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BOOK REVIEWS

Hershel Parker. Herman Melville: A Biography.Vol. 1: 1819-1851. Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1996. xx + 941 pp., b+w plates,genealogical tables, documentation, index. US$39.95, cloth; ISBN 0-8018-5428-8.

Hershel Parker follows Herman Melville's coursefrom his early life in Albany to his success as oneof America's most popular writers of sea adven-tures at mid-century. This first volume ends in1851, when Melville was thirty-two and hismagnum opus, Moby-Dick, was about to reachprint. At nearly nine hundred pages, this bio-graphy creates a complex, composite po rtrait ofMelville, built from diverse and wide-rangingsources. One comes away from it feeling bulkedup with a great knowledge of Melville and hisfamily, their day to day activities, and the atmos-phere of local and national events within whichthey struggled. If at certain points one would wishfor more incisive commentary to bring Melville'swriting into focus, Parker compensates with com-prehensive and impeccable scholarship.

Parker is eminently qualified to do justice tohis subject. He has written and edited manyvolumes by and about Melville. As editor of TheNew Melville Log, continuing Jay Leyda's lifeproject that set out in the 1940s to compile docu-ments relevant to Melville's life and writing,Parker writes what might best be described as acultural biography, encompassing an incredibledocumentary record of American life duringMelville's lifetime. Parker has a compelling taleto tell. He reveals the financial exigencies thatshaped the destiny of the Melville family duringthe risk2filled days of national expansion in the1820s. Melville's early life was tainted by thatpeculiar poverty made all the more painful giventhe remembrance of wealth. His family stemmedfrom Revolutionary War heroes and Americanaristocracy on both sides. By the time of Mel-

villesof Melville'svvville's birth in 1819, much of this glory had beensquandered. Allan Melvill, by Parker's estimate aloving father, was a merchant doubly-cursed byunrealistic, aristocratic ambitions and little busi-ness sense. When he died in 1832, he left a legacy

of financial woe. The struggle of Herman'smother, Maria Gansevoort Melville, to keep thefamily from disintegrating, shaped Melville'sfuture. It cut off his formal education at agetwelve, sent him into a series of menial jobsbefore he reached eighteen, and eventually forcedhim to sea. Parker's detailing of the family'sfinances explains why the son of patrician NewYorkers should have shipped on the whalerAcushnet out of New Bedford in January 1841.

The bulk of this first volume concerns theperiod after the Acushnet set sail. For a writerwho made his reputation by the sea, Melville'ssea experience was relatively sho rt and unpleas-ant. Parker shows that those sailors who, likeMelville, chose to "go ashore" before their four-year cruise was completed, outnumbered thosewho toughed it out. Melville jumped ship early,in August 1841 at the Marquesas Islands. Subse-quently, he spent another two years whaling andwandering in the South Seas, until he enlisted onthe USS United States at Honolulu, and served atthe mainmast until being disharged in Boston in1845. By Parker's reckoning, the United Stateswas Melville's Yale and Harvard, leading himtoward a literary career. On board, he immersedhimself in the ship's extensive library, soaked upthe atmosphere, rehearsed the tales that wouldlater make him famous, and observed the lessonsdictated by life under the A rticles of War.

Earlier attempts to reveal Melville's yearsspent in the South Seas have been obscured byembroidered recollections of friends and relatives,muddied greatly by the fictionalizations of Mel-ville's tales and books. Given Melville's penchantfor hyperbole, Parker has returned to the docu-mentary record to set straight previous exaggera2tions and confusions, using an array of documentsfrom the whale fishery, exploration expeditions,the South Sea missions, and the ghost log of thefirst mate on the United States. Parker also addsi mportant evidence of Melville's home life after1845. The recent discovery of papers belongingto Herman's younger sister, Augusta, who squir-reled away manuscript fragments, letters, andother documents of the Melville clan, are likely

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the last big find in Melville scholarship. Theymake Parker's biography timely and necessary.

Parker nicely encapsulates the mixture ofintrigue, titilation and moral indignation thatmade Melville's first book, Typee, an instant sen-sation in London and New York during 1846.Surprisingly, it made Melville America's firstmedia sex symbol, an "American Crusoe." Parkeralso shows that the combination of realistic detailand romantic speculation that characterizedMelville's later work was present from the begin-ning. The account of Typee reveals Melville'stransformation of the three week stay with theMarquesas natives into four months in Paradiseamong the Cannibals. Yet Melville's desire toexplore philosophical and high literary topicsdestined him to write books that, as he put it,"were made to fail." When the satiric, mythic andphilosophical Mardi (1848) was received withconfusion and silence by critics expecting moresea adventures, Melville returned to the tried andtrue, dashing off Redburn and White Jacket in anamazing flurry of writing during the summer of1849. However, sometime in 1850 his plan towrite about life on a whaling ship took a nosedive back into the depths.

Parker skillfully weaves in and out of theAugusta papers to reconstruct Melville's dailyroutine as he wrote Moby-Dick. The descriptionof life in Melville's farmhouse in the Berkshires,the influence of his reading, of his literary friendssuch as Evert Duyckinck, and of NathanielHawthorne's presence in the area, all contribute to anunderstanding of Melville during this most impor2tant period. Parker's aim to show Melville im-mersed in family life, surrounded by mother, foursisters, wife and child, counters earlier depictionsof the tormented loner. This domestic setting forMoby-Dick's composition gives the biographysome much needed humour, as well. It is strangeto think that the direction of the novel might havedepended upon Melville giving up the reins ofCharlie, the family horse, so that his mother andsisters could transport themselves to town.

