148-4. tial. For example in a long book with ten chapters there are chapters on "A Shoemak• Between 1450 and 1700 northwestern Eur• er's Holiday," "The Spirit World," the "Regis• ope moved from a position at the margin of tering the Pilgrimage," and so on but none Europe's network of regional and global on shipbuilding, fishing, the Atlantic fish• trade and communication, centred on the eries, the Atlantic slave trade, seafarers and Mediterranean, to a strategic position at the the seafaring community, charts and car• centre of a global commercial and com• tography, or Bristol's rural hinterland. In munication network linked through the other words this is not a volume of maritime North Atlantic. As the late French historian history or one which deals substantively with Fernand Braudel observed, the greatest the Atlantic maritime dimensions of a sig• nificant English town. Rather, it might best achievement of the Europeans in the Age of be described as an essay on the impact of Discovery was not the finding of the social change on attitudes to municipal Americas but the discovery of the Atlantic governance and administration. with its system of winds and currents linking Western Europe to all the oceans of the world. No region within northwestern David McGinnis Europe was more deeply influenced by this Calgary, Alberta 90 The Northern Mariner

Nigel Tattersfield. The Forgotten Trade: was appalling; nearly half (206 or 45.5%) Comprising the Log of the Daniel and Henry died before reaching Jamaica. Because of of 1700 and Accounts of the Slave Trade these losses, Prideaux experienced second from the Minor Ports of England, 1698-1725. thoughts about the trade's morality, and the London: Jonathan Cape, 1991. xx + 460 pp., Daniel and Henry's owners withdrew from illustrations, maps, tables, appendices, bibli• further participation in the Guinea trade. ography, index £20, cloth; ISBN 0-224- Throughout his presentation of the 02915-0. Daniel and Henry's log, Tattersfield provides an informed commentary about the repre• Historians have long been aware of slavery's sentative nature of this single central importance to the growth and devel• merchantman's experiences. Many English opment of the British Empire during the vessels were forced to tarry on the Guinea seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As a Coast, and numerous guincamcn were result, numerous scholars have examined accompanied by sharks across the middle Britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade. passage, feeding on the jettisoned bodies of By combining a detailed analysis of a single dead slaves. And like the owners of the slaving voyage with an examination of the Daniel and Henry, many entrepreneurs participation of England's small outports in found that profits from black cargoes were the slave trade, Nigel Tattersfield has made illusory. a valuable contribution to the study of this The slave trade's hazardous nature and key branch of English maritime commerce. its dubious profitability form two major The Forgotten Trade is divided into two themes in Tattersfield's examination of the sections. The first is based upon a fair copy outports' role in this commerce. In a port by (completed in 1857) of a log written by port analysis, the author uncovers the laby• Walter Prideaux, the supercargo of the rinth of business and family relationships Daniel and Henry of Exeter. Prideaux chron• that characterised England's overseas busi• icled the events of a 1700 voyage from ness community during this period. Investors Dartmouth to the Guinea coast, the middle in slaving voyages from the outports were passage to Jamaica, and the return trip to well informed and acquainted with then- England. The second section focuses on the counterparts in London and Bristol. Despite role of English outports (Exeter, Lyme these connections, few of the many business• Regis, Plymouth, Bideford, Whitehaven, men discussed profited from the trade. among others) in the slave trade. Using Nevertheless, merchants in virtually every numerous port record books, High Court of port from Berwick in the northeast to Admiralty papers, Colonial Office shipping Whitehaven in the northwest dispatched returns, and a wide array of sources from vessels to West Africa and the Caribbean. provincial record offices, Tattersfield dem• The focus on the outports' slaving voyages is a useful balance to the tendency of most onstrates that while London, Bristol, and slave trade studies to examine only the Liverpool may have been the leaders in the exploits of London, Bristol and Liverpool, slave trade, numerous minor seaports sought the leading slaving centres. profits from transporting human cargoes. Prideaux's log reveals the many diffi• The only problem with Tattersfield's culties that characterised slaving voyages. useful book is his surprising assumption that The Daniel and Henry, like most Guinea- Britain had played only a small role in the men, spent weeks on the West African coast slave trade: "Britain was primarily acting as before completing its cargo of 452 slaves. a whiter-than-white knight, a St. George on The slaves' mortality rate during the ten and behalf of black Africa, who had never been a half week crossing of the middle passage greatly involved in the [slave] trade itself." Book Reviews 91

(p. 357) This naive view accounts for the culled from missionary accounts, colonial book's title. Far from forgetting, most his• documents and contemporary writers like torians have fully realised Britain's promi• the pirate-surgeon Esquemelin, the pirate- nent role in this commerce. Despite this hydrographer William Dampier, the French weakness, The Forgotten Trade is a valuable buccaneer Louis Le Golif or Borgne-Fesse account of the slave trade and is a worth• and Captain Charles Johnson, better known while addition to the maritime history of the as Daniel Defoe. The book reads like a First British Empire. pirate roll-call with familiar names like Hawkins, Drake, Piet Heyn, Henry Morgan, Carl E. Swanson Thomas Tew, William Kidd, Thomas Tew Greenville, North Carolina and Edward Teach or Blackboard. Lesser known villains include Montbars the Exter• Jenifer Marx. Pirates and Privateers of the minator, El Diabolito, L'Olonnois and Caribbean. Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Calico Jack Rackham whose crew included Company, 1992. x + 310 pp., illustrations, the only two recorded female pirates, Anne select, bibliography, index. US $32.50, cloth; Bonny and Mary Read. Men with one eye, ISBN 0-89464-483-1. one arm, a wooden leg, birth defects and psychotic tendencies parade across the An exhaustive if not always exhausting pages, as do shipmates who joined willingly overview of the subject, Pirates and Priva• or, once captured, chose piracy as an alter• teers of the Caribbean traces piracy from its native to death or marooning. origins through its historical practice in the Lack of maps and too few illustrations sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The detract considerably from the usefulness of final chapter examines the decline of piracy the book, since many of the port towns and in the nineteenth century and its modern harbours mentioned either no longer exist manifestations in the drug trade. However, or have been renamed. The book could also the main focus is the period from Columbus have used a heavier editorial hand to organ• to Blackboard when Caribbean waters were ize the material more tightly, remove some a Spanish lake. Through an introduction and of the extraneous information, and correct ten chapters sail French corsairs, Eliza• the occasional typo. For students of mari• bethan sea dogs, Dutch "Sea Beggars," time history, the book's main weakness is buccaneers, pirates and privateers~as motley the author's failure to defme clearly the a crew as ever went on the account. difference between piracy and privateering. As a writer/researcher/diver, Marx has Traditionally, privateers served as a nation's worked for twenty years with her husband licensed naval auxiliaries, capturing enemy Robert on underwater archaeological sites vessels during wartime, while pirates took around the world. While demonstrating a prizes indiscriminately and were universally wide knowledge of the documentary sources, despised as enemies of mankind and treated Marx seems to have written the book for a accordingly if captured. By failing to make this distinction, Marx leaves the impression more general audience. With a topic like that the two were synonymous and no ship piracy that has been greatly romanticized, at sea was safe. While the lines between the knowing where a piece of historical informa• two activities were frequently blurred, there tion originated is almost as important as the did exist an international system of law information itself. Unfortunately, Marx only which tried to regulate the provision of provides references for direct quotes, depriv• letters of marque to privateers and the ing us of access to the original sources, and taking of prizes. Britain, France, the Neth• undermining the authority of her research. erlands, Spain, and Portugal (and their The book is full of fascinating anecdotes 92 The Northern Mariner colonies) all had legal procedures in place nent structures supported by Gothic arches by the sixteenth century to distinguish with carvings of saints or royalty. Paint and between authorized and piratical captures. gold leaf were extensively used, the out• Readers seeking a survey history of standing example being the Sovereign of the Caribbean piracy will find this book fui' of Seas. Massive figureheads and supporting colourful information. Those desiring an columns overloaded ships and frequently analysis of the social, economic or political interfered with ship handling, particularly on implications of piracy and privateering will French ships. Carvings and paint costs have to look elsewhere. became so extravagant that Admiralty Boards placed severe restrictions on them. Faye Kert During the 1700s, there was an Oriental Ottawa, Ontario tinge due to the number of ships built in Eastern yards for naval and mercantile use. L.G. Carr Laughton. Old Ship Figure-heads Ornamentation of both bow and stern & Stems. With which are Associated Gal• was usual on important ships but it was not leries, Hanging Pieces, Catherades, and Divers until the attempt was made to combine the other Matters that Concern the Grace and best features of the galley and sailing ship Countenance of old Sail-Ships. London, that the resulting beakhead made a con• 1925; reprint, Conway Maritime Press, 1991. spicuous place for a figurehead. This xv + 281 pp., illustrations, plates (colour, became a regular decoration during the B + W), indices. £80, cloth with slipcase; reign of Henry VIII, persisting until the ISBN 0-85177-597-0. advent of steel warships. The stern went through several developments, square, ellip• This book was originally intended to illus• tical and round, until the round stern was trate systematically and in sequence the authorized in 1817. The stern and galleries development of ship ornamentation in its were lavishly decorated with carvings and various forms. When the available material figured galleries and rails. Nevertheless, proved so vast and scattered that complete neither figureheads nor stern ornaments research was impossible, the author decided were popular with the Navy Board and to use English material supplemented, when Admiralty. Twenty-three orders were issued possible, by foreign collections and data. 1703-1817 regarding the appearance of The eight sections of the book offer a Royal Navy ships. One in 1742 stressed "the complete history of naval ship construction strengthening of ships and ordered the carvings of stern and quarters be made and ornamentation. Little mention is made small and very light." (p. 19) Figureheads of mercantile practice. The use of terms of were abolished on all large ships in 1894; the shipwright's craft is made easier by three the last RN ships to be decorated with pages of key drawings illustrating "two ends figureheads were sloops of the Odin and and middle of a ship." (p. 1) The text is well Espiègle classes during World War I. supported by numerous sketches and is well documented by footnotes. This is a beautiful book with interesting Few records exist of ship decoration plates and informative sketches. It is based before the thirteenth century except for on solid documented research of the ship• remains of Viking ships whose principle wright's craft, yet it is easy and interesting to feature was a snake, bird or animal head at read. It will appeal to ship enthusiasts, the bow and small carvings on the tiller bar. model builders and collectors of marine art. Then, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, stages or scaffoldings appeared at Arthur W. Mears the bow and stern. These became perma• St. Stephen, New Brunswick Book Reviews 93

M.M. Witt. A Bibliography of the Works who actually get to stand in the swirling Written and Published by David Steel and his smoke of historic ordnance will find this Successors. London: Greenwich Maritime book interesting. It will provide them with a Monographs, 1991 [order from: AJ. Sim- thorough review of the principles and pro• monds, Maritime Bookseller, 23 Nelson cedures regarding the safe firing of muzzle- Road, Greenwich, London, SE10 9JB, Eng• loading devices of all kinds, ranging from land], xi + 156 pp., illustrations, index. heavy artillery on travelling carriages, £27.50, cloth; ISBN 0-9517675-0-X. through garrison guns and down to the Cohorn mortar. The name Steel needs no introduction to the Adrian Caruana's knowledge of guns student of eighteenth century naval history, was acquired during a lifetime involvement his "Elements and Practice of Rigging and with artillery. Retired as a captain from the Seamanship," "Elements of Naval Architec• Royal Artillery in 1979, he is one of only ture," and his regular "Navy Lists" are all two certified "proofmasters" of ordnance in well known and in use even today. What is the United Kingdom. He has written several perhaps less appreciated is the full range of books and numerous articles on the topic of publications put out by Steel himself and, these historic weapons. His prose is straight after his death in 1803, by his successors. forward and precisely informative, but not Mr. Witt has fully catalogued well over the least officious. two hundred items ranging from textbooks Most modern pyrotechnics lack the through charts to pilots and sailing instruc• extremes of actual gunfiring. When ignited, tions. There is also an essay on the Steel authentically-loaded ordnance will disturb family, and Witt provides genealogical the growth of trees one hundred yards down details. The result is a well conceived bibli• range and be heard six miles away. It is with ography that will be welcomed by profes• this type of artillery work in mind that sional librarians, booksellers and serious Caruana explains the construction of guns, collectors alike. their proof and test firing, the correct types This volume is the first in a projected and quantities of wads and charges, the series of standard reference works on naval ignition process, the treatment of misfires and maritime history. It is also a fine and the essentials of safety. Tables of orig• example of contemporary book production. inal charges for rifled muzzle loaders, iron However, readers should note that the pub- guns of 1859 and brass guns of 1780 are Usher has limited this edition to only 525 presented as are step-by-step drills for copies, of which numbers 1-500 are for sale. twenty-one configurations of men and artil• One looks forward to further publications in lery. this series. Contemporary treatises on the manage• ment of ordnance, such as the work of Norman Hurst William Congreve, are important resources Coulsdon, England for artillery enthusiasts, but Caruana's book provides an accessible and modern approach Adrian B. Caruana. The Pocket Artillerist or: to the subject. Although the cost of this slim The Art of Coarse Gunfiring. A Handbook volume seems high, the text is an entertain• for the Safe Firing of Muzzle Loading Ord• ing and informative read that will be a nance. Rotherfield, England: Jean Boudriot valuable addition to any gunner's library. Publications, 1992. 124 pp., tables, figures, glossary. £12.50, paper; ISBN 0-948864-09-5. Robert Malcomson St. Catharines, Ontario Gunners of the armchair variety and those 94 The Northern Mariner

