Book Reviews Colin Brooker. The Shell Builders: Tab- preservation consultant, has provided by Architecture of Beaufort, South Car- it. Brooker explores tabby from every olina, and the Sea Islands. Columbia, conceivable angle, including its chem- SC: University of South Carolina Press, istry, antecedents, variants, history, www.sc.edu/uscpress, 2020. 320 pp., and literature, and writes with winning illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. ease. His research is impeccable, and US $39.99, paper; ISBN 978-1-64336- his knowledge of the material profound. 072-0. He has seemingly investigated every surviving remnant of the stuff, from Coastal concrete, or tabby, as they call it an old foundation repurposed under a in the Carolina and Georgia Lowcoun- Daufuskie Island lighthouse to a crum- try. No history-minded traveler there bling chimney base situated by a Hil- can miss it—that delightfully practical ton Head baseball diamond. But even concoction of lime, sand, and oyster more interesting than Brooker’s archi- shell that was used to erect brooding tectural knowledge, is his cast of char- river forts, plantation big houses, slave acters—“landowners … sea captains, dwellings, barns, sugar mills, cisterns, pirates, merchants and speculators, rice gates, seawalls, and box tombs. politicians, governors, an occasional Tabby was fashioned from the ocean’s clergyman, one or two signers of the bounty and spread largely by means Declaration of Independence, several of naval power. Surviving examples, heiresses … and women widowed with backgrounded by spreading marsh, fortunes large enough to fuel ambitions placid estuaries, and moss-hung live of suitors and new husbands alike.” (9) oaks eloquently conjure up a culture Who knew that such a modest com- tuned to its distinctive environment. pound could thread through the lives of A good book about tabby has long so many intriguing protagonists? been overdue, and now Colin Brooker, Brooker begins with an overview of a British architect and engineer with tabby’s old-world antecedents. These decades of experience as an historic include examples along the North Af- The Northern Mariner / Le marin du nord, XXX, No. 3 (Fall 2020), 301-338 302 The Northern Mariner / Le marin du nord rican littoral where mixtures of lime, est towns in the United States. Outly- earth, gravel, and rock were employed ing plantations did not always fare so in buildings, walls, gates, aqueducts, well. After their owners abandoned and fortifications. From there, crafts- them, looting and decay were often men took the technique into southern their fate. The use of tabby declined Spain, whence it eventually spread into during the late nineteenth century when the Caribbean and southeastern margins efficient railroad connections facilitat- of North America. There are accounts ed rapid delivery of building materials of tabby as early as 1493 in Santo Do- from commercial hubs. It is, there- mingo, where Christopher Columbus’s fore, fortunate that so many examples house was made of it. A century later it still survive, especially in Beaufort, but appeared at Spanish Santa Elena (now Brooker worries about ongoing threats Parris Island, S.C.), and St. Augustine, to isolated remnants, including rampant Florida. By the eighteenth century coastal development and “irresponsible it was ubiquitous in the Sea Islands, zoning.” (14) where deep shell deposits provided The Shell Builders will primarily handy quarries. In 1766, the naturalist be of interest to architectural historians, William Bartram wrote that “ye people but maritime historians, and scholars comes and rakes up what they please more generally, should also take note, brings them in a boat heaves them on given that tabby is, in Brooker’s apt shore to dry after which they burn them phrase, “a quintessential product of the to lime.” (50) If the shells were not Atlantic world.” washed before burning they produced a hideous smell that offended neighbours John S. Sledge and proved inferior for construction. Fairhope, Alabama The generally accepted formula for good tabby was three parts clean shell, Margaret Conrad. At the Ocean’s Edge: three parts lime, and three parts sand, A History of Nova Scotia to Confeder- but wise builders adjusted the sand to ation. Toronto: University of Toronto match the quality of their lime. Press, www.utorontopress.com, 2020. Once they had a good supply of 456 pp. illustrations, maps, tables, in- tabby, workmen poured it into pegged dex. CDN $29.96, paper ISBN 978-1- wooden box forms, typically many feet 4875-2395-4. (E-book available.) long and one- to two-feet high. After each pour dried, the form was broken Lying as it does, in the author’s words, apart and reset atop for the next pour. “a great lobster stuck off the northeast- Skilled artisans could raise a wall ern coast of North America,” Nova