Parker's approach does have its pitfalls. Forall the evidence and careful documentation, hecannot seem to reveal the intricacies of Melville'smind engaged in producing one of the greatbooks. Fifty years ago, Charles Olson's Call MeIshmael presented a mixture of biography andtextual sleuthing to attribute Melville's rediscov2

ery of Shakespeare to the splendours contained inMoby-Dick. Parker can offer no such startlinghypothesis. The surface details are all here, butParker can only hint at the inner workings ofMelville's mind. He offers little insight into thephenomena of Moby-Dick's creation.

The psychological portrait Parker presentsproves partly unsatisfactory because the story isincomplete. By ending this volume in 1851, onthat "happiest day" when Melville presentedHawthorne with a copy of Moby-Dick, Parkerleaves the downward spiral unexplored. The com-mercial failure of Moby-Dick, increasing debts,accusations of madness, estrangement from hiswife, early loss of his sons to tuberculosis andsuicide, and the final years of obscurity andsilence all lay ahead. To a writer so attuned to thedarkness, to plumbing the depths, Parker hasadded much light. His second volume, which heindicates is ready for publication, will need to tella much darker, more disturbing tale.

Marc ThackrayCorner Brook, Newfoundland

Heinrich Paasch. Paasch's Illustrated MarineDictionary. "Conway Classics"; London: ConwayMaritime Press, 1997. x + 206 + CIV pp., illustra2tions, English index. £15, cloth; ISBN 0-85177-70027. Canadian distributor, Vanwell Publishing,St. Catharines, ON.

This book will appeal primarily to readers inter-ested in detailed information on the various com2ponents used in the construction of nineteenth-century ships of both wood and iron. The bookcomprises a list of terms that cover hull parts,engines, anchors, and related equipment, mastsand spars, rigging, sail, tackle, blocks, ropes,knots, bends and splices. The terms are presentedin English, French and German , arranged incolumns. Over eighty illustrations interspersedthroughout the pages show different steamers andsailing ship rigs, parts of both wooden and ironships, machinery and equipment, sails, riggingand tackle. The book concludes with tables ofequivalents in Imperial and Metric for measure-ments of length as well as details of weight forsuch items as iron plate, angle iron, flat- andsquare-rolled iron, copper, brass and lead compo2nents, both manila and wire rigging, and steel

Book Reviews 77

hawsers. A trilingual index follows.Heinrich Paasch was well qualified to write

this type of book. He was at sea at age ten; fiveyears later he joined the German navy, and subse-quently served in the Danish navy as well. Hebroadened his experience by serving in German,Dutch and American merchant ships, rose to com-mand vessels, and finally settled in Antwerpwhere he supervised the construction and repairof ships, acting as a surveyor for Lloyd's register.Recognizing the need for this type of book, hefinanced its publication himself.

Readers familiar with Paasch's works shouldbe alert to the fact that this is the first edition ofFrom Keel to Truck! Why Conway chose tochange the title is not explained. Under its origi-nal title, a second edition was published in 1894,a third in 1901, and a fourth in 1924. By virtue ofits trilingual approach, the amount of informationwas effectively limited to a third of what couldhave been included in a unilingual version. Whilethe terms themselves are shown, together with theequivalent in the other languages, most lack adescription. Some terms are self evident, butmany will force less knowledgeable readers toconsult a dictionary or other reference. It was forthis reason that Paasch was approached by someBritish masters and shipowners, following thepublication of this first edition, to prepare anEnglish2only edition, thereby creating enoughspace to allow the terms to be described brieflyand clearly where necessary. The result was theIllustrated Marine Encyclopedia (1890; reprintedin 1977 by Angus Books), which increased thetext by a hundred pages and provided furtherillustrations which better illustrated the parts ofwooden ships, illustrations which would bewidely reproduced by authors right up to thepresent day. The third edition reverted to thetrilingual approach, though the extra illustrationswere carried forward. This next edition was morethan double the size of the original edition.

This latest reprinting is sufficiently faithfulto the original that it does not include the illustra-tions added in the later editions. Nevertheless, itcertainly deserves a place in any ship librarywhich lacks a Paasch publication.

Eric D. LawsonBowen Island, British Columbia

H. Abrahamson, P. Lindquist, Y. Lindström , L.Stenholm, B. Swahn. Aktuellt 1997 Marin Mu-seum. Karlskrona: Marin Museum, 1997. 192 pp.,illustrations, plans. [No price given], hardbound;ISBN 1103 5595.

In June 1997, the Naval Museum's fine newfacilities at Karlskrona were officially opened bythe King of Sweden. Curiously, no mention ismade of this event in the museum's 1997 year-book, though it contains a wealth of informationabout the past years' other activities.

The museum's director, P.L. Lindquist, andpresident of the Friends of the Naval Museum H.Hedman explain in the foreword that the newbuildings took form following visits to Chathamand Rochefort (France) dockyards. Two articlesinclude a history of the museum since its found-ing in 1752 and descriptions of the new buildings.The architect, B. Malmström , also painted thepicture of the new museum on the cover.