RA. Stradling. The Armada of Flanders: ideology of religion, we learn little about the Spanish Maritime Policy and European War, religion of the ships' complements. Indeed, 1568-1668. Cambridge & New York: Cam• we are told far more about an alleged fire• bridge University Press, 1992. xix + 276 pp., wood allowance peculation by Dunkirk maps, appendices, bibliography, index. US officials in 1607-9 than about any aspect of $59.95, cloth; ISBN 0-521-40534-3. the social and cultural life of the mariners. The evidence provided for prizetaking, by Within its limits, this is a useful study. The both the Armada and privateers, has very author set out to study Spanish policy and largely been previously published and Strad• its implementation in respect to the rise and ling here eschews further analysis of the decline of the Armada of Flanders. The statistical evidence as "marginal". temporal coverage is less extensive than the What is central to this investigation is subtitle suggests: the pre-history of Spain's the year-by-year chronicle of the efforts to permanent naval formation at Dunkirk, create, sustain and exploit a formidable 1568-1621, is dealt with in a brief, but use• naval force in the Spanish Netherlands. Ori• ful, prologue; the decade 1658-68 forms a ginally intended as a central feature of a briefer, and less useful, epilogue. Stradling's guerra ofensiva against the Dutch, the Arma• interest is focused upon the chronological da came, in addition, to be used extensively narration of the challenges, successes and against the English and French. When def• failures of the flotilla in the North Sea, ence of the Spanish heartland became the Atlantic and Mediterranean between 1621 priority during the 1640s, the regional force and 1658. Politics and administration are was diverted south, to be used against the privileged; other maritime themes receive Portuguese and in the western Mediterra• less attention. The author states that he nean. The placement of the Armada of "eschews discussion of shipbuilding tech• Flanders within the larger strategic issues niques, material, equipment," etc. (p. 164). confronting the Spanish monarchy is a useful We learn considerably more about the land achievement. Stradling is careful to anchor officials who administered the flotilla than his chosen subject firmly in the larger we do about those who sailed in its ships. themes of the successive military and naval The investigation is grounded in a de• challenges facing Spain and its depend• tailed study of archival sources, especially encies. He is not as judicious in establishing Spanish. Unfortunately, many of the relevant the relative significance of his topic within Flemish documents no longer survive, and the larger fabric of history. The assertion little use is made of the extensive archives of that "Dunkirk, for so long master of prizes, the Armada's principal opponent, the Uni• became itself the single greatest prize of the ted Provinces. The study is written in mod• war [of the 1640s], epicentre of the struggle ern idiom. The text has a tendency to move for European mastery" (p. 131) remains onto tangents, or less than fully developed unestablished and the reader who more than themes where allusions are preferred to once senses hyperbole never has this con• sustained development. Limitations of evi• cern put to rest by the author. dence for causal connections produces a The clarity of this book most certainly conspicuous reliance upon 'doubtless' and could have been improved. What, for related adverbs. The study of captains and example, is "an unofficial privateer?" (p. 43) crews in the chapter "Men and Ships" is Is this the same as the "'private' privateers" episodic, with very little provided on the introduced five lines later? For the latter, common seamen themselves. For example, Stradling states these were "variously in an age when, the author asserts, sea referred to by the authorities as armadores warfare was significantly influenced by the or particulares". The glossary defines arma- Book Reviews 95 dor (although not in a way which would (English text), and twenty-three separate explain the term "'private' privateer"), but folded plans, all in a slip case. for particular we are told "see armador" Boudriot and Berti begin with a chapter (neither term is included in the less-than- in which they survey several different types comprehensive index). Moreover, we are of Mediterranean craft such as the felucca, informed that royal licences were issued to brigantine, oared galley, tartane, lateen bark, armadores. (p. 47) These ambiguities are and polacre. As the "family" of Mediterra• never resolved, and when a definition of nean craft is a very extended one indeed, the privateer is finally provided (p. 204) it is authors restrict themselves to those types strictly conventional. Overall, the reviewer is that were actually used by the French Navy left with the impression of multiple dangling at Toulon. Boudriot and Berti proceed from ends, never firmly tied together. This is this general view to a history of the xebec unfortunate, for Dr. Stradling has knowledge and the use of this type of vessel by the to offer to the patient reader. French Navy between 1750 and 1779, when the last xebec to serve in La Royale was J.D. Alsop condemned. The heart of the book, how• Hamilton, Ontario ever, is a very detailed description of the Requin and a very full account of the ves• Jean Boudriot and Hubert Berti; trans. sel's career. There are comprehensive notes David H. Roberts. Chébec "Le Requin" 1750: on the thirteen principal 1:48 scale plans for Étude navires méditerranéens. Paris: the vessel-Plan No. 14 is a 1:72 scale ver• A.N.C.R.E., 1987; English translation, Roth- sion of the two larger scale lines drawings- erfield, England: Jean Boudriot Publications and on nine more sheets, again in 1:48 scale, 1991. 154 pp., 22 plans at 1:48 scale, sum• that show every one of the frames in detail. mary sheet at 1:72 scale, drawings, tables, Further notes cover the intricacies of the photographs, documents, maps, bibliography. rigging, cordage sizes, and painting; photo• £82 (+ post & packing, £4 UK, £6 abroad), graphs of the dockyard model set out clearly casebound; ISBN 2-903 179-07-7. English the particulars of the deck, the various text only, £12 paper; ISBN 2-903179-09-3. fittings, and the decorative work. The book• let is profusely illustrated throughout with lines, drawings, photographs of several Xebecs were among the fastest sailing war• contemporary models of xebecs, reproduc• ships ever built—originally lateen-rigged, tions of contemporary engravings and docu• with fine lines and very light scantlings, and ments, sketches, and maps. carrying a press of sail. They were the preferred vessels of the corsairs of the An English translation has been very Barbary States, and it was only natural that ably prepared by David Roberts. It is pres• the French Navy should have also adopted ented in a separate booklet that is paginated this type of vessel for commerce protection exactly like the French original so that the in the Mediterranean. It was also only two texts can be read in parallel. Unfortu• natural that Boudriot and Berti should have nately, the illustrations have been reduced chosen one of those vessels—the Requin, one by approximately 10 percent, with the result of four xebecs built at Toulon in 1750, and that they, and especially the photographs, for which both original draughts and a are less crisp than the ones in the original. dockyard model are available~as the subject More regrettable, two sections have been for a monograph in their excellent series entirely omitted from the translation—the "Collection archéologique navale française." survey of different types of Mediterranean The monograph itself comprises a 152-page craft and the service history of the Requin. booklet (French text), an 88-page booklet These economies have been effected in 96 The Northern Mariner

order "to help reduce the cost." It is to be explains England's late-eighteenth century wondered, though, if model shipwrights, frigate construction programme and apparently the intended beneficiaries of the describes the hull, armament, masts, rigging economies, would not be as interested in the and all equipment, including the Pandora's, missing information as in the details of box in which the prisoners were confined. masting and rigging and of framing and Pandora was one of the Porcupine-class fittings. (For those who already have the of frigates designed by Sir John Williams. French original, the English translation is McKay used thirteen Admiralty draughts of available separately from the publisher at a different Porcupine-class frigates as a basis cost of £12.) for the hull drawings. The authors provide a This monograph represents a substantial section on copper sheathing and a table sho• and valuable contribution to the history of wing the lengths, diameters, numbers of the French sailing navy and will be of inter• copper bolts used in a 24-gun ship. Pando• est equally to the naval historian and to the ra's armament in 1790 included four 18- model shipwright. pounder carronades and twenty 6-pounder guns, one of which has been recovered. G. Edward Reed Anchors, cables, pumps, ship's boats, oars Ottawa, Ontario and sweeps, the prisoners' cell, and probable decorations are all described. The dustjacket John McKay and Ron Coleman. The Anat• shows a possible colour scheme. There is omy of the Ship: The 24-Gun Frigate also a detailed description of Alexander Pandora 1779. London: Conway Maritime Brodie's patent galley stove and still, which Press, 1992. 128 pp., figures, photographs, is visible at the wreck site. There is an tables. £20, cloth; ISBN 0-85177-583-7. isometric and six 1/72 scale drawings of the Canadian distributor, Vanwell Press, St. stove in the book's fittings section. The text Catharines, Ontario. includes a description of Pollard's steering system adopted as the Navy's standard in Built in 1778, HMS Pandora escorted con• 1771; an isometric drawing illustrates the voys from Quebec to Britain during the method of operation. The archaeologists American War of Independence. At war's recovered two parts~a copper spectacle end, she was laid up at Chatham until she plate and a pintle. was refitted in 1790 to hunt down the The isometric drawings are not to scale Bounty mutineers in the Pacific. She was but show the external and internal hull, wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef in 1791 masts, yards, rigging, steering gear and the while carrying the captured mutineers of the ship's boats. The excellent detailed drawings Bounty. The wreck's discovery in 1977, the are to scales ranging from 1/18 to 1/228, Queensland Museum's underwater excava• though a mistake was made in giving the tions, the recovery of artifacts, and the belief scales in the text. The principal scale in the that a third of the hull is intact, encouraged drawing keys, given as 1/144, should in fact the authors to research the vessel's construc• read 1/128; other scales in the keys should tion and trace her history. be adjusted accordingly. An erratum note Ron Coleman is curator of Maritime was included with the book once the mistake History at the Queensland Museum; John was discovered; those who bought the book McKay is an architectural draughtsman and before this could be done, should contact a member of CNRS. Together they assem• the publisher. Some drawings, to provide bled eight pages of explanatory texts, six of significant details for clarity, are to no scale. photographs, and over a hundred of isomet• These will be helpful to the model builder. ric and detailed scale drawings. The texts Eight photographs show a model of Pandora Book Reviews 97 owned by the Queensland Museum in its is not a long work, and the text is further various stages of construction. limited by such eccentricities as setting Navy Board warrants, Steel's Rigging, notes, apparatus and index in triple-spacing. and the 1787 general order were the sources The author does not claim to have dis• for the masts', yards', riggings' or sails' covered any important new sources or facts, sections. The rigging section has an eight- and could not at this length compete with page list of the type, size, and quantity of the established full-length lives. A reviewer rigging items. Thus, we read "Fifty Burton has to ask what purpose the book serves. It pendants, four inch round, five fathoms, reads as though it were a competent sum• wormed, parcelled and served." (p. 109) mary of the subject by someone not deeply This is a fine addition to the "Anatomy familiar with it, for the benefit of those not of the Ship" series. It is interesting, contains familiar at all. It might almost be an under• magnificent drawings and a wealth of infor• graduate course written up for the press, mation valuable to all interested in eight• except that the notes, though skeletal and eenth century frigate construction. The book uninformative, make it clear that the book is is essential to the model builder of naval almost entirely the fruit of manuscript vessels of that era. research. One can hardly criticise this in itself, but one may well ask if the author was Dan G. Harris sufficiently prepared for it. His very short Nepean, Ontario bibliography omits numerous items of basic importance such as Beaglehole's edition of Cook's journals and Dawson's calendar of Roy E. Schreiber. 77ie Fortunate Adversities Banks' letters. The text reveals at every turn of William Bligh. American University a very superficial acquaintance with the Studies, Series IX, History, Vol. 108; New subject and period. To conflate the elder York, Bern, London: Peter Lang, 1991. 257 and younger Hyde Parker, or to refer to a pp., list of sources, bibliography, index. US vice-admiral being appointed a commodore, $43.95, library binding; ISBN 0-8204-1516-2. are not in themselves disastrous errors~but it would be hard to imagine anyone falling This is a short biography of Captain Bligh, into them who was at all familiar with the whose legend is familiar to the cinema-going eighteenth-century Royal Navy. One cannot public, and whose life is familiar to those help feeling that Schreiber might have been interested in the maritime history of the better advised to have spent less time with eighteenth century. The title refers to the documentary sources most of which are well fact that the major steps in Bligh's naval known, and more time using printed works career, notably his promotions to captain to make himself acquainted with the period. and rear-admiral, immediately followed the There are important and original things to unhappy episodes of the Bounty mutiny and say about Bligh, and with a profound knowl• the New South Wales rebellion. However edge of the eighteenth century, a scholar of Professor Schreiber does not claim that this imagination might be able to say them in a provides any new key to understanding book shorter than this-but it is to be feared Bligh, and he avoids following up the sug• that Schreiber is not yet equipped to do so, gestion that he suffered from a psychiatric still less to write a new standard biography. condition known as "Intermittent Explosive This is not so much a bad book as a book Disorder." He is doubtless wise not to get without an apparent purpose. involved in psychoanalysing the dead, but this does leave unanswered the question of what the book has to offer which is not NA.M. Rodger offered by existing biographies of Bligh. This London, England 98 The Northern Mariner

