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BOOK REVIEWS Rita V. Bryon and Terence N. Bryon (comps.). this work; readers should consult the newer Maritime Information: A Guide to Libraries and work before heading to Liverpool. Second, in Sources of Information in the United Kingdom. discussing the British Empire crew lists in 3rd edition, London: Witherby and Co. for the Appendix A, the Bryons fail to mention the so- Maritime Information Association, 1993 [order called "cooperative index" to this source in local from Witherby and Co., 32-36 Aylesbury St., record offices around Britain that is available London EC1R OET, UK], vi + 222 pp., appen• from the Maritime History Archive at Memorial dices, index. £25, paper; ISBN 1-85609-009-8. University of Newfoundland and which will save much frustration in trying to ascertain the The third edition of Maritime Information is an location of these records outside the major absolutely indispensable reference tool for stu• repositories. dents of maritime affairs. Between its covers is Such minor omissions do not in any signifi• information on the marine-oriented holdings of cant way detract from the overall assessment of 500 repositories of various sorts throughout Maritime Information. The immense effort the Britain, meticulously compiled by Rita and Bryons put into compiling it will doubtless assist Terence Bryon. Some, like the National Mari• countless researchers to locate appropriate time Museum or the Public Record Office, will records more efficiently. For this they deserve be well known to researchers, but others will the gratitude of all maritime scholars. not. Thanks to the Bryons, when I next go to the UK for research, I shall be visiting the Tower Lewis R. Fischer Hamlets Local History Library and Archives to St. John's, Newfoundland inspect the photographs in the Bolt Collection and the Thames Police Museum to work through Roger Morriss (comp.), with the assistance of the river police manuscripts. Since in neither Peter Bursey. Guide to British Naval Papers in case was I previously aware of these records, North America. London: Mansell, for the Nat• without the labours of the Bryons I would likely ional Maritime Museum, 1994. xxii + 418 pp., still be ignorant of their existence. As a bonus, library information, indices. £70, US $120, Maritime Information is pleasingly produced, ex• cloth; ISBN 0-7201-2162-0. Distributed in the tremely well indexed and easy to use. United States by Cassell, New York, NY. Users of the book, however, need to be aware of a couple of caveats. First, the guide This reference work is the result of American does not do justice to the important collections interest in collecting British historical manu• of the Merseyside Maritime Museum. Fortunate• scripts, particularly in this century in the case of ly that institution, in association with the Inter• collections relating to North America. Though national Maritime Economic History Associa• colonial records of a naval nature, such as Vice tion, has just published Gordon Read and Admiralty Court records, were indigenous, so to Michael Stammers (comps.), Guide to the speak, to North America, most of the documents Records of the Merseyside Maritime Museum surveyed in this useful work were the result of (Research in Maritime History No. 8; St. John's, piecemeal acquisition. Key repositories for such 1995), the first of a projected two-volume documents are the William L. Clements Library finding aid that supersedes what is contained in at the University of Michigan, the Huntington 59 60 The Northern Mariner Library in San Marino, California, Yale Univer• clothe and educate young females and orphaned sity Libraries (Beineke and Sterling) and the daughters. Under "Government Records" we find Perkins Library of Duke University. Too many the Admiralty Correspondence kept and col• of the major collections inventoried here are not lected at Esquimalt and now in the Maritime as well known outside the United States as they Museum of British Columbia in Victoria. This should be. While micro-reproduction now makes corpus of records, largely duplicated from research less dependent on travel, a full and up- material now in the Public Record Office in to-date inventory and user's guide such as this Kew, Surrey, nonetheless gives important docu• one serves a number of interlocking require• mentation to students of British Columbia ments. The guide is partly intended for users in maritime history. Under "Fleet Records" we find the United Kingdom who may wonder where various gunnery instructions, navy lists, sailing some of their country's great naval and mercan• instructions, and signal books. For ship enthusi• tile papers have disappeared. Yet it is doubly asts the section "Ship Records" will be especial• certain that the guide will be heavily consulted ly welcome. Most examples are from the era of by Canadian and American students in search of the sailing Navy in the late Victorian era. In some of the treasures of British naval literature "Artificial Collections" are listed numerous items and documentary