A variety of articles follow, including one onthe possible origins of the Spanish guns (onedating from 1514) found in the Great Crownswreck off the island of ()land,. There is an activ-ity report on the Carlskrona boat squadron. Thisconsists of eleven lateen-rigged ships' boats, builtbetween 1830 and 1882 and now owned by themuseum; they are maintained in Chapman's oldboathouse, and are sailed on Wednesdays andSundays. Four retired naval vessels are also keptalongside the museum. The ship-rigged trainingship Jarramas, built of steel in 1900, retired in1946 upon commissioning of the schoonersGladan and Falken. The steam turbine mine-sweeper, Bremön, was one of a series of fourteenbuilt during World War II. Their purposes alsoincluded neutrality patrols and escort work.Bremön was retired from active se rv ice in 1966,and then served as a training vessel for engineroom personnel until the end of steam in theRoyal Swedish Navy. Two torpedo boats are partof the collection as well; both have been refittedand are in running order. T38, displacement 40tons, is one of a series of steel torpedo boats builtby Kockums in 1950. Three 1500 hp Isotta en-gines gave the vessel at full load a maximumspeed of fifty knots. Although most of this classof twenty-five had a se rv ice life of about twentyyears, T38, for some reason, was laid up inKarlskrona in 1956. Spica, 210 tons and armed


with one 57mm gun and six torpedoes, was thefirst in a series of twelve torpedo boats propelledby three 4250 hp Bristol Proteus gas turbinesbuilt in 1966. Spica was in service for overtwenty-two years. HM the King served as amidshipman in this ship in 1967. As well, thecollection includes the hulls of the Navy's firstsubmarine Hajen (Shark), built in 1900 and nowpreserved ashore, and that of a customs cruiser.

The museum has sponsored two full-scalereplica projects since the 1995 completion ofAluett based on the 1200 AD Kalmar wreck. Thefirst is the Aurora, a twenty-six-foot steam pin-nace of the type built in the old Stockholm navalyard in 1884. The original draughts were avail-able, and the compound engine and boiler werefound in the dockyard. The second project is theconstruction of the postal vessel Hjörten (Deer),designed by the English shipwright Francis JohnSheldon in 1690 for se rv ice between SouthernSweden and the continent; the vessels had alength of fifty feet and a beam of 13.5 feet. It isintended to sail the ship between Karlskrona andthe continent in 1999. The yearbook contains anaccount of sailing Aluett in the wake of KingValdemar II's 1219 expedition to Tallin, Estonia.

Regrettably there are no summaries in Eng-lish, but those who are able to read any of thethree Scandinavian languages will enjoy this veryinteresting yearbook.

Dan G. HarrisNepean, Ontario

Lincoln P. Paine. Ships of the World: An Histori-cal Encyclopedia. Boston & New York:Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997. xvi + 680 pp.,photographs, illustrations, colour plates, maps,chronologies, glossary, bibliography, index. US$65, cloth; ISBN 0-395-71556-3. Canadiandistributor, Thomas Allen & Son, Markham, ON.

The notion of producing encyclopedias and dic-tionaries of ships is not a new one. Biographicallistings of historic ships have been with us forsome time and have gained such popularity andi mportance that many of them specialize and dealwith limited subjects, such as the ships of a spe-cific country , ships of a defined era, or museumships and shipwrecks. The strength of this workis in its universality and in its currentness; the

book's dust jacket states that Paine's encyclope-dia lists over a thousand historic ships. The firstentry is the Cheops ship of Egypt dated 2500BCE and the last entries are from 1995. Onesenses that the author was adding to his materialeven after the document was at the publishers.

The ships range from the very obvious andwell known to obscure, almost unknown vesselsand this obscurity is indicative of the author'sthoroughness in compiling his list. Given that weall have our favourite ships, but understandingthat producing an encyclopedia is not an arbitraryexercise, it would be difficult to find anyone thatwas dissatisfied with this work's contents or feltthat an important vessel had been overlooked.

As is expected of an encyclopedia, a com-pendium is given for each ship listed. This in-cludes the statistics for each vessel (dimensions,tonnage and so forth) as well as a concise historyof the ship from conception to fate. These entriesvary in length depending on the significance ofthe ship, and while they cannot provide a compre-hensive study of a given ship, they are the perfectstarting point for anyone wishing to do furtherresearch. Enhancing this role is a note at the endof each compendium, recommending furtherreading; these are reflected in the bibliography.

One might anticipate a certain dryness inreading an encyclopedia but this is not the casewith Paine. When first given this book to review,I assumed that, as a reference work, a lightbrowse over its salient features would suffice toform an opinion of the work. However, as shipsare the pawns of maritime history and maritimeand world history are inseparable, the author haspresented us, albeit inadvertently, with a briefsynopsis of world history. Consequently, when Ibegan to look at the text I found it so infectiousthat my light browse escalated to the point whereI have read almost all of it. Further, even before Ibegan this review, I had two opportunities toemploy this book for reference.

The book itself has been handsomely pro-duced; representative photos and useful mapshave been included and there is a fine selection ofcolour plates. A thoughtful inclusion is the chro-nologies, of which there are five — "Archaeologi-cal Sites," "Maritime and Related Technology,""Voyages of Discovery," "Naval History" (whichis divided in turn into ten sections) and "Ship-wrecks, Highjackings and Other Disasters." All

Book Reviews 79

are particularly useful, for they can easily beexamined at a glance.

Encyclopedias by their nature quickly be-come outdated and this is especially true today, ina world of instantaneous global communicationsand electronic information banking. Paine's work,however, will undoubtedly enjoy extended lon-gevity not only for its present merit, but alsobecause future editions can easily be updated.

As a general reference work it is unlikelythat this volume will find its way into libraries ofevery student of maritime history. Let us there-fore hope that public libraries will be astuteenough to obtain a copy. This is a very ambitiouswork and while ambition is to be applauded at alltimes, it is to be given a standing ovation when itis as successful as this one is. Paine and his colla-borators have produced an encyclopedia thatepitomizes the definition of the word.