Leonard F. Guttridge. Mutiny: A History of iny. This was made abundantly clear by Lord Naval Insurrection. Annapolis, MD: Naval Goddard, then Lord Chief Justice of Eng• Institute Press, 1991. ix + 310 pp., photo• land, in 1957 when writing the judgement of graphs, maps, bibliography, index. Cdn the Courts-Martial Appeal Court on the $36.50, US $26.95, cloth; ISBN 0-87021-281- appeals of Grant et al. (Nos 10,11,12, and 13 8. Canadian distributor, Vanwell Publishing, of 1957). In dismissing the four appeals, the St. Catharines, Ontario. Lord Chief Justice clarified the issue by writing: "What is mutiny? There is no doubt This is a remarkably interesting book. Gutt• that mutiny is a collective offence, that is to ridge covers a great variety of mutinies in a say it cannot be committed by one man." He number of navies. In the British navy, pay later adds that it is an offence which deals appears to have been a cause of rebellion in with collective insubordination, collective Egmont, at Spithead, at the Nore and at In- defiance or disregard of authority. The defi• vergordon. This is to be expected, not neces• nition of mutiny in the Canadian National sarily because the British sailor is more Defence Act is equally clear in the same avaricious than others but because British sense. In short, while there is doubt in the authorities have long had a tendency to United States that mutiny can be committed overpay those in high office and to underpay by one man alone, there exists no such those in more humble office—a dangerous doubt in Canada where it simply cannot. practice as these four mutinies made clear. Guttridge's book brings to mind "La For the layman and for the naval per• Vergue Et Les Fers" by the French author sonnel seeking to minimize the frequency of Alain Cabantous, a tale of mutiny and mutiny, Guttridge lists and often analyses a desertion in the seventeenth and eighteenth remarkable number of mutinies. Like others century French navy. There exists an inter• before him, he tends to attribute mutiny to esting similarity of findings by both authors; the incompetence of officers, overcrowded this is hardly surprising as mutiny is simply living quarters, poor food, insufficient shore mutiny wheresoever it may occur. leave, inadequate complaint procedure, Guttridge makes at least one preposter• awareness in the lower deck of neglect by ous misstatement of fact. In discussing the those in authority and even, as in the case of Canadian naval mutinies of 1949, he quite the Russian battleship Potemkin or in the wrongly states that the "findings of a secret Imperial German Navy after World War I, inquiry into the affair were never published." political considerations of the moment. (p. 234) This is quite unfair: our Mainguy Because of its consequences, there exists Report was published by government with• a general tendency towards the use of out delay and made wild headlines in the euphemisms when real mutiny arises: "inci• media for months. This error is all the more dents," "unrest," "disaffection," even "collec• surprising because, apart from listing certain tive disturbance". Mutiny is not a word easily press reports, Guttridge cites the Mainguy accepted at any level in a navy. Indeed, Report (p. 308); clearly he was aware of the Guttridge casts some doubt about the exact Report's existence and publication. Such a meaning of mutiny. In the United States he slip inspires a measure of diffidence. implies some doubt about its definition, as Nevertheless, Guttridge's impressive list there also is in the same country about the of naval mutinies and his exhaustive exam• definition of sodomy which appears to cover ination of so many of them remains a mat• a wide variety of modes of behaviour. Such ter of very real interest. While at times he doubt does not exist in British or in Cana• appears loath to attribute blame, this may dian law, where there can be no doubt that well be a result of the vast number of a single or lone person cannot commit mut• mutinies with which he deals. His book and Book Reviews 99 that of Alain Cabantous are quite the best WA.B. Douglas gives Barclay well-deserved of their kind which I have encountered and respect (as did Perry himself) and indicates make of mutiny a much more common the profound significance of his bravery for occurrence than most people suspect. Canadians; Dennis Carter-Edwards des• cribes the consequences of Perry's victory; L. C. Audette R. David Edmunds analyses the Indians and Ottawa, Ontario their difficulties; Harold Langley, the com• plex quest for peace; Ian Pemberton pres• David Curtis Skaggs and William Jeffrey ents a Canadian perspective and Christopher Welch (eds.). War on the Great Lakes: McKee an American one. Finally, Stuart Essays Commemorating the 175th Anniver• Sutherland describes Canadian sources while sary of the Battle of Lake Erie. Kent, OH: Douglas Clannin outlines US manuscripts. Kent State University Press, 1991. vi + 154 Should you buy this book? Yes, for two pp., map, tables, notes, index. US $29, cloth; reasons. First, it provides a model for post- ISBN 0-87338-424-5. US $17.50, paper; 0- conference publication; second, it presents 87338-425-3. new material, new possibilities, for what previously seemed a well-worn topic. This is the product of a top-flight conference held in September 1988 to commemorate Emily Cain the Battle of Lake Erie and to celebrate the Jerseyville, Ontario long peace that followed. Conference papers-especially those at William J. Williams. The Wilson Adminis• popular, many-layered, event-filled confer• tration and the Shipbuilding Crisis of 1917: ences such as this one—inevitably exist on at Steel Ships and Wooden Steamers. Lewiston, least two levels: as prepared for animated NY & Queenston, Ontario: The Edwin Mel- delivery to a diverse audience, and as pre• len Press, 1992. iii + 220 pp., appendix, pared for posterity, for publication. Immedi• bibliography, index. US $69, cloth; ISBN 0- ately after delivery, a paper becomes a 7734-9492-8. memento, and a potential historical essay, transformation is tricky, and depends upon In the summer of 1917, the British Prime editorial expertise. In this case, the editors Minister stated in a speech that the key to have done a beautiful job, as has the book- victory "is to be found in one word, 'ships'." designer. The ten essays by some of our best By then, the Allied merchant fleets had been historians flow smoothly, yet retain individ• decimated by losses to submarine warfare. If ual variety, while end-notes satisfy even this enough new ships were to be built to count• note-addicted reviewer. Three essays on eract those losses, they would have to come Canadian-American sources are supported from American yards. Woodrow Wilson's by usefully-dense documentation. An index early attempt to structure an organization to is followed by biographies of the contri• build his bridge to France is the subject of butors. Yet the editors have managed to historian William J. Williams' latest book. retain buoyancy: Christopher McKee, for In 1916, the United States Congress had example, is a witty lecturer-far funnier in legislated a shipping act which had as its person than he can be in his impeccably- focus the revitalization of the American researched award-winning books; his jokes merchant marine. Among other things, the (if not his asides) are retained. legislation provided for an administrative Here is Gerard AltofFs narrative over• apparatus to be known as the US Shipping view of the battle; Frederick Drake presents Board. The board had the authority to a tightly-documented comparison of artillery, establish public corporations for building, 100 The Northern Mariner commandeering in emergencies, leasing, and have established clearer lines of authority, manning a fleet of merchant vessels. Out of something he could have done easily that authority came the creation of the through an executive order. Instead, Wilson Emergency Fleet Corporation. One import• vacillated, hoping the two men would work ant element in the legislation was lacking, out their differences. It was only when namely, language allowing a clear chain of things reached an unworkable point that command between the Shipping Board's Wilson asked Denman to resign as Chair• chairman and the managing directorships of man. Goethals voluntarily submitted his any corporations founded by the Board. A resignation at the same time. second problem—this one not in itself a fault Williams' writing fills a void in the of the legislation — was the human element. maritime history of World War I, and it President Wilson had used poor judgement does so in a most readable manner. If there in selecting William Denman to head the is criticism, it is that he ends his story all Shipping Board. Denman, a lawyer from San too abruptly. We would like to have been Francisco, had practically no executive told, for instance-an epilogue treatment experience nor did he have any knowledge would have sufficed—of the wartime and of the shipping industry or of ship construc• postwar performance of the wooden steam tion. He did, however, have a thirst for freighters which were the catalyst for much power, and he exercised that thirst by of the trouble between Denman and attempting complete domination, not only Goethals. over the membership of the Shipping Board Considering his fine grasp of the first but over the Emergency Fleet Corporation months of the ship construction programme as well. Major General George W. Goethals of 1917, I would encourage Williams to received the appointment as General Man• pursue the story through 1918-19, after the ager of the Emergency Fleet Corporation. point when Denman and Goethals resigned This was the same man who had engineered and the Shipping Board came under the and overseen the construction of the chairmanship of Edward J. Hurley. This Panama Canal. Goethals' long career had later phase was considerably more successful been spectacular, and because of his success than the disastrous tenures of Denman and in Panama, he was generally considered to Goethals. An examination of the two ad• be a national hero. As a person, the general ministrators, Denman a failure, Hurley a was dogmatic, a characteristic nurtured and substantial success, would make a great case developed by the dictatorial powers he had study on how to and how not to run an held in Panama. He was therefore not the type of man to accept orders from an emergency shipbuilding programme. unknown such as Shipping Board Chairman Denman. The deteriorating relationship Charles Dana Gibson between the two men was further stressed Camden, Maine by Denman's enthusiasm for a rather hair- brained concept stressing the building of Dan Van der Vat. The Pacific Campaign: steam-powered freighters, these to be con• World War II. The U.S. - Japanese Naval structed of wood, a scheme which Goethals War 1941-1945. London: Hodder and strenuously criticized. Because of the clash Stoughton, 1991. 430 pp., maps, photo• of these two personalities, when coupled graphs, sources, index. £25 cloth; ISBN 0- with opposing polarity over the direction of 340-49661-4. shipbuilding policies, the programme was in chaos for the first four months of its exist• With the publication of this book, Dan Van ence. Early on, President Wilson should der Vat has outstripped the accomplishment of his previous volume on the Atlantic War. Book Reviews 101

This is a sweeping, complete, and carefully mary and assessment of the Battle of Leyte considered text on the Pacific campaign. It Gulf, as well as an assessment of Halse/s is suitable for both the naval historian and now famous error and Ozawa's success at the general reader; both will be able to deception, describing Admiral Ozawa as the devote time and attention to it with profit. most talented of Hirohito's admirals. The book begins with two tidy chap• This is an excellent book, almost totally ters—well done, succinct and complete- free of typographical errors, and is highly giving the political and international back• recommended as an addition to any naval ground of the Pacific war, something which collection and well worth the price. is not found in all studies of this subject. Having set the scene, he then continues to James C. Lawless recount the story of the war in a fast-paced Ottawa, Ontario and accurate narrative, missing little. Totally devoid of notes, he laces his material with Edward S. Miller. War Plan Orange: The pithy and brief comments throughout, U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945. usually in parentheses, which do not detract Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991. from his pace. This may disturb the histor• xxi + 509 pp., maps, figures, tables, notes, ian but it will certainly appeal to the general photographs, bibliography, appendices, reader. The section on Sources and Ack• index. Cdn $47.95, US $34.95, cloth; ISBN 0- nowledgements is refreshingly short and 87021-759-3. Canadian distributor, Vanwell clearly contains only those works which he Publishing, St. Catharines, Ontario. actually consulted in the writing of the book (as opposed to some authors who list every War Plan Orange, the US maritime strategy book ever written on the Pacific campaign!). to defeat Japan, is well known. However, its Van der Vat's parenthetical comments formulation and implementation has never make it abundantly clear that he is not before been explored as well and as thor• enamoured of General Douglas MacArthur's oughly as in this ground-breaking work. strategic acumen or of Admiral Isoroku Indeed, any study of the Pacific campaign or Yamamoto's contribution to the Japanese American strategic planning before World naval war effort. On the latter he points out War II must now surely refer to this work. that a few more mistakes like failing to Edward Miller, a retired executive, ensure a constant supply of properly trained traces the development of the plan's many pilots for the fleet would have ensured his versions from its origins at the turn of the being perceived "even by the Americans, as century to its succession in 1940 by the an asset to their cause." (p. 264) Atlantic-first RAINBOW series. The process The author also discusses the similarity that is unveiled bears out Miller's conclusion of the Japanese experience and errors in the that American strategic planning, although development of submarine and anti-submar• free-form and informal in style, was effective ine warfare to that of the Germans, observ• nonetheless. From the beginning there was ing that no one sought German advice or agreement among navy, and eventually army, assistance with problems in any systematic planners that only a maritime campaign fashion. He cites the Japanese army's at• would defeat Japan if war broke out, and tempt to build its own submarines for supply that it must proceed through three phases. purposes at the end of the war without naval First, Japanese gains would have to be consultation as an example of inter-service contained. This would then have to be rivalry and failure in coordination and com• followed by an advance across the central mand at the most senior levels. The book Pacific. The third phase would require the also contains an excellent description, sum• final reduction of Japan through blockade. 102 The Northern Mariner