quickly, and they also excelled at mak- Scotia is the most maritime of Can- ing tabby floors, roofs, and just about ada’s Maritime Provinces, prevented any other construction element required from being an island by only a narrow or the human mind could conceive. isthmus. The title of this new history, Beaufort, S.C., established by roy- the first scholarly treatment in several al charter in 1711, preserves a delight- generations, references the relationship ful collection of tabby buildings, and the area has with the sea and the reader Brooker details them carefully. Beau- with a nautical bent might expect the ti- fort was occupied by Union forces early tle to set a major theme for the work. It in the Civil War but, happily, was not is with a slight disappointment that we burned, and is today one of the pretti- find that the author, although standing Book Reviews 303 at the ocean’s edge, does so with a view downplayed economic and social activ- facing the shore and with only the occa- ities and emphasised politics in the lives sional glance back towards the sea. and contributions of those selected for Nevertheless, this is an impressive entries. The work of the shipbuilders and long-needed volume. A general and merchants, and fishers and sailors history must draw on the research work who created and maintained a maritime of other scholars as well as the special- economy is often ignored in preference ization and interests of the author, and to their political involvements. the scope of this volume, testified to by At the Ocean’s Edge attempts to sit- the range of sources cited in the notes, uate the region in an expansion of Eu- shows how much examination and rope with the attendant damages from thought the region has supported for the settler colonialism and impacts on the last thirty years. In many respects, At environment (335), yet there is rela- the Ocean’s Edge can serve as a read- tively little discussion on the latter, es- er’s guide to Nova Scotia historiogra- pecially as regards the nautical aspects. phy. In addition to dozens of articles in The land-based perspective results in journals such as Acadiensis, the Cana- the sea being generally treated as a bar- dian Historical Association Journal and rier, with Northumberland Strait, Cabot the Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Strait, the Bay of Fundy, and the Gulf of Historical Society, the volume makes Maine separating Nova Scotia from the extensive and effective use of the Dic- rest of the area, instead of being an eas- tionary of Canadian Biography and an ily negotiated communications corridor extremely large number of monographs for trade, commerce, people and ideas and thesis from the full range of aca- within the region and connecting it to demic research. If the nautical side of the world beyond. Nova Scotia’s story has been slighted, As the volume progresses, there the problem lies more on the dearth of seems to be a reduction in the treatment relevant scholarship in the field than on of the marine aspects of the history. the book’s author. While several nauti- From recognition that in the sixteenth cal themes and events receive coverage, century the value of the area’s cod fish- there is no overall sense of the role of ery “eclipsed all other economic activi- the sea in Nova Scotia’s history. That ties in the Americas.” (41) The narrative being said, Dr. Conrad does draw on concludes with greatly reduced refer- a broad range of the available nautical ence to the role maritime issues played sources including, but certainly not lim- in the psyche of the colony. There is ited to, the important work of the sever- reference to Louisbourg as a major port al scholars associated with the Maritime in the early 1700s exceeded in ship vis- History Group at Memorial University, its only be Boston, New York, and Phil- Greg Marquis’ study of the maritime adelphia. (105) The establishment and role in the American Civil War, Julian growth of Halifax is positioned as a mil- Gwyn’s analysis of the colonial econo- itary consequence of empire with trade my and Faye Kert’s treatment of priva- as a secondary consideration. Although teering in the early nineteenth century. the author does recognize that “greater The reliance on the Dictionary of Cana- Nova Scotia” could be an important re- dian Biography for information about gional approach, once New Brunswick prominent individuals exposes the ex- and Prince Edward Island are carved tent to which the entries in that series out of the territory, there is relatively have, until the more recent volumes, little discussion of how the colony, and 304 The Northern Mariner / Le marin du nord especially Halifax, still operated as the Press, www.usnwc.edu/press, 2018. financial, industrial, commercial and v+197 pp., illustrations, acronyms, ta- cultural leader for the region.