John McKayLangley, British Columbia

Horst Menzel. Smakken Kuffen, Galioten. Dreifast vergessene Schiffstypen des 18. und 19.Jahrhunderts. Hamburg: Ernst Kabel Verlag forthe Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum, 1997. 144 pp.,illustrations and photographs (b+w, colour),suggested readings, index. DM 68, cloth; ISBN 3-8225-0413-0.

This is a very nicely published book on an inter-esting and important subject which has not hadmuch published treatment in the past. The text isin German without English language summariesor captions but the book is well illustrated and thetheme of the book is easy to follow.

The types of small merchant and fishingsailing vessels described — the smack, the kuffand the galiot — were particularly associated withthe Netherlands and the German No rth Sea andthe Baltic coasts. They persisted from the seven-teenth century until well into the twentieth.Indeed in motorised steel versions they played avaluable role in the rebuilding of western Euro-pean trade after World War I.

The book is divided into three sections — notchapters in the normal sense. Each deals compre-hensively with the history of one of the threetypes. The first section concerns the smack, aterm used internationally in Europe for sailing

fishing and small trading vessels. A brief descrip2tion of some Danish and English vessels leadsinto a detailed and well-illustrated account of thehistory, construction and rigging of Netherlandsvessels. The kuff follows and occupies the greaterpart of the book with over fifty pages of historyand description, again comprehensively illus-trated. This was a vessel type which developed inthe eighteenth century and continued to evolve inthe nineteenth. Kuffs sailed to the Iberian penin2sula and the Mediterranean as well as extensivelyin the Baltic and the No rth Seas. Double ended,with little rise of floor, relatively deep and narrow(though small kuffs carried leeboards), they werein English language terms ketch or schoonerrigged, usually with square topsails. There is onedrawing of a brigantine-rigged German kuff.Again the type is associated particularly with theNetherlands, especially with the po rt ofGroningen where it evolved in several forms.There are detailed descriptions of structure, com2prehensive lines drawings, and numerous photo-graphs of contemporary models.

This reviewer has a particular interest in thedevelopment of vessel structures in the medievalperiod. The illustrations and descriptions of thestructures of underwater finds dating from themid-nineteenth century, together with the draw2ings of the model of the kuff Groningen, datingfrom the same period show a system of hullplanking closely similar to that believed to havebeen used in the medieval hulc. There is, perhaps,a survival here comprising evidence which couldbe followed up with advantage.

The final section deals with the galiot. Lat-terly a ketch-rigged vessel of seventy feet or so,in the eighteenth century the term was used forfull-rigged ships designated by their hull formrather than their rig. In later galiots one can per-haps see the origin of the hull form of the latenineteenth- and twentieth-century German/Danish/southern Swedish galeas, familiar as theinaccurately named "Baltic trader," still seen inEuropean waters today as yachts, cruise andtraining vessels.

The book concludes with some detail ofsmall vessels' rigging, again with excellentdrawings.

Basil GreenhillSaltash, Cornwall


Julian Mannering (ed.); Basil Greenhill (Consult-ing ed.). The Chatham Directory of InshoreCraft: Traditional Working Vessels of the BritishIsles. London: Chatham Publishing, 1997. 239pp., illustrations, photographs, lines drawings,maps, sources, index. £35, US $60, cloth; ISBN1-86176-029-9. Distributed in the United Statesby Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, CT.

The Chatham Directory of Inshore Craft; Tradi2tional Working Vessels of the British Isles fulfilsits title and more, for it also includes craft thatworked inland from the coast and some whereemployment took them well offshore. Written byseveral contributors, each expe rt in their field,this book is by far the most complete referencework on this subject so far published. The areacovered includes all of Ireland, but not the Chan2nel Islands, divided into regions starting with thenorthwest coast of Scotland and working clock2wise around the country . At the beginning of eachregion there is a description of the environment asit effected the working boats and of other contrib-uting factors, such as historical and commercialconsiderations. This is followed by a detaileddescription of each craft, as much as space al-lows, which includes its function, historicaldevelopment, hull form, method of construction,manner of working and rig, the text enlivenedwith anecdotes and well illustrated with manyplans drawings and photographs.

A directory is only a guide and thereforedoes not cover every aspect, but for those whowish to make a further study, the authors haveincluded their sources for each craft in the text, acomplete list is also produced before the index.Most of the sources referred to are already pub2lished works on one particular craft or class,although the late Eric Mckee's Working Boats ofBritain their Shape and Purpose is more compre-hensive and, as it goes into much greater detail onthe structure, shape and means of propulsion,forms the ideal companion to this book.

This book allows comparisons to be made ofcraft working in the same type of environmentand employment but from different locations. Insome cases they appear very similar in hull formand rig, such as the beach boats of Sidmouth andBeer and those further up Channel at Hastings,Eastbourne and Brighton. On the other hand if welook at the pilot vessels of the Bristol Channel,

there were two distinct types, both engaged, atleast in the latter years, "seeking" ships often wellto the west of Lundy Island. These were the wellknown gaff cutters and the Swansea schooners,similar in dimensions but having a totally differ-ent rig. The text points out that in this case, thecutter, because of the danger to her rig comingalongside in a seaway, transferred the pilot usinga punt while the schooner, not having any stand2ing rigging, shorter masts, and well equipped withfenders could get directly alongside. Furthermore,a close examination of the photographs can oftenreveal information not contained in the captionand it would appear in this instance that theseschooners had heavy bitts on each side of theforemast just inboard of the rail and that theprobable method would therefore be to sail inclose under the vessels lee and get a working lineaboard, which was then taken to the bitts, lowerthe canvas and, providing the ship still had wayon, sheer in alongside with the rudder. There is areason for every pa rt and piece of equipment in aworking craft and this book, due to its scope andpurpose, does not have all the answers on ques-tions relating to seamanship, or boat construction.