The planning for phases one and three example, Clark G. Reynolds credits him with remained fairly consistent. However, very influencing the decision to bypass certain different approaches were developed for the island strongholds. Miller hardly mentions advance westward; Miller devotes much of Towers and instead traces the idea back to his study to a discussion of that debate. The Orange planners of the 1930s. Such debates process was dominated at various points will continue, but thanks to Miller's impres• either by "thrusters" who championed a bold sive scholarship they will be conducted at a thrust to the Far East, or by "cautionaries" more highly informed level. who called for a more gradual advance. In the end, a strategy embodying elements of Michael Whitby both approaches (but far more of the cau• Almonte, Ontario tionary) was developed and, after some tinkering, formed the basis of the American Donald M. Goldstein & Katherine V. Dillon victory in the Pacific. This complex process (eds.); Masataka Chihaya (trans). Fading is explained well by the author, but should Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki be warned that this is not light reading. 1941-1945. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Miller's research is impressive. He has Pittsburgh Press, 1991. xvii + 731 pp., pho• uncovered new evidence which allows him to tographs, appendices, notes, bibliography, advance fresh interpretations. For instance, index. US $29.95, cloth; ISBN 0-8229-3665-8. he refutes traditional arguments that the mandate award to the Japanese at Versailles This is a highly revealing daily account of was disastrous for American strategy. The the activities and personal thoughts of Vice award meant that planners no longer had to Admiral Matome Ugaki, Imperial Japanese be concerned with ticklish neutrality laws Navy (UN). The diary covers the war in the when acquiring bases for the westward Pacific from the decision to attack Pearl thrust across the Pacific but could seize Harbor to the Admiral's last hour on Japan• them instead from the enemy. Deep in an ese soil before a self-imposed suicide archives Miller discovered Admiral Kim- mission on August 15, 1945. mel's hawkish plan to lure the Japanese fleet The Admiral was an exceptional officer away from the vulnerable Malay barrier to who served his country properly. After Wake Island; there they were supposed to graduating from the Naval Academy in 1912, be ambushed by the Pacific Fleet. Such he received training at sea and specialty aggressive thinking was the legacy of thirty- training in Naval Gunnery and the Naval five years of planning that stressed War College. He then commanded a cruiser instantaneous response and helps explain and a battleship before being promoted to how Pearl Harbor could happen. Miller also Rear Admiral and appointed Director of presents intriguing information about impor• Operations, Naval General Staff in Decem• tant historical figures. The revered naval ber 1938. In 1941 he became Chief of Staff theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan is revealed as of the Combined Fleet and was promoted to a bumbling strategist and we learn that Vice Admiral in 1943. He was seriously Douglas MacArthur unwittingly signed the wounded when he and Admiral Yamamoto death warrant for Corregidor and Bataan were shot down at Bougainville Island. In when as Army Chief of Staff he endorsed a 1944 he became Commanding Officer, 1st new cautionary strategy. Battleship Division and in 1945 was the Despite the strength of Miller's work, Commanding Officer of the 5th Air Fleet. controversies over War Plan Orange will He accepted his share of responsibility for undoubtedly continue to exist. In his recent the loss of the war. En route to his suicide biography of Admiral John Towers, for mission he observed that "...we have failed Book Reviews 103 to destroy the arrogant enemy...a failure Kong. On the Doolittle raid an agitated which should be attributed to my lack of Ugaki wrote: "this shattered my firm deter• capabilities." (p. 665) mination never to let the enemy attack The editors have done an excellent job Tokyo or the mainland." (p. 113) He main• of placing Ugaki's writings in historical and tained his optimism after the American stra• military perspective. One need not be a stu• tegic victory at Coral Sea, the loss of four dent of the Pacific war to appreciate Fading carriers with aircraft and a heavy cruiser at Victory. The background comments provide Midway and the long struggle for Guadalca• sufficient historical or military context for nal. But on 31 December, 1942 he wrote: the diary entries. Each of these entries is "How brilliant was the first stage operation dated and begins with the weather, followed up to April! And what miserable setbacks by a wide range of observations: details and since Midway in June! The invasions of comments on the activities of that day, Hawaii, Fiji, Samoa and New Caledonia, military operations, battle entries, political liberation of India and the destruction of the comments, philosophical views of life, British Far Eastern Fleet have all scattered poems, tributes to his wife, on having a sake like dreams." (p. 319) with fellow officers and mundane asides For the remainder of the war Ugaki about his friends, his dog, haircuts and his continued to believe in eventual victory bad teeth. The entries begin Thursday, 16 despite the losses and lack of logistic sup• October, 1941 with Ugaki's comments on port. The formation of the Kamikaze Corps the Chinese Incident, the Tripartite Alliance pleased him but he had respect for midget and Soviet Russia. On the USA he writes: submarines far beyond their real effective• "the attitude of the United States has turned ness. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when firm and positive and cut off our way of Ugaki was ordered to suspend any positive obtaining oil by freezing out funds...The attack on Okinawa, he wrote: "This seems to most important and impassable barriers are be endorsing our Surrender. I completely the request for evacuation of our forces disagree with the order, as I believe that we from China and the United States' attitude should fight until the last moment." (p. 663) of not recognizing our superior position in Fading Victory provides a detailed view the western Pacific including China." (p. 7) of naval operations in the Pacific during Whether Pearl Harbor was a surprise or World War II. We relive the war through a sneak attack has been a postwar issue in the eyes of a capable, arrogant senior naval Japan. Ugaki, with his respect for the Sam• officer with a fascination for the Samurai urai code, was quite clear: "It isn't unfair to philosophy. We share his agony over the loss assault one asleep. This ensures a victory of his ships, his wife, his men, his fellow over a most careless enemy." (p.35) He did officers, and finally his country's war. We feel that the task force should have followed chuckle at his poems, his hunting, and his its success with a second major attack: "This fishing (he broke two rods and took in only [the return of the task force] is open to one prawn). We wonder about a man who criticism as sneak-thievery and contentment suffered with aching teeth throughout the with a humble lot of life. Since our loss is war, only to have them capped three days not more than thirty planes, it is more before his suicide. Our understanding of important for us to expand our results." Admiral Ugaki increases with each page. Ugaki had a low opinion of the enemy How typical he was to the Japanese military after Pearl Harbor. Yet he indicated disdain mind of that era I cannot say. when he thought the Japanese could have done better, and admiration for the enemy Carl W. Ross when due, as with the defenders of Hong Kingston, Ontario 104 The Northern Mariner

Eric Groner (revised and expanded by marine service, and the ever changing details Dieter Jung and Martin Maass). German of conning towers, as well as brief sections Warships 1815-1945. Volume Two: U-Boats on Type XXII to the projected Types XXVI and Mine Warfare Vessels. London: Conway to XXXVI. The Allies owe quite a debt to Maritime Press, 1991. xi + 240 pp., draw• the armies that overran the Reich before ings, notes and abbreviations, glossary of these planned "super U-boats" could be builders and dockyards, index. £35, cloth, built, for our warships would have been hard ISBN 0-85177-593-4. pressed to cope with their high underwater speeds, strengths and depths. Lists and This is a sequel to the volume that covered modest details of the mini-U-boats of the Germany's major surface vessels (reviewed Seehund and Hecht types are given, although here in January 1991) from the earliest days the authors gave up on the manned torpedo of the North European German Leagues to types, Neger, Biber and such. the final days of World War II. Both vol• The large section on mine warfare umes are major re-works of Erich Grôner's vessels, starting with those of World War I, pre-war massive research project, with new is a valuable and very detailed listing and and amended details added by Jung and description of this oft-neglected class of Maass after his death in 1965. While they vessels. In this volume are covered not only apologize for not being able to ensure that the sweepers and layers, but small motor every single detail of every boat and ship is sweepers, including those captured through• entirely accurate, it would be the harshest of out Europe, mine transports, defensive net critics and the most diligent of naval ship• layers and tenders, net barrage lighters and building specialists who could find fault with tugs. Again, a few lines are devoted to every these definitive references and their con• vessel, often including in the case of these tents. surface ships a word or two about post-war Included in this volume is every U-boat, use. It is a stupendous listing, and not for from the earliest wooden trials models of the faint of heart or for those only vaguely 1850 to those which were planned but never interested. But for the U-boat or mine built during both World Wars I and II; all warfare buff or practitioner, it will be an are carefully described, with drawings pro• invaluable and permanent reference, to be vided whenever they existed or survived the dipped into again and again, or consulted to resolve puzzles or arguments. war. Useful to both model-makers and those trying to identify photographs are such details as the provision of extensive tables F. M. McKee showing the number, shape and placement Markdale, Ontario of the hundreds of casing drainage holes in U-boat hulls! Every single U-boat's history Charles Dana Gibson. The Ordeal of Convoy is given in the class tables with their careers, N.Y. 119: A Detailed Accounting of One of in three or four lines, consisting usually of the Strangest World War II Convoys ever to commissioning date and date and location of Cross the North Atlantic. 2nd ed.; Camden loss. Here the book suffers from its actual ME: Ensign Press, 1992. xxviii + 180 pp., German publishing date of 1982, for recent photographs, illustrations, maps, glossary, research has amended about seventy of notes, bibliography, index. US $28, cloth; these loss dates and causes (see my article ISBN 0-9608996-5-0. in The Northern Mariner, October 1991). There are useful sections on World War I Imagine trying to cross the North Atlantic U-boat bow and stern distinguishing fea• during World War II in small coastal vessels tures, on foreign boats taken into Kriegs- and barges. This was the task assigned to Book Reviews 105

Convoy N.Y. 119; its perilous oceanic trek of convoy this is not a serious oversight. late 1944 is chronicled in this book, which Overall, despite the rather disjointed was first published in 1973. Gibson is uni• structure of its chapters, this book still quely qualified to document the story of deserves to be read by anyone with an int• N.Y. 119 because of his own experiences in erest in North Atlantic convoys in general, a similar, but later and much more suc• and American ATS convoys in particular. It cessful convoy. reminds us that in war, all forces and com• The story of this weather-battered con• mands must be fully co-ordinated and org• voy is told in ten brief chapters. A prologue anized to avoid wasting the fruits of their provides a quick synopsis of the Battle of individual labours. the Atlantic and developments on the beach• es after D-Day which seemed to make this Peter K. H. Mispelkamp convoy feasible and necessary. Unfortunate• Pointe Claire, Québec ly, the publisher did not update the prologue with details of how "Ultra" contributed to Patricia E. Gallagher LeBlanc. From Tropi• the Battle of the Atlantic and the passage of cal White to Battleship Grey. Ottawa: Alone this convoy. However, Gibson has added a Publishing Enterprise, 1988 [PO Box 8312, succinct paragraph which partially offsets Ottawa, Ont. K1G 3H8]. ix + 267 pp., this drawback. An introduction outlines the photographs, illustrations, appendices, bibli• story of the earlier US Army Transport ography. $19.95, paper; ISBN 0-9695814-0-8. Service (ATS) convoys, and the problems they encountered at sea and in port. Edward LeBlanc began his career at sea in The main text follows the progress of 1902 as a fourteen-year-old cabin boy on the N.Y. 119 from its genesis to the conclusion American fishing schooner Juanita. He of the salvage operations associated with it. eventually rose through merchant ranks to In general Gibson remains faithful to the attain the rank of Captain and served in a document record, but when the sources are variety of ships, including seven schooners, patently inadequate, he recreates conversa• a barquentine, two tugs, two naval trawlers, tions and speculates on some details. These three cable ships, seven passenger ships, and exceptions are, however, well indicated in fourteen freighters, nine of which were ships the notes. The book delivers a good sum• of the Canadian government Merchant Mar• mary of the difficulties that the convoy faced ine. LeBlanc's life was not without incident: (manning, ship selection, equipment failures he was washed overboard in 1911, survived and turbulent weather), but it has the feel of the Halifax Explosion of 1917 and the dep• a diary or log entry rather than a real narra• ression which began in 1929 and continued tive. Each chapter is heavily sub-divided by through the 1930s, and was blown off the date headings; even individual paragraphs bridge of his ship by the nearby explosion of are sometimes separated by a series of stars. a torpedo in 1942. The appointment which Gibson's account of the disorganization and gave him most personal satisfaction was as confusion which prevailed when this Master of R.M.G. Lady Rodney of Canadian weather-battered convoy arrived in England National Steamships Limited from 1939 to is of particular interest. 1942, a period that saw the transition "from The many photographs, illustrations, tropical white to battleship grey" to which diagrams, and maps complement the text the title alludes. Awarded the O.B.E. in nicely. Warship buffs may be disappointed 1944 for "long, continued, faithful and ardu• by his failure to include statistical data on ous duty whilst serving at sea and in port" the convoy's escorts. Given the relative lack during World War II. LeBlanc died at Hali• of any significant German reaction to the fax in 1945 at the age of fifty-seven. 106 The Northern Mariner