sources. pulled together. Thus at Princeton some Nelson Guide to British Naval Papers in North material sits side by side with Earl Beatty's America contains 1,190 entries. Space permits letters to Nancy Price and some Samuel Pepys only a few examples to demonstrate the wealth documents. The Houghton Library at Harvard and variety of the material. Admiral of the Fleet holds a ticket to Nelson's funeral. In the War of Sir Edward Hobart Seymour's notebook of his 1812 Collection in the Clements Library can be time on the China Station is in the McClennan found Sir Henry Edward Bunbury's cogent Library of McGill University, while others of objections to the War Secretary, Lord Bathurst his papers are in the New York Public Library, to a naval assault against New Orleans. the Naval Historical Library in London and the The utility of this outstanding book is National Library of Scotland. Robert Falcon increased by full particulars about the addresses, Scott's correspondence with members of the hours of opening and phone and fax numbers of O'Reilly family of Victoria is in the British various Canadian and American libraries and Columbia Archives and Record Service. Various archives. There is also a chronological index, a papers of Sir John Franklin can be found in the ship index, and a comprehensive general index. McCord Museum in Montreal, the Huntington All serious scholars of Royal Navy history will Library, the New York Historical Library, the require this work for their future research. Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library, the National Archives of Canada, and the University Barry Gough of British Columbia Library. Admiral Sir John Waterloo, Ontario Thomas Duckworth's extensive papers while serving as governor of Newfoundland are in the Robert G. Albion, William A. Baker, and Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Benjamin W. Labaree. New England and the Labrador, though a thorough scholar must also Sea. Rev. ed.; Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport go to Connecticut, Boston, Chicago, Ottawa, Museum, 1972, 1994. xiv + 308 pp., maps, Gainesville and Kingston, Ontario to cover the illustrations, photographs, tables, index. US $18, full list of relevant documentation. paper; ISBN 0-913372-23-4. As these examples indicate, personal collec• tions command the greatest attention. Yet there This is a revised edition of a book originally are five other categories of entries — treatises, published almost twenty-five years ago. At that government records, fleet records, ship records time, there existed no synthetic history of mari• and artificial collections — that will be equally time New England better than Samuel Eliot welcome to users. Under "Treatises" we find Morison's Maritime History of Massachusetts, reference to a plan held by the Beineke Library which dealt only with the Bay State and covered for a charity school (1760) intended to maintain, in detail only the years between the end of the Book Reviews 61 Revolutionary War and the beginning of the dependence on Indian labour, a fact known now Civil War. The original New England and the for over a decade and not incorporated into the Sea was a creditable attempt by three distin• revised book. guished historians to cover this broad subject in This is no reason to prevent the publication a scholarly yet approachable manner. The of a new edition; but to claim that the work has revised edition is essentially the same book. in a meaningful sense been "revised" is to exag• Indeed, the first four chapters, covering the gerate. Particularly if the book is to function as years, 1600-1914 have not been changed at all. a survey, it should take some account of devel• Only the fifth, titled "The Twentieth Century," opments in the field, and it has not. has been chronologically extended in an effort to cover the developments of the last two decades. Daniel Vickers The book retains some of its earlier virtues Pouch Cove, Newfoundland — those proper to a popular survey. Its text is clear; the coverage is broad; and the illustrations Uwe Schnall and Ursula Feldkamp (eds.). are interesting. There is still no general history Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv XVI (1993): 125 of seafaring in New England that covers as Jahre deutsche Polarforschung. Bremerhaven: many subjects over as long a period of time. But Ernst Kabel Verlag for the Deutsches Schif- unfortunately, New England and the Sea no fahrtsmuseum, 1994. 413 pp., illustrations, longer stands anywhere close to the cutting edge photographs, figures, DM 46 (DM 38 by sub• of historical scholarship. The fishing, whaling, scription), paper; ISBN 3-8225-0274-X. and merchant shipping industries of New Eng• land — especially during the period prior to the It is difficult indeed to do justice in a brief Civil War — have all received extensive study in review to a volume such as this — a volume recent years, and our understanding of them is laden with well-researched, well-written and simply fuller than what it was a quarter-century annotated and splendidly illustrated articles ago.