Stability, particularly in the smaller pullingand sailing boats and the need for load carrying orspeed are often conflicting requirements. Each ofthese craft was a compromise based on the finalcriteria of "fitness for purpose" and the plans,drawings and historic photographs complementthe text and illustrate how this was achieved.

The index, as one would expect in a refer-ence work of this kind is extensive but confinedfor the most part to names of places, people andboats. There is no glossary of seaman's terminol-ogy, as it is assumed that the reader will have atleast some knowledge of the subject. However,for anyone not familiar with the coastline, onsome of the maps, due to the close spacing ofplace names it is difficult to make out the actuallocation; a smaller type face would still be legibleand avoid confusion.

I am sure this book will be frequently takendown from the shelf, not just as a reference, butbecause it provides an absorbing and readablestudy for anyone interested in the historic work-ing craft of the British Isles.

Peter AllingtonCotehele Quay, Cornwall

Book Reviews 81

Kenneth Solway. The Story of the ChestnutCanoe: 150 Years of Canadian Canoe Building.Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 1997. ix + 166 pp.,illustrations, photographs, tables. $19.95, paper;ISBN 1-55109-221-2.

In The Story of the Chestnut Canoe, KennethSolway offers not only a history of the Frederic-ton company which built these vessels but also abrief history of their evolution, the histories ofrival companies and biographic notes on most ofthe people who played a major part in the saga.

"The canoe is the defining icon of Canadianheritage and the Chestnut Canoe Company —incorporated in 1907 in Fredericton, N.B. — wasthe crowning achievement among the many greatcanoe companies of Canada." This quotation fromthe back cover, a somewhat pretentious forewordand some prefactorial fiction (the tale of how twoteenage boys first came in contact with a canvas-covered canoe), gets Solway's history of Cana-dian canoe building off to a rather inauspiciousstart . As a result, it was a pleasant surprise to findthat the rest of the book contains some reallyinteresting material.

We find, for example, that the beautifully2finished wooden plank canoes of the Peterbor-ough area evolved from the native dugoutsadopted by the settlers to meet their transpo rtationneeds. The more utilitarian canvas-covered ca-noes originated in Maine. There are, according tothe author, hybrids, incorporating waterproofcovering, like the birchbark canoe, with thecarefully fitted wooden planking of the Peterbor-ough. The use of canvas also permitted the ves-sels to be built from the inside out — ribs, plank-ing, canvas, over reusable wooden forms, a majoradvantage over the outside-in method of birch2bark construction.

Solway offers a number of unsatisfactorytheories about the origin of this method of manu-facture. However, had he looked into the mattera little further, he would have found reference tothe moosehide-covered spring canoes used by theMaliseet. They were in use late into the nine-teenth century and, but for the method of fittingand fastening their cedar strips, bear a strongresemblance to the later canvas-covered craft.

The story of the Chestnut Brothers, Harryand William, and their canoe company is tracedfrom the establishment of the family's general

goods store in Fredericton in 1836, through 1897,when the first Chestnut canoe was built, until thelast canoe left the factory in 1979. Like manybusiness tales of the era, there was skulduggeryafoot — a questionable patent on wood and can-vas construction techniques, workers stolen fromrival companies, secret deals and amalgamations,all of which add a little spice to a somewhatdisorganized but nonetheless fascinating story.

Although Solway's book contains much tointerest both the canoe enthusiast and the generalreader, it is badly edited and very poorly orga-nized. In addition to misspelling of proper namessuch as "Canard" liners and "Malicite" Indians,the main text is cluttered with tiny, barely deci-pherable photographs, some out of sequence, plusbiographic notes, tables and other inse rts whoseproper place is in endnotes and appendices. Worstof all, eighty-four wonderful pages of reproduc-tions from old canoe catalogues have beensqueezed into forty pages of book, overlappedand reduced in size to the point where, withoutmagnification, their text is quite illegible.

Robin H. WyllieEast LaHave, Nova Scotia

Timothy J. Kent. Birchbark Canoes of the FurTrade, 2 vols. Ossineke, MI: Silver Fox Enter-prises, 1997 [P.O. Box 176, 11504 U.S. 23 South,Ossineke, MI 49766, USA]. xi + 343 pp. (I), v +326 pp. (II), figures, photographs, maps, sources.US $49.50 ($46 & $3.50 p+h), Cdn $71, paper;ISBN 0-9857230-0-3.

There can be few more enduring historical associ-ations than that between the birch bark canoe andthe No rth American fur trade. Images of stalwartvoyageurs paddling through the wilderness are astaple of North American history, and many willhave heard of artists such as Frances AnneHopkins and her fur trade paintings — indeed, oneof them graces the cover of volume number oneof Birchbark Canoes of the Fur Trade. For all ofthe acknowledged importance of fur trade canoes,however, considerably more historical a ttentionhas been devoted to the voyageurs, their routesand the circumstances of the trade than to thewatercraft in which this was all carried out. Thistwo-volume study by Timothy J. Kent sets out toremedy that oversight.