From Tropical White to Battleship Grey reluctant to consult the official documents in is LeBlanc's biography, self-published by his archives and other institutions in order to daughter-in-law with the encouragement and obtain the RON'S side of the story. The assistance of her husband, Eddie LeBlanc, twenty-five books in the bibliography do not who died in 1991, and other members of the include Felicity Hanington's book The Lady family. It displays both the virtues and the Boats, a strange omission for the biography vices of a book written primarily from the of a former master of one of those ships. As viewpoint of the subject's children and with a result, the book is more family hagiogra- a non-professional approach to both primary phy than impersonal biography. and secondary sources. The narrative is From Tropical White to Battleship Grey strongest when it conveys aspects of Le• does justice to its subject as an individual, Blanc's character and career which would but could have used the aid of some histori• have been directly observable by his cal researchers and a competent editor to children. One example is young Eddie turn it into a more satisfactory contribution LeBlanc's description of an exciting noctur• to marine studies. nal ride in a Buick equipped with a siren, accompanying his father, who at the time Peter Robertson was Assistant Marine Superintendent of the .Ottawa, Ontario Port of Montreal responding to a fire in the docks of Montreal during 1928 (p.92). Edwyn Gray. The Devil's Device: Robert Equally informative is the children's de• Whitehead and the History of the Torpedo. scription of the unloading of a cargo of Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991. West Indian bananas from LeBlanc's SS 320 pp., illustrations, bibliography, index. Cavalier at Montreal during the 1930s (pp. Cdn $39.95, US $28.95, cloth; ISBN 0-87021- 121-122). Significantly, the children's obser• 245-1. Canadian distributor, Vanwell Pub• vations enable the reader to see LeBlanc, lishing, St. Catharines, Ontario. not as an individual without a care in the world, but as a family man struggling to During the late nineteenth century, three support his wife Helena and their ten young innovations revolutionized naval warfare: the children, four of whom died as infants, submarine, the mine, and the torpedo. Of during economic times when appointments these, the author informs us, the torpedo at sea were difficult to obtain. was the most important as launched from LeBlanc's children did not observe him submarines, surface ships, or aircraft; the while he was at sea, and they are therefore torpedo probably destroyed more ships in unable to describe that part of his career. the first half of the twentieth century than One has the impression that the author is any other two naval weapons combined. Yet floundering around for information, not the man who invented this powerful weapon, quite sure about what other sources to Robert Whitehead, is relatively unknown, a consult in order to answer the question, fault that Edwyn Gray has set out to rectify. "What did you do at sea Dad?" Personal Robert Whitehead (1823-1905), a rest• papers in the possession of the family are less technical genius, was the son of an Eng• used as discrete items at face value, mainly lish industrialist. He early demonstrated a to reinforce the family's notion of events. flair for innovation. After a sound theor• For example, the family claims that the etical and practical education in machinery RCN treated LeBlanc unfairly over the years design, he established an engineering works by refusing to renew the commission which in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Appalled he received as a Lieutenant during World by the bloodshed he witnessed during the War I, yet the author appears to have been unrest of 1848, Whitehead resolved to invent Book Reviews 107