Kent's work is in a clear line of descent fromprevious scholars. The best-known modernstudent of birchbarck canoes of No rth Americawas the Canadian Edwin Tappan Adney (1868-1950). He became interested in bark canoes at anearly age and carried out exhaustive research forthe rest of his life, interviewing longtime employ2ees of the Hudson's Bay Company, readingmanuscript accounts, examining photographs andfinally making models of various types of barkcanoes. This vast accumulation of research mate-rial lay unpublished in manuscript until it wascollected, synthesized and expanded by HowardChapelle. This work resulted in the publication bythe Smithsonian Institution of The Bark Canoesand Skin Boats of North America (1964). Itquickly became the standard reference work onthe subject.

The research of both Adney and Chapellewas based largely on every possible kind ofsource but the canoes themselves. Indeed,Chapelle concluded in The Bark Canoes and SkinBoats of North America that it had to be so, for heand Adney believed that none of the original crafthad been preserved in museum collections. How-ever, four original bark canoes and four modelbark canoes do still exist, and it is on these extantartifacts, as well as a considerable amount ofarchival information, that Kent has based hisstudy.

Birchbark Canoes of the Fur Trade is firstand foremost a work of material culture scholar2ship, founded on a detailed examination of arti-facts. The first volume addresses the voyages androutes, manufacture, origins, sizes, crews, car-goes, decoration, equipment, loading, propulsionand longevity of fur trade era birchbark canoes.Appendices explore French canoe builders in theSt. Lawrence Valley, the research of EdwinTappan Adney and the paintings of Frances AnneHopkins. The second volume is divided into eightchapters, each a detailed record of one of theextant canoes or canoe models. Each volume hasa few colour plates and many more black andwhite illustrations. Volume one also contains aglossary of canoe terminology and an extensivebibliography.

Kent writes with authority about his topic,and his academic and archival research is bol-stered by a considerable body of practical experi-ence. He and his wife and son are living history

researchers, and travel North America portrayinga 1600s French fur trader and his woodlandIndian family. They have paddled thousands ofmiles in a traditional 16-foot bark canoe, andhave equipped themselves with authentic cloth-ing, equipment, weapons and food. This hands-onexperience lends veracity to his treatment of thesmaller details of canoe travel. For example, hisdiscussion of the use of canoes as short-termshelters for sleeping was clearly written by some-one who has spent many nights under such cover.

Kent's obvious passion for his topic is botha strength and a weakness. His research is un2questionably exhaustive and his work goes farbeyond that of other scholars in this field to makea significant contribution. However these twoself-published volumes would have been mademuch stronger with the assistance of an objectiveeditor. There is a great deal of repetition andoverlap between chapters, and often four or fiveexamples are given where one would have suf-ficed. A great deal of the material is undigestedquotations from primary sources, and Kent'sarguments would have been strengthened by moreanalysis and synthesis. While he pays eloquenttribute to the pioneering efforts of Adney and toa lesser extent Chapelle, Kent is curiously silentabout the work of other scholars working in thefield. The bulk of the material in these volumesconsists of his own observations or primarysource quotations, and yet the bibliography is fullof other writings about bark canoes. A moresubstantial historiographical consideration ofcanoe research would have helped to situateKent's work within bark canoe scholarship.

These criticisms should not, however, detractmuch from what is a substantial accomplishment.This book and the primary source material itpresents will be an invaluable resource for histori-ans, students of material culture and watercraft,and living history re-enactors. Kent is cur rently atwork on a similar book about dugout canoes. Ifthese volumes are any indication, it should bewelcomed by those working in the field. It is trulyrefreshing to see such a study based as much onoriginal artifacts as on archival and textual re-cords, for which Kent is to be congratulated.

John SummersToronto, Ontario

Book Reviews 83

James P. Delgado (ed.). British Museum Encyclo-paedia of Underwater and Maritime Archaeol-ogy. London: British Museum Press and Yale:Yale Universi ty Press, 1997. 493 pp., illustra2tions, photographs (b+w, colour), glossary, index.£29.95, US $55, cloth; ISBN 0-7141-2129-0(British Museum Press), 0-300-0742721 (YaleUniversi ty Press).

The dust jacket of this publication claims that itis the "first comprehensive reference book on thediscovery and recovery of the submerged past".Perhaps a nod of acknowledgement is due, how-ever, to preceding effo rts that went a long waydown this road. Those published in Englishinclude George Bass's A History of Seafaring(1972), Keith Muckelroy's Archaeology Under-water: An Atlas of the World's Submerged Sites(1980), and Peter Throckmorton's The Sea Re-members (1987). Granted, each of these earlierworks had some specific limitations or failings.They are all now out-of-date and out-of-print aswell. In following the encyclopaedic formatJames Delgado naturally does not offer thesmooth flow of text which Bass provided, hisillustrations are not designed for the coffee tableas in Throckmorton, and for cartographic flour-ishes one still needs to refer to Muckelroy orelsewhere. But for thoroughness and pure wealthof information Delgado's effo rt is without equal,and the result justifies the publisher's claim.

Over five hundred entries by 150 contribu-tors are included in this encyclopaedia. As mightbe expected more than half the entries refer tospecific shipwreck sites. Chronologically, thesesites range from the mid-second millennium BC,with vessels such as the Ferriby boats found onthe Humber River, or the Uluburun and CapeGelidonya wrecks off the coast of Turkey, to thewarships intentionally destroyed around BikiniAtoll during atomic bomb tests in 1946. Shipsdiscovered in dry environments range from theKhufu burial ships (2600 BC) to the Niantic, builtin 1833, and recovered from landfill beneath thestreets of San Francisco. Maritime sites which arenot shipwrecks include harbours, isolated under2water finds, canoe spills, graves and monuments.Submerged prehistoric sites garner fourteenentries. Geographically, fifty-two countries havesites represented. There are also twenty-fouruseful entries providing overviews of archaeolog-

ical activities in specific countries or regions;these often mention additional sites and projectswhich may not have earned an entry for them-selves. The encyclopaedia also includes someshipwrecks such as the Nuestra Senora de Atochaand the Whydah Galley, excavated with salvage-for-profit as the primary motivation. Entries forthese sites are accompanied with an editor's notestating that inclusion reflects the popular a ttentionthese sites have received, but "does not sanctionor condone this type of activity."

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of theencyclopaedia is the extensive number of entriesgrouped under the following headings: legisla-tion/legal issues; organizations/institutions/agen-cies; research themes/approaches; and technol-ogy/techniques. Such topics add immeasurably tothe book's value as a reference tool for the stu-dent of underwater and maritime archaeology.Including items on legislation and organizationsmay seem an invitation for the work to becomedated almost upon publication, but the approachhere provides the reader with a dynamic sense ofthe young discipline's evolving history and thechanging social environment it operates within. Itis gratifying to see the inclusion of avocationalgroups, as well as it is to see their accomplish-ments in the field receive due attention. Theseinclusions accurately reflect the increasinglymature contributions many of these organizationshave made to the understanding and managementof underwater cultural resources in recent years.Research themes range from the obvious to thesurprising; headings such as epigraphy, filteringprocesses, forminifera, quatemary studies andland bridges, and ship traps entice the browser.While most entries under the heading technolo-gies/techniques offer little new to the specialist,for the uninitiated, topics dealing with often high2tech options for remote sensing, surveying, andsite recording, may be of great interest.

The encyclopaedia's finding aids include asubject list by topic, with sites referenced accord-ing to type, period and country, as well as atwelve-page index. Related topics are bold-facedin the text for handy cross-referencing. Illustra-tions are good in quality and in proportion to thetext. All entries have short lists of "additionalreading." These are not intended to be completebibliographies, but direct the reader to the most"recent and easily accessible works" for more


information. There is also a brief glossary ofnautical terms.

The critical reader may note more than a fewtypographical errors and will certainly be able toidentify sites and topics absent in this book. Mostobvious from a general stand-point, is a notice-able bias towards No rth American sites andconcerns. Only about one-third of the contributorsare based outside of North America. Delgado,who is the Executive Director of the VancouverMaritime Museum and who formerly worked withNational Parks Service in Washington DC, read-ily admits in his preface that the contents reflectthe "North American genesis" of the work. Hefurther acknowledges that more contributionsneed to come in from "Asia and ... those countriesformerly behind the Iron Curtain," and welcomessuggestions from readers for sites and topicsdeserving inclusion for future editions. Thebreadth and balance Delgado has achieved isnevertheless commendable; further editions arejustified by this publication's merits rather thanits omissions.

The reviewer is loathe to use the well-wornphrase "there is something here for everyone," butin this case the expression is applicable. Anyoneinterested in human activities on the sea will findthis as absorbing to peruse as any encyclopaediacan be. It is an excellent introductory text for thestudent of underwater and maritime archaeology,while it remains a valuable basic reference for theprofessional operating in a field where there is adearth of good comparative studies. I would par2ticularly recommend it for maritime historians asan essential primer for a rapidly growing field ofresearch that has much to offer to them, but is toooften ignored in their publications.

Charles MooreOttawa, Ontario

John Sherwood Illsley. An Indexed Bibliographyof Underwater Archaeology and Related Topics.Vol. 3 of "International Maritime Archaeology"series; Oswestry, Shropshire: Anthony Nelson,1 996. 360 pp., indices. £25, paper; ISBN 0-904614-57-3. Distributed in North America byDavid Brown Books, Oakville, CT.

This work is the culmination of fifteen years ofwork by a team of compilers under the direction

of the author, John Sherwood Illsley. This thirdvolume in the Inte rnational Maritime Archaeol-ogy Series focuses on underwater archaeology,dividing the subject into eight sub-headings. The"related topics" refer to shipbuilding and navalarchitecture, artefacts, conservation, archaeologi2cal sites, and miscellaneous. The data for theselatter categories is intended as a general guideonly and does not claim to be comprehensive.

The introduction is essential reading tounderstand the "how" and "why" of this bibliogra-phy. The principal criteria for an item's inclusionis that it had been employed in a work related tounderwater archaeology, or seen to be potentiallyuseful in that context. The selection and organiza-tion of headings and sub-headings is acknow-ledged by Illsley as a list that may have beendifferent under the direction of another author,but that such individualism is unavoidable. How-ever, an explanation of the rationale behind hisselections would have been helpful, as well as thescope of his definition of the subject.

Some entries fall into more than one sub2heading, but there are no more than four for eachlisting, and about one quarter of the total areduplicates. Most of the titles were derived bycombing IJNA periodical notes, articles and bookreferences, and other bibliographies. Therefore,neither the sources cited nor the topics themselveshave been systematically reviewed which makesthe work as a whole seem slightly piecemeal andalmost arbitrary. It does however, provide a widerange of titles covering a gamut of publications inmany languages. Practical and efficient indices tothe authors and keywords complete the book,although the same for the sources is missing.Some indication of the accessibility of the entriescould also have been added but may be beyondthe expectations of a bibliography.