a weapon so terrible that it would make war appendices that provide data on three hun• impossible. The germ of the concept of the dred different models of Whitehead pattern modern torpedo, a self-propelled mine trav• torpedoes in service from 1870 to 1991. elling beneath the surface of the sea capable In short, this is an interesting and useful of sinking the largest ship, was suggested to book that will appeal not only to those inter• him by a retired Austrian naval officer, ested in naval history, especially the history Giovanni de Luppis. He had designed a of weapons systems, but also to readers int• small boat crammed with explosives, pow• erested in technical genius and innovation. ered by a clockwork motor and guided by ropes for use from the land against block• ading warships. De Luppis's prototype was Donald E. Graves unworkable, but Whitehead continued to Ottawa, Ontario work on the concept. In 1866, he con• structed the first modern torpedo. Edward C. Meyers. Thunder in the Morning The author then traces the technical de• Calm: The Royal Canadian Navy in Korea velopment of the torpedo from this first 1950-1955. St. Catharines: Vanwell Publish• primitive prototype through increasingly ing, 1992. x + 248 pp., map, photographs, more sophisticated designs. The Whitehead appendices, notes, bibliography, index. torpedo's acceptance by the Royal Navy in $24.95, cloth; ISBN 0-920277-71-3. 1871 was its seal of approval and Gray provides some interesting new material on The author served two Korean War tours in the important role played by Jacky Fisher in HMCS Cayuga during five years in the navy. the gaining of that acceptance. His products He writes, not as an historian or a polished now eagerly sought after by the world's raconteur, but with the bluntly expressed navies, Whitehead had a number of com• perspective of the lower deck. The official petitors and imitators and Gray also history of Canadian Naval Operations in describes their products. Korean Waters 1950-1955 (Thorgrimsson & It is curious that a technical innovator Russell, 1965) is out of print and this book like Whitehead refused to take either the gives a valuable, though non-comprehensive, submarine or the aircraft seriously for it was impression of the war and those navy times. the mating of the torpedo with the first in Some aspects which the official history 1914-1918 and the second in 1939-1945 that skated over are specially interesting, like the revolutionized war at sea. Gray provides a grounding of HMCS Huron on the island of good overview of the effect of the torpedo Yang-Do in 1953. The negligence evident on naval warfare, how a smaller German from the Board of Enquiry stands in sharp navy equipped with torpedo-armed aircraft contrast to the superb navigation of HMCS during World War II devastated the Ameri• Cayuga in the daring Chinnampo operation can battle fleet at Pearl Harbor, the Italian in 1950 led by Captain J.V. Brook. Meyers battle fleet at Tarante, and sank some of the expresses great admiration for Brook who most powerful warships at sea. Gray dis• was his CO, then marks him as one of those cusses in detail the problems encountered by officers fighting to keep the RCN a clone of world navies with the temperamental tor• the Royal Navy. He talks of uneven disci• pedo, providing some fascinating new infor• pline, frustrations and discomforts, boredom mation on the development of the Japanese and excitement, black moods and the joys of "Long Lance" 21-inch weapon, perhaps the Oriental ports, comradeship, the everlasting best of all the weapons modelled on the resilience of the sailor and pride in a job original Whitehead prototype. Rounding out well done. There are pungent comments on this overview are some detailed and useful officer-man relations, inefficient mail and 108 The Northern Mariner support services and the desire of men on Charles W. Koburger. Jr. Naval Strategy the lower deck to be more "Canadian." This East of Suez: The Role of Djibouti. New parallels the watershed "Mainguy Report" of York: Praeger, 1992. 114 pp., maps. US 1949 to which Meyers refers—and mis- $39.95, cloth; ISBN 0-275-94116-7. quotes-and which was just starting to affect substantial change. For many students of naval and international Editing is inconsistent between text, affairs the expression "East of Suez" is a appendices and chapter notes and he some• telegraphic description of the grandiose but times muddles the record, like turning yards threadbare maritime policy pursued by into feet (significant when it's the distance Great Britain in the Indian Ocean and between you and the enemy), and unjustly beyond until it was unceremonious aban• accusing the Royal Australian Navy of being doned by the Wilson government in the dry! A more serious charge is that HMCS early 1970s. Accordingly, this slim little Iroquois' consort, USS Marsh, cut and ran volume (in many ways an extended footnote when the Canadian destroyer was hit by on French naval and colonial history) is a Chinese shore batteries suffering three killed timely corrective, alerting us to the fact that and ten wounded. Meyers claims that RCN France had, and still has, its own "East of ships were henceforth leery of support by Suez" policy. At a time when our attention the USN, and Iroquois' ship's company is focused on sea lanes in the South China never forgave USS Marsh. This is unsub• Sea, the abandonment of US bases in the stantiated and, for the record, Rear Admiral Philippines, and renewed concerns about William Landymore RCN (retd) who was mounting long-range maritime operations, it Iroquois' captain at the time completely is valuable to examine the story of a rela• reflects it. This distinguished officer, it tively little known point d'appui which, if happens, tops Meyers' list of the four only by default, has gained rather than lost destroyer captains most highly regarded by geostratcgic significance over the years. the lower deck during the Korean conflict. As Charles Koburger, the author of a There's a gratuitous chapter on the variety of studies on the Marine Nationale, unification of the forces, thirteen years after notes, Djibouti is "a country, a town, a port, both the end of the author's naval service an international airport, and a railway as and the last gun of the Korean War. His well as a naval base." (p. xiv) While it is bitterness about some officers' Royal Navy difficult to keep the different personae leanings is generalized here though Canada's separate, his primary focus is on Djibouti as navy had changed markedly in that interval a base. The land itself is a god-forsaken to, in his own words, "the fiercely proud, enclave lying on the Horn of Africa: a wild• highly efficient and well-respected naval erness of arid desert and remote highlands force" that began its hard-earned develop• blessed, serendipitously, with a commodious, ment in those times. fjord-like harbour impeccably located at the The book has some unsupported con• Indian Ocean mouth of the Red Sea. clusions and many errors in detail of ship's Indeed, it is location that has conferred armament, equipment and procedures. upon this port its not inconsiderable import• However, it should be read for the colour ance during the twentieth century. and personal dimension it provides to an Initially it was because Djibouti pro• important and too little-known part of our vided the Marine Nationale with an invalu• navy's history. able half-way house on the voyage from Toulon to Saigon during the French acquisi• Tony German tion of Indochina in the 1880s. Then it was Old Chelsea, Québec because of its position astride the much Book Reviews 109 vaunted "windpipe of empire," and more rec• dor, according to Koburger, "marked the ently it was because of its propinquity to the coming of age of Djibouti as a base." (p. 67) Persian Gulf, particularly at a time when the It acquired the necessary permanent oper• naval resources of traditional Indian Ocean ational organization and staff to initiate, squadrons were shrinking and the numbc- of direct and support areawide operations. The classic naval bases was declining commen- Commanding Officer Maritime (COMAR), surately. Koburger provides the necessary Djibouti, reports to the Flag Officer French statistics: 1400 nm to the Strait of Hormuz; Naval Forces, Indian Ocean (one of France's 1300 nm to Suez; 2200 nm to Diego Garcia. four major naval commands), and although No other naval "base" is as conveniently the CFS became an independent republic in located to the geopolitical heartland of the 1977 Djibouti continues to provide the Middle East, to that politically volatile, oil- Marine Nationale with valuable logistical, rich pentagon, as Djibouti. repair, refuelling and intelligence services, Lest this seem to exaggerate its import• monitoring, for example, the daily passage ance, Djibouti was a primitive backwater of of thirty to forty oil tankers and the move• empire for much of this century which owed ments (in times past) of Soviet vessels in the a good deal of its importance to being a area. Djibouti's value was further highlighted place on the way to somewhere else. After during the Gulf Crisis when a carrier battle World War I (during which it was associated group, built around the carrier Clemenceau, with the hunt for German surface raiders) was based out of Djibouti for the execution Djibouti lapsed into "its almost normal semi• of Operation Artimon, the French contribu• comatose state," (p. xix) a sun-wracked col• tion to the coalition naval effort. lection of warehouses, wharves and precious This is not a profound or particularly little else. The railway which linked it with scholarly work—based as it is on a rather Ethiopia threatened to draw Djibouti into scanty collection of secondary sources—but Italy's Abyssinian campaign in the mid-1930s it is a useful little addition to our knowledge and Djibouti's adherence to the Vichy of a crucial but relatively underreported regime resulted in the imposition of a maritime region of the world. coastal blockade of the Côte Française des Somalis (CFS) by the Royal Navy in the James A. Boutilier early stages of World War II. Victoria, British Columbia Koburger, in fact, devotes a good deal of time to describing the efforts of smug• Michael A. Palmer. On Course to Desert glers and other Casablanca-like characters Storm: The United States Navy and the to circumvent the blockade in dhows, schoo• Persian Gulf. Washington, DC: Naval His• ners and submarines. This is all good anec• torical Center, 1992. xxii + 201 pp., photo• dotal stuff but the author tries too hard to graphs, tables, maps, appendices, notes, infuse these marginal episodes with historic bibliography, index. US $11 ( + 25% outside or heroic significance and he overplays his the USA), paper; ISBN 0-945274-09-2. hand when he suggests that Djibouti's sur• vival rivalled that of Malta. Michael Palmer's latest book is the fifth The Gaullist authorities took control of volume in the Naval Historical Center's the CFS on 28 December, 1942. Thereafter "Contributions to Naval History Series." The Djibouti played an important role in sup• title should be read quite literally, because porting the French campaign in Indochina the most recent activities of the USN in the and the unrealized southern thrust against Persian Gulf in the war against Iraq are Ports Tewfik and Suez (Operation Torea• barely mentioned. The objective of the book dor) during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Torea• is to put the origins of American naval 110 The Northern Mariner involvement in this troubled region in his• actions undertaken by the USN in April torical perspective. The book effectively ends 1988 against Iran after the USS Samuel B. with the ceasefire between Iraq and Iran in Roberts was damaged by a mine. This oper• 1988, which brought the so-called "Tanker ation resulted in numerous clashes between War" in the Persian Gulf to an end.The US and Iranian naval forces. events that occurred after 1988 are referred The book is tightly focused on an imp• to in the preface and conclusion, but other• ortant but narrow subject, providing a con• wise go unremarked. cise history of a topic which defies facile Palmer traces the initial forays of the explanations. Palmer's extensive research USN into the Persian Gulf in the nineteenth and experience as an author are well century, moving quickly into the twentieth reflected in the finished product, which century. He notes in passing that Captain admirably summarizes the subject. His A.T. Mahan's strategic musings on the polished prose style is more academic than Persian Gulf covered most areas of contem• entertaining, in keeping with the nature of porary concern, with one exception: the the topic. The many photographs, maps, and importance of oil. The book dwells briefly tables, as well as the well-organized index, on the growing involvement of US oil com• useful appendices and reasonably complete panies in the area in the inter-war period, list of abbreviations all contribute to a highly but the main focus of the book is clearly, professional publication. While the book and appropriately, the post-war era. It may not be suited for everyone, those wish• succinctly reviews relevant US foreign policy ing a good overview of the history of the activities in contiguous areas, such as US United States Navy's involvement in the involvement in the Suez Crisis, the Six Day Persian Gulf need look no further. and the 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, but the focus throughout remains the Persian Gulf. Doug McLean The growing importance of oil or petro- Victoria, British Columbia strategy, is a well developed theme in this book. Another concerns American efforts to Gary Anderson. Towards a Pax Universalis: maintain stability in the area, without the A Historical Critique of the National Military commitment of substantial ground forces. Strategy for the 1990s. Newport, RI: Naval The importance of the USN in the War College Press, 1992; Newport Papers American effort to maintain a discreet but #2. 47 pp., paper. Available on request influential presence in this volatile region from: the Managing Editor, Naval War soon becomes obvious. Palmer makes a College Press, Newport, Rl 028415010 persuasive argument for the continuing utility of naval forces in situations such as The aim of the "Newport Papers" is to that in the Persian Gulf, where diplomatic stimulate debate by distributing individual complications and immense logistical prob• papers written by the faculty and students of lems make the permanent stationing of US the US Naval War College. This contribu• ground forces very difficult. The book ends tion should certainly do this. Despite its with the USN's largely successful operations title, however, the paper is not historical. in defence of oil tankers transiting the Rather, it is a strategic analysis that draws Persian Gulf in 1987-88, an operation which on some lessons of history to justify a new allowed the US to exercise considerable role for the US Marine Corps within the influence with a comparatively minor invest• latest version of the US national strategy. ment in forces. Included in a brief appendix The author's opening premise is that in by Dr. Hans M. Pawlisch are the details of placing heavy reliance on a strong strategic Operation Praying Mantis, the retaliatory reserve to protect American global interests, Book Reviews 111 the current "strategic vision" of US political US Navy and, naturally, the Marines. This and military leaders is flawed. To support option, he argues, avoids the political prob• this view, he embarks on a study of strategic lems of forward basing, would be less expen• reserves in the history of warfare. The sive than increasing the mobility of the US trouble is, of course, that the present era Army, and prevents future entanglements has few historic parallels. Nevertheless, with difficult allies such as Iran. The prob• Anderson finds similarities between the lem with his proposition is that he does not American situation in today's complex world explain how the new "Global Marshal" is and the problems faced by the Romans, the going to convince the rest of the global Byzantine Emperors, and the leaders of citizens that their interests will be served by post-Napoleonic Britain. He selects these joining the posse. To many, the new "naval diverse regimes as a basis for comparison bridge" strategy will appear as a global because each had widespread geographic SWAT team rather than as a true contribu• interests outside its imperial domain. He tion to collective security. puts the US global security role into context Although one may not agree with his by explaining it as one of non-imperialistic conclusions or his methodology, the way in coalition-building. It is a role he sees as which Anderson builds his case is fascinat• more akin to the old frontier marshal than ing. Relating the Roman, Byzantine and to the popular image of global policeman. British Empires to the present American From there, Anderson plunges into an strategic situation may stretch the imagin• interesting discussion of the successes and ation a little, but the use of those examples failures of the early superpowers, as he sees is novel and not as unrealistic as one might them, in keeping the peace within their think. The paper is controversial and pro• areas of interest. His use of modern con• vides much food for thought, and so is well cepts such as deterrence and strategic intelli• worth reading. But have pen and paper gence to analyze the effectiveness of early handy because it invites comment from both military structures, is innovative yet poten• the historical and the political perspectives. tially confusing. However, he deftly avoids the obvious traps by keeping the discussion Peter Haydon short and simple. Perhaps a little too short Bedford, Nova Scotia in some places, for one is left wondering just how he got to his conclusion that the new Peter Mushkat, Fred Crickard, Robert US strategy is "visible" except in the Middle Huebert (eds.). Niobe Papers, Volume II: East. The rationale, one discovers, comes Oceans Policies in the 1990s. Halifax: from a recent war game and the experience Oceans Institute of Canada, 1991. viii + 122 of Desert Storm. According to Anderson, pp., maps, figures. $18, paper; ISBN 0-7703- without prepositioned forces or a forward 9262-8. operating base in the region, the United States will have great difficulty intervening Fred Crickard, (ed.). Niobe Papers, Volume quickly in the next Middle East crisis. III: The Canadian Navy in Peace and War in As possible solutions, he discusses four the 1990s. Halifax: Nautica Books, 1992. 90 options: establishing permanent American pp., $10, paper. bases in the Middle East, increasing military mobility, developing regional security The Naval Officers' Association of Canada regimes (hegemonic), and creating an has been sponsoring a series of annual enhanced naval power projection capability. conferences on an oceans policy for Canada. Essentially, Anderson advocates the devel• These two slim volumes contain papers opment of a "naval bridge" strategy using the presented in 1990 and 1991. Their contents 112 The Northern Mariner are of a high quality and deserve attention. nation of Canada's size and stature. And Until recently there has been little published surely the analyses provided in this volume in the way of informed comment on Cana• could help to clear up woolly thinking about da's maritime concerns and policies. These defence in a country which has maintained two relevant and well-reasoned volumes are minimal military forces over the past thirty therefore particularly welcome and should years. Substantial reductions in defence help to fill a large vacuum. The authors are expenditures~a sizeable dividend-are unrea• an eclectic group expert in their fields and listic unless Canada wishes to relinquish its hence their papers are authoritative. ability to exercise sovereignty. Oceans Policies in the 1990s has a wide Several noteworthy essays appear in this focus; it spans topics from the law of the sea compact volume. A carefully-researched through environmental concerns to maritime article by Ann Maclnnis stands out for its security. These papers suggest how Canada's reasoned discussion of how underwater sur• oceans can be managed and developed in an veillance in the Arctic could be partially orderly manner. The most vivid contribution achieved and how this would affect sover• is by Stewart Wade, editor oiFairplay Inter• eignty. An interesting historical analyses by national Shipping Weekly, on international Vice-Admiral Brodeur demonstrates how in shipping and Canada. It sketches current the past Canada was not taken seriously by trends and problems such as the lack of her neighbour when intentions were not trained crews, the implications of running matched by actions and forces in being. large tankers beyond their designed lives, Both these trenchant booklets are at• and flags of convenience registries. Wade tractively produced. They are thought-pro• offers some considered advice on how Van• voking, topical and recommended reading couver and Montreal, given the right tax for anyone interested in Canada's ocean incentives, could become significant ship policies, civil and military. All three volumes management centres. of the Niobe Papers, and a forthcoming issue The Canadian Navy in Peace and War in on the 1992 conference in St. John's, are the 1990s is written from the perspective of available from Nautica Publishing, 1579 recent headlines. It describes the navy being Dresden Row, Halifax, N.S. B3J 2K4. used as an instrument of national policy in exercising sovereignty in Canada's oceans, in Jan Drent contributing to international operations in Victoria, British Columbia the Gulf, and in supporting diplomatic initia• tives. The events covered and the views of Peter Haydon. The McNaughton Papers (The the authors have particular relevance at a Canadian Journal of Strategic Studies) Vol• time when defence policy is being modified ume II, "When Military Plans and Policies to fit the evolving international situation. Conflict: The Case of Canada's General Pur• An obvious lesson from the analyses is pose Frigate Program". Toronto: Canadian the need for forces in being. Fortunately, Institute of Strategic Studies, 1991. 85 pp., Canada's modest navy-and its sister ser• plan, bibliography. $10, spiral-bound; ISBN vices—have been available when needed at 0-919769-45-4. the start of the '90s. As it happened, the tasks they had to meet did not involve the The cancellation of the General Purpose military threat which had dominated so Frigate Programme occurred almost three much commentary during the lengthy Cold decades ago but it has never been com• War. Surely the fact that they were needed pletely forgotten within the Navy. Peter urgently points to a continuing requirement Haydon's paper clears away much of the which is fundamental to sovereignty for a mythology so that the true facts of this Book Reviews 113 episode may be examined. interest to those concerned with military- Haydon's starting point is a consideration political relations in Canada. As a case of the administration of defence policy. This study, this paper meets its goal of identifying is a complex topic and readers without pre• lessons that may be valid today but readers vious knowledge may find this section diffi• should be cautious in drawing comparisons. cult. Haydon has also chosen to examine the As Haydon notes, the Navy was wiser as a defence department organization in light of result of the General Purpose Frigate epi• the later decision to unify the three services sode. It would be fair to add that subse• although this was not, strictly speaking, quent events have made the Navy wiser still. relevant to the decision to cancel the Gen• eral Purpose Frigate Programme in 1963. RJ. Summers The paper next turns to the evolution of Toronto, Ontario Canada's Cold War Navy. Haydon follows the Navy's fortunes from the cutback in 1945 Chuck Lawliss. The Submarine Book. New through the Korean War revitalization to the York: Thames & Hudson, 1991. 160 pp., introduction of the new NATO strategy of photographs, figures, bibliography. US $35, 1955. It is here that he identifies the begin• cloth; ISBN 0-500-01498-1. nings of the commitment-capability gap. He further notes that naval planning in this Without doubt, the most revolutionary, period was hampered by the inability of the strategic weapon system to emerge since planners to identify the government's goals. World War II is the nuclear-powered, ballis• It was to the Navy's credit that it became a tic missile-armed, submarine—the SSBN. leader in ASW technology even as it battled Ton for ton, no other single weapon system to establish its own strategic direction. can even begin to compare with an SSBN The paper suggests that this ambivalence for destructive capacity or seagoing utility. contributed to the downfall of the General Nuclear-powered submarines are the Purpose Frigate Programme. Recognizing wonder warships of our century. Chuck the need for additional air defence for ships Lawliss, who has no personal experience in operating with NATO in the eastern Atlan• submarines, makes this abundantly clear. He tic, work began on a new design with both points out that the SSBNs and their smaller, ASW and area AAW roles in early 1961. more nimble sisters, the hunter-killer SSNs, Unfortunately, additional capabilities were are technological masterpieces embodying later added which both increased the costs design features rivalling, or even surpassing, and compromised the clear operational need those used in space programmes. After all, for a general purpose ship. It may be that surviving in the oceanic depths is at least as the General Purpose Frigate Programme demanding as survival in outer space. was doomed in the climate of fiscal restraint The Submarine Book is confined almost that followed the election of the Liberals in exclusively to a discussion of the American 1963. However, in Haydon's opinion the new nuclear submarine programme. Information Defence Minister Paul Hellyer managed to about the Soviet Union's, now Russia's, generate controversy not so much by efforts, is understandably scarce. Because of cancelling the programme as by the process the classified nature of the topic, Lawliss is which he used to reach that decision. severely restricted in subject matter. This Haydon has done much to illuminate the leaves some pretty big holes in the fabric of history of the General Purpose Frigate his narrative. Nevertheless, he manages to Programme by introducing and analyzing keep his account moving at a fair clip and material from sources that were previously uses the information available to him to unavailable. His paper will be of particular good effect. His descriptions of day-to-day 114 The Northern Mariner routine activities aboard a nuclear-powered areas, the lack of reference to source sub at sea are interesting and his examin• material and the absence of an index, this ation of the technical problems faced by the book does not qualify as a reference work. designers and operators is informative. Despite its limitations and flaws, however, it Lawliss also provides some interesting could serve as a basic general introduction background to the development of the US to the subject from an American viewpoint. Navy's nuclear submarine force, including a brief look at the career and personality of Dave Perkins Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. The scion of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia the USN's nuclear fleet is depicted as a dedicated loner who single handcdly envi• James C. F. Wang. Handbook on Ocean sioned, created, developed and directed the Politics & Law. Westport, CT: Greenwood nuclear navy regardless of personal cost. Press, 1992. xv + 568 pp., maps, figures, Lawliss provides sufficient detail to give us tables, appendices, bibliography, index. US an appreciation of what it must have taken $49.95 cloth; ISBN 0-313-26434-1. to convince the Navy, the Congress and the American people to adopt such a controver• The author, who is a professor of political sial technology and to build nuclear-powered science and international studies at the ships and submarines. Nuclear-tipped arma• University of Hawaii at Hilo, intended that ments for these vessels already existed and his Handbook should satisfy a need in "lib• the marriage of the two was only a matter raries, universities, governmental and non• of time and opportunity. governmental agencies concerned with ocean Some of his observations, however, are affairs" for "a single-volume reference book poorly phrased. To describe the typical to provide accurate, comprehensive and crewman selected for service in SSBNs as a timely background information and analysis" "computer freak or Nintendo junkie" (p. 2) on an array of multidisciplinary subjects. is neither accurate nor flattering. Similar Most are "salient portions of the 1982 Law gaffes are scattered throughout. For of the Sea Convention." (xi) instance, as historical background the author The book is arranged in five parts: an has provided a brief overview of the devel• overview of the physical features of the opment of the submarine; he also examines oceans; a survey of multilateral international the use of submarines in wartime. Both of conferences on the uses of the oceans and these discussions are riddled with mistakes the evolution of international principles on of a very basic kind that could have been the law of the sea; a detailed review and avoided through informed editing. Thus, the analysis of the economic and political man• photo captions contain many errors, such as agement of the living resources in the one which described "a submarine accom• oceans, including access to resources and panying a convoy steaming toward England disputes over access rights, and non-living in the early days of [World War II]" (p. 73) resources—oil and minerals, including deep- which in fact is a Japanese sub at sea with seabed mining; a review of environmental units of the Japanese fleet in attendance. protection and pollution prevention meas• Such carelessness is unfortunate. While an ures for the oceans; and an overview of the astute reader might be able to recognize principal uses of the oceans: naval activities, errors in the text, it takes a specialist's eye navigation, communications and shipping, to do so in a photo caption. Since the book and marine scientific research. The Hand• seems to be aimed at the uninformed lay• book ends with a summary of the positions man, mistakes of this kind are unforgivable. of "the major players" (states and regional Because of the brevity of coverage in all and other groups of states) on selected Book Reviews 115 issues at the Third United Nations Confer• John H. Harland. Catchers and Corvettes: ence on the Law of the Sea, from December The Steam Whalecatcher in Peace and War 1973 to April 1982. Here and elsewhere, 1860-1960. Rotherfield, UK: Jean Boudriot Wang has fairly and accurately assessed Publications, 1992. 448 pp., lines drawings, Canada's positions on some of the issues. plans, photographs, bibliography, indices, The book is comprehensive in the areas £65 (+ shipping), cloth; ISBN 0-948864-09-5. of resources, less so in other areas. The subject of fisheries, for example, is especially It is no easy matter to critique a labour of well-handled, as is Wang's treatment of the love. In this case, John Harland has over• deep-seabed mining issue. It was disagree• taken his magnum opus Seamanship in the ment over elements of the mining issue, Age of Sail (Annapolis, 1984) with another under negotiation since 1967, that finally masterwork of similar size and scope, one caused the USA and some other industrial• detailing the evolution of the steam-powered ized states to refuse to sign the Convention whale-chaser boat. Yet, despite its title, the in December 1982. There are two instances book is more about catcher boats used in of excessive detail in tables that together fill "modern" whaling than about navy corvettes, five pages: one is a list of the scientific and though Harland does present a cogent common names for some sixty-five "recog• argument for the versatility of the whale- nized small cetaceans," i.e. the dolphin chaser, and shows why its design was family, the other provides totals of gross coveted by Axis and Allies alike for a variety registered tonnage of merchant fleets by of military functions during World War II. country in mid-1985. In getting to that point, we discover two In the part on uses of the oceans, there other subjects which each might merit book- are several errors, e.g. under naval oper• length treatment. One is the history of the ations and on safety of life at sea conven• chaser boat; the other is a brief treatise on tions, and omissions, such as piracy, which is marine engineering. Harland is a superb still a serious problem in the Caribbean and artist both visually and in writing: he in Southeast Asia and has four articles on it describes the technical niceties of steam in the Law of the Sea Convention. power in a way that lay readers can under• Much of the information is current to stand while previously-informed readers will early 1990, yet some of the entries, for nod their heads knowingly. His explanation unexplained reasons as in the case of a list of the workings of steam engines and their of bilateral fisheries agreements for the brief associated deck gear is very fine, indeed. period 1975-1978, are not at all recent. The This is therefore a book for modern whaling general and name index has only about 350 scholars, naval historians, ship modellers and entries of a possible 2081. There is no sep• artists. It is a technical book about steam arate list of international and national (US) whale-catchers. There is even some storm cases, and few of the cases mentioned in the surge, since Harland is not averse to text are indexed. Indeed, the greatest short• retelling a few whalemen's stories, of boats coming of this Handbook as a "single-vol• capsizing, gunners gone missing, and the big ume reference" is the lack of an adequate ones that didn't get away. index. Perhaps the companion volume, The technical drawings, well redrawn by Ocean Politics and Law: An Annotated John McKay from plans retained by Norwe• Bibliography, is suitably indexed. gian museums and shipping companies, de• pict the evolution of the steam-powered Allen D. Taylor chaser-boat accurately and give sufficient Cantley, Quebec detail for modelmaking and painting. A selection of vessels are included, from 116 The Northern Mariner

earliest to latest, from common varieties to ing: The End of the Adventure and describes the unusual and the unique. the decline of the Norwegian hegemony over There are two quibbles. One concerns the twenty year period, from the postwar the positioning and captioning of the illus• startup in 1945, until the final collapse of the trations. Since none is captioned except by whaling industry in the 1960s. The author is figure number, we soon discover that some one of the prime movers of the Norwegian are not cited specifically in the text, while Shipping History Society and a past editor of for some reason, only photographs are iden• this group's journal Skipet. Besides his books tified at the front of the book. Thus it on Norwegian shipping, his contributions becomes possible to miss finding the expla• will be familiar to readers of magazines like nation of an illustration in the text, with no Ships Monthly, Sea Breezes and Fairplay. recourse to the table of photographs. This is The last of the four volumes of Johnsen unnecessarily frustrating when short captions & Tonnesen's Den Moderne Hvalfangsts could have made for clearer communication Historié was published over twenty years between author and reader. The other ago. Bakka's Hvalfangsten offers a useful minor quarrel is over the decision to call supplement to it, providing us with much in• these ships whaleboats. This is a specific formation in a very convenient from. There term to those of us who dabble in the sail- are capsule histories of all the major com• whaling trade; it means a five-to-seven-man panies, as well as on the whaling stations on rowed double-end wooden boat, about thirty South Georgia. Other sections describe the feet in length and used in hunting the whale preparations for the expedition's sailing day from a sail-whaling ship. Most whaling in the fall, and life aboard the catcher boats. historians use catcher or chaser for the big General arrangement drawings show the lay• steel steamers to avoid confusion. out of several good-looking catchers built by These, however, are but blips in a well- Kaldnes in Tonsberg. researched, brilliant effort at encapsulating The gunners were the aristocracy of the this little-known and little-cared-for class of whaling fraternity, since it was on their skill vessels. The naval component will interest that the success of the whole expedition an entirely different group of readers, and depended. In most cases they were also in the book is otherwise recommended to any• command of the catcher-boat, and not one with a passion for the speedy work• unaware of their importance in the scheme horses of the whaling grounds, the steam- of things. On one occasion, a pilot boarding powered chaser boats, that is, whaleboats. a catcher in Cape Town asked the gunner "Are you the Captain Sir?" to which the Robert Lloyd Webb gunner replied with barely concealed pride, Bath, Maine "I am more than the Captain." (p.39) The book includes mention of the Brit• Dag Bakka Jr. Hvalfangsten: Eventyret tar ish firms, Christian Salvesen Ltd, United slutt. Larvik, Norway: Krohn Johansen Whalers, and the South African companies, Forlag [P.O. Box 43, N-3251 Larvik, Nor• all of which had very close Norwegian con• way], 1992. 216 pp., photographs, ship plans, nections. It does not cover the whaling maps, tables, bibliography. Price available activities of the Japanese and Russians, nor from publisher, cloth; ISBN 82-90528-24-8. indeed those of Aristotle Onassis, or the Netherlands Whaling Company, even though In 1939, whaling was still dominated by both the latter depended heavily on Norwe• Anglo-Norse interests, and from a technical gian technical expertise. The activities of point of view was essentially a Norwegian some of the well-known "pirate" whalers of industry. The title of this book means Whal• the 1970s, Sierra, Run, lb s a Uno and Ibsa Book Reviews 111

Dos are described, and the efforts made by develops the whole subject of North Pacific Greenpeace to frustrate them. There is trade between 1785, when the fur trade on peripheral reference to postwar activity in the northwest coast began, and 1841, when Canada, including British Columbia Packers' American involvement in trade on the coast joint venture with the Japanese at Coal ended. By choosing 1785 as his starting date, Harbour and the whaling engaged in by Gibson excludes, other than a brief mention, Karlsen Shipping of Halifax. There is also the Russian fur trade with China prior to quite a bit about coastal whaling in Norway that date. For this, we must go to a paper in the '50s and '60s, which was engaged in (unpublished as I write) presented by Gib• with marginal success from small stations at son to the Vancouver Conference on Explo• Blomvâg, Steinshamn, Skjelnan, and Hestnes ration and Discovery, sponsored by Simon on the island of Hirta. Fraser University in April 1992. Useful reference material includes a list The book covers the highly unstable of the gunners who served with most of the commercial and political situation in China, Norwegian managed expeditions from 1947 and the changing nature of the Chinese until the mid-1960s, and alphabetical lists, market, which initially had no interest in with many photos and technical data con• exports and no need for foreign goods. The cerning the factory ships, transports and sea otter skins opened this closed society catchers which served with the postwar because of the desire for their rich fur in expeditions. Northern China. Payment was made in silver Nicely produced on glossy paper, this until the need to export goods to pay for book will appeal most to those with a read• opium forced the Chinese into foreign trade. ing knowledge of Norwegian, but the photo• Gibson also brings out the flexibility and graphs and the lists referred to in the previ• price volatility of the trade on the Northwest ous paragraph, would be of use to a reader Coast, with the development of Indian mid• with no acquaintanceship with the language dlemen and the involvement of traders in at all. One hopes that one of the English intertribal trade. For years, otter skins were maritime publishers may see their way clear the principal product offered by the natives, to translating and putting this book out, though salmon (salted down for the Hawaii• once the current pall of gloom and doom an market) and timber, mostly for the same hanging over the publishing trade has evap• market, became more important as the sea orated. otter became scarce. Instead of dying, the trade broadened to include many products John H. Harland from the Pacific islands as well as the Kelowna, British Columbia Northwest Coast. A multifaceted trade ensued, with traders bringing muskets, James R. Gibson. Otter Skins, Boston Ships, powder and shot to the coast as well as and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade metals and cloth. They might pick up elk of the Northwest Coast, 1785-1841. Montreal: skins at the Columbia or oolichan grease McGill Queen's University Press, 1992. xxii farther north, to barter for skins at locations + 422 pp., maps, illustrations, tables, notes, where these commodities were scarce, and finally end up with a cargo of skins. They bibliography, index. $39.95, cloth; ISBN 0- would then trade these in Canton for China 7735-0829-5. goods—tea, textiles, and chinaware—which would be taken to Boston for sale or for re• The book covers a broader subject than its export to Europe. It is unnecessary to follow title suggests. While the maritime fur trade all the convolutions of this complex trade, or between the northwest coast of America and to cover the effect on the Amerindian and China is at the centre of the story, Gibson 118 The Northern Mariner

Polynesian people who became embroiled; prime subject intimately and also to place these subjects are all discussed in the book. him accurately in the complex world of the Critical comments will be brief, because eighteenth century British navy, shipboard it is more useful to describe the book, which life, international diplomacy of the 1790s, is well organized and well written. Yet it is and the special hardships of a long voyage a bit unsettling to read about the violence of exploration. Given the limits of documen• that existed on the coast under the chapter tation, these are most difficult missions. heading "Obstacles to Trade." True, it was As a narrator vehicle, John Vancouver an obstacle, but other aspects of violence can be made to express any number of were more important, as Gibson details. The fictional inaccuracies, biases, egregious subject deserves its own chapter. errors, and odd views. Yet Gillespie wants The statistical tables, the extensive notes to present a correct and full account of and the twenty-four page bibliography add George Vancouver's life and his epic voyage. considerable value to the work, although the Unfortunately, she commits numerous errors index is skimpy. The publisher has done a of fact and analysis. To make Vancouver proper job, with legible tables, running less formal, more human, and more interest• heads over the footnotes giving the page ing, she intimates that the flesh-subduing numbers, and quality printing and binding. commander enjoyed a sexual liaison with a The book can be highly recommended Hawaiian woman aboard HMS Discovery. to historians, and to a broader audience. Without some evidence, such an insinuation simply does not fit Vancouver's character or John Kendrick his strong discipline as a British naval cap• Vancouver, British Columbia tain. Similarly, Vancouver is made to express anti-Spanish attitudes that his Brenda Guild Gillespie. On Stormy Seas: brother John may have held, but he did not The Triumphs and Torments of Captain actually utter. These repeat old propaganda George Vancouver. Victoria: Victoria, BC: stereotypes banished by modern historians Horsdal & Schubart, 1992. xvi + 298 pp., and describe the Spaniards as abusing and maps illustrations, plates, bibliography, enslaving the Indians of the Northwest index. $18.95, paper; ISBN 0-920663-12-5. Coast. In California, the Spanish fandango, that bothered Archibald Menzies with its passion, becomes a "lewd display." Was this Described in the press release as a work of the fictional observation of a prudish John creative non-fiction, Gillespie's study of Vancouver or the author Gillespie? Since George Vancouver seeks to transcend the George Vancouver did not state his views on formal prose of the official published the subject, it is difficult to speculate what account of his expedition to the Pacific he may or may not have thought. Given his Ocean. Distant and often somewhat cold in relations with the Spaniards, it is doubtful character, Vancouver presents a difficult that Captain Vancouver would have des• subject for his biographers. Much of bis cribed the California officers and soldiers as original correspondence, notes, journals, and "pompous, prickly, lazy little men all." other material from the expedition to the (p.177) North Pacific have disappeared. To over• come the stiffness of existing sources and Perhaps even more damaging to the real biographies, Gillespie writes from the per• George Vancouver is Gillespie's preoccupa• spective of his brother John Vancouver, tion with the Honourable Thomas Pitt, later seeking creatively to interpret, but not to Lord Camelford, whose evil presence per• abuse the existing evidence. To achieve vades the book. Without evidence, success, Gillespie must understand her Camelford or his powerful relatives are Book Reviews 119 more or less declared guilty of destroying all explorers, and the hydrographie surveys of lost documents, letters, and journals of the Captain George Vancouver and Captain expedition. Certainly, Vancouver's judge• George Richards, later chief hydrographer ment about flogging Midshipman Pitt may of the Royal Navy. As a result a good pro• be questioned, but because he did not give portion of the names are those of prominent the young nobleman sufficient special con• men in both the royal navies of Spain and sideration. While Camelford did cloud Great Britain. With great scholarship, Cap• Vancouver's last days, his omnipresent role tain Walbran combed the archives of both in Gillespie's account is overblown. Creative countries, and his masterpiece of research non-fiction may be useful, but not when it has never been equalled. alters the historical characters and events to There are thousands of entries in alpha• create a parody. Even by referring to Cap• betical order, a boon to all historians, but tain Vancouver by his first name as also to all seafarers on the British Columbia George—sometimes up to nine times per coast. On my first trip up the coast in 1935, page-through the artifice of John I had a valuable first edition copy of Wal• Vancouver, the author erodes the reputation bran handy in the wheelhouse. The book of a very formal and serious British com• also makes wonderful browsing, as human mander. In some crucial elements, Gillespie interest stories abound. For instance, Thor- has created a George Vancouver who is a manby Island was named in 1860 by Captain creature of pure fiction rather than shedding Richards in honour of the Derby winner of new light on the original man. Prospective that year, on which he and his officers had readers should compare the present study placed bets. All the names in the vicinity are carefully with W. Kaye Lamb's authoritative connected with the turf: Buccaneer Bay, The Voyage of George Vancouver (4 vols.; Derby Point, Epsom Point, Oaks Point, London: Hakluyt Society, 1984). Merry Island, Surrey Islands, Tattenham Ledge and Welcome Pass. The last name Christon I. Archer was chosen because it was welcome news Calgary, Alberta that Thormanby had won the big race.

John T. Walbran. British Columbia Coast Norman Hacking Names 1592-1906: Their Origin and History. North Vancouver, British Columbia Facsimile reprint of 1909 edition; Vancou• ver: Douglas and Mclntyre, 1991. xx + 546 David Seidman. 77ie Essential Sea Kayaker: pp., illustrations, maps, $19.95, paper; ISBN A Complete Course for the Open Water Pad- 0-88894-143-9. dler. Camden, ME: International Marine Publishing, 1992. 144 pp., photographs, Captain Walbran's compendium of British figures, appendix. US $12.95, paper; ISBN 0- Columbia coast names, first published in 87742-305-9. 1909, is a classic of its kind. It was very rare until the publication of a popular reprint in This very readable book lives up to its 1971 by the Vancouver Public Library. A subtitle. While intended for the "begmning similar reprint is now available. to experienced sea kayaker," my feeling is The author was master of the Canadian that the book is really meant for beginners. Government SS Quadra on the Pacific coast An experienced ocean paddler would prob• for many years, and his life hobby was the ably be better off with a book like John collection of data on the history of British Dowd's Sea Kayaking: A Manual for Long Columbia coast place names. Many of these Distance Touring. names date from the early Spanish Seidman's book is divided into two 120 The Northern Mariner

parts. He first deals with eveiything from section on "weather." Otherwise Seidman determining the right kayak, paddle and has provided the sea kayaking fraternity with accessories to basic kayaking strokes. There a very readable introduction on the basics of are sections on how to get in and out of a many aspects of sea kayaking. kayak and even how to load a kayak on a car roof rack. Deidman has thought of just Keith Nicol about every aspect of ocean kayaking and Corner Brook, Newfoundland writes about it in a very straight forward, easy-to-read manner. He is a former adver• Peter Murray. Homesteads and Snug Har• tising copy writer and is now a contributing bours: The Gulf Islands. Ganges, BC: Hors- editor and columnist for a variety of boating dal & Schubart, 1991. vi + 213 pp., maps, magazines; his writing talent is apparent. photographs, figures, bibliography, index. The second section, entitled "Toward $14.75, paper; ISBN 0-920663-13-3. the Horizon," deals with more advanced manoeuvres like the Eskimo Roll rescues, Peter Murray says that his intention is "to paddling through surf and a short section on invoke a sense of what it was like for the family kayaking and paddling for disabled islands' first settlers." (p. 3) Though there is people. Seidman concludes with a compre• much interesting information in Homesteads hensive list of sea kayaking periodicals, and Snug Harbours, the author's purpose is books, manufacturers, and even a listing of not satisfactorily realized. sea kayak clubs and organizations. Since He offers a number of interesting sug• much of the book deals with "how to" type gestions why people settled on the islands: of information, more than text is typically their economic opportunities and difficulties, necessary to grasp the ideas being discussed. the diverse nature of the population and the The author has chosen line drawings for this role of climate and transportation. Yet these purpose, and they are generally effective. themes, which could have provided a unify• Many of them are in sequence which is a ing structure, are not developed. Instead sensible way to depict the action of sea Murray deals with each island separately. kayaking paddling technique. There are also Mane, Galena, Pander and Saltspring each several black-and-white photographs which rate a chapter, but the smaller islands are add variety to the line drawings. Overall, grouped together, usually with two or three their quality is better than that of some of but as many as seven in a single chapter. the drawings, and I would have suggested Murray takes pains to identify the first increasing the number of photos and reduc• settlers and is meticulous in recording dates ing the number of line drawings. of birth and death. Since families occasional• In conclusion, the book is good value, ly moved from one island to another or and I found it useful. I do a number of sea women found husbands on neighbouring kayak trips every year and I feel that I islands, some names appear more than once. would have progressed faster in terms of The main weakness of the book lies, not confidence and skill level had this book been in the structure but in the nature of the available six years ago when I first bought resources Murray tapped and the use he my Klepper ocean kayak. People who live in made of them. The typescript and audio relatively remote areas (as I do) will find it tape memoirs in the British Columbia particularly useful; here in western New• Archives and Record Service and the many foundland, there is no such thing as a sea published local histories provided a wealth kayak instructor anywhere. Only one or two of material, but Murray did little to draw his passages were hard to understand, and I own conclusions. Where some attempt at disagreed with a couple of statements in his analysis is made, the footnotes reveal Book Reviews 121 another mind at work and the places where mercial purposes and, concerning the latter, the narrative is most satisfactory are where Slocum himself wrote to his editor that "I a good deal of groundwork has been done in think I may be able to give the matter for an earlier local history. In this book, Mur• the book many a touch which shall, when all ray, who claims to be a journalist and an will have been done, make it not the worst historian, reveals himself to be a reporter. sea story in history." Not satisfied with the The chapter titles tell much about suspect content of these books, Blondin has Murray's approach. "Musical Bachelors and attempted to add further interest by includ• a Cowbell" and "Feuds, Wife Swapping and ing every current event of note and worst- an Opera House" are two examples which case scenario descriptions of port districts reflect the fact that this book is a compila• and social conditions. The tale is further tion of anecdotal material. They may also embellished when Blondin introduces meet• entice the reader who wants, in one slim ings between Slocum and Herman Melville, volume, the cream of the colourful early author of Moby Dick, Burroughs, inventor of history of the diverse Gulf Islands. the adding machine, Judson, inventor of the zip fastener, Gauguin and many other now- Morag Maclachlan famous personages. Vancouver, British Columbia Had the author included with his sources Walter Magnus Teller's scholarly Robert Blondin. The Solitary Slocum: An biography, The Search for Captain Slocum Apocryphal "Autobiography. "Halifax: Nimbus (New York, 1956) in which Slocum is Publishing, 1992. 252 pp., bibliography. described as a "sailor, peddler and teller of $19.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55109-002.3. tales," Slocum's own Voyage of the Destroyer from New York to Brazil (Boston, 1890), in Robert Blondin graphically and intimately which he describes his command and describes Joshua Slocum's life, in the first expresses his admiration for John Ericson's person, from his birth on a poverty-stricken novel steam warship, or even Victor Slo• hard-scrabble farm on the North Mountain cum's family history, then a more realistic until, in 1892, nearly destitute, his family evaluation of the Captain and his motiv• relying upon the charity of relatives for ations might have been possible. As it support, he acquires the Spray and plans his stands, however, Blondin appears to have voyage around the world. After this, Slocum tailored what is basically fiction and those gradually deteriorates to the point where he facts from his flawed research which happen becomes quite detached from reality. The to fit his own profile of the captain into this tale concludes on 14 November, 1909, when "apocryphal autobiography." Captain Joshua Slocum, at age sixty-five and Blondin's is not the Slocum of Sailing accompanied by the ghosts of his lost loves Around the World (New York, 1900), nor is and heroes, leaves Vinyard Haven on a near it the Slocum of Teller's carefully-researched derelict Spray, bearing southeast into what, biography. That Joshua Slocum was an by night, becomes a full gale. eccentric, there can be little doubt, and Joshua Slocum's history and the story of perhaps one would prefer to remember him his remarkable voyage are well known. for his amazing voyages, rather than his Unfortunately, in this "apocryphal autobi• personality. It is, however, quite another ography," Robert Blondin appears to base matter to be asked to accept the Joshua his interpretation mainly upon two of Slo• Slocum of this demeaning fabrication. cum's own books, Cruise of the Liberdad and Sailing Alone Around the World (New York, Robin H. Wyllie 1900). Both were penned for purely com• East LaHave, Nova Scotia