The major design problem of An IndexedBibliography is in the page composition, since itsoriginal intended format was as an electronicdatabase. It resembles a computer print-out inwhich each entry is coupled with distractingnumbers, although the purpose they serve is tocorrespond with the abovementioned indices. Thesmall font is also necessary given that the cita-tions number approximately twelve thousand.

This book clearly shows the growing volumeof research produced in the field and illuminatesareas where there is a relative small body of

Book Reviews 85

scholarship, such as fishing, small boats andboatbuilding (found under M aritime Ethnographyand Ship Types). No rth American sources arerelatively scarce, but this bibliography can stillserve as a solid basis for any researcher to beginhis or her study. With its exhaustive listing andcareful organization, An Indexed Bibliography ofUnderwater Archaeology and Related Topics willprove to be an essential reference tool for both thegeneralist and specialist.

Monica MacDonaldOttawa, Ontario

Mark Redknap (ed.). Artefacts from Wrecks:Dated Assemblages from the Late Middle Ages tothe Industrial Revolution. Oxbow Monograph No.84; Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1997. vi + 232 pp.,figures, maps, tables, illustrations, photographs,colour plates. US $68, library binding; ISBN 1-900188-3922. Distributed in No rth America bythe David Brown Book Company, Oakville, CA.

This book consists of nineteen papers delivered atan international conference held at the NationalMuseum of Wales, Cardiff in 1994. The papersdeal with the interpretation of artefacts fromwreck sites, with the objective of highlighting theimpo rtance of contemporary studies of artefactsfrom wrecks, focussing on the period of transitionin Europe (c. 1485 to 1785). Overall, the collec-tion is very interesting while the hardbound bookis well presented, with a colour cover, colourplates and excellent black and white illustrations.One wonders how Oxbow has been able to pro-duce such a reasonably priced book. The work isa credit to the editor and the organizers (who werethe Nautical Archaeological Society).

The papers themselves cover a wide range ofsubjects which are divided into four parts: artefactintegration and potential; artefact groups from theAge of Discovery; an interdependence of disci-plines; and shipwreck identification and socialstructure. Some of the papers are extremelyinteresting, and many are most welcome in thefield of shipwreck archaeology. The papers aredivided into those dealing with sites (Mary Rose,Machault, Kronan, the Cattewater Wreck, DuartePoint wreck, Zuiderzee wrecks and a wreck inWales). Artefact studies included coinage fromwrecks, ingots, a study of shoes from the Basque

whaling ship from Red Bay, clay pipes andceramics. More generalist papers deal with sub-jects such as armaments that might be found onwrecks, and identification of ships' departurepoints from artefact assemblages. I found thelatter a little unsatisfying, as in this format thereis not the space to develop the themes to usefullevels.

One paper I found particularly interesting:"Family life on board: the Dutch boat peoplebetween 1600 and 1900" by Van Holk. Here theauthor investigates the evidence for the presenceof family groups on board ships, seeking itemsthat may indicate gender or age from both writtenand archaeological evidence. On the other hand,in "Rhenish stoneware from shipwrecks: the studyof ceramic function and life-span," Gaimsterdraws erroneous conclusions from the Batavia(1629) material, having not read the excavationreport and relying on an early illustrated cata2logue. As a result he assumes a certain ceramic onthe wreck, with a sprig dated 1595 was an heir-loom, whereas the archaeological evidence sug-gests that there were at least four identical itemswithout base wear and thus more likely to betrade items and the potters were re-using sprigsthat were thirty-five years old. In addition hemakes statements about the Vergulde Draeckmaterial which are not even recorded in theexcavation repo rt stating, for example, that mer-cury was found on the site when it was not, andthat the bartmann jugs were used to carry mer-cury. This was true on some VOC ships, but inthis case the archaeological evidence indicatedthat they were being taken to the Indies empty,evidence which is confirmed from archivalsources. He goes on to state that a fatty substancefrom a small jar was analysed, where no suchsubstance was found or analysed.

What a joy to at last see some of the productsof the Mary Rose in print. It is also interesting tosee both a more rigorous analysis of some of thearchaeology that has been conducted in the pastand also the development of the integration ofarchaeology and the archival record. These as2pects have been sadly lacking in the past.

I found a lack of representation of terrestrialarchaeology in the proceedings. There were norepo rts of complementary evidence and surpris-ingly, while the Netherlands was well representedin the shipwreck aspects, it would have been


useful to have some comparative terrestrial re-ports from the archaeology conducted in the citiesin the Netherlands — Amsterdam and Ro tterdamand similarly from the United Kingdom. Many ofthe shipwreck repo rts refer to other shipwreckarchaeological sites and it was difficult to find areference to authors using evidence from terres-trial excavations. Does this mean that the twofields are still so far apart?

Jeremy GreenFremantle, Western Australia

Mensun Bound (ed.). The Archaeology of Shipsof War. Vol. 1 of"International Maritime Archae-ology" series; Oswestry, Shropshire: AnthonyNelson, 1995. 192 pp., maps, figures, photo-graphs, index. £32, paper; ISBN 0-904614-52-2.Distributed in North America by David BrownBooks, Oakville, CT.

This new publication presents some of the papersgiven at a 1992 conference entitled "The Archae-ology of Ships of War" held at Greenwich. Thetitle is somewhat misleading as only half of thetwenty-four papers deal specifically with thearchaeology of warships. The remainder coverother topics related to ships of war, principallyordnance and restoration projects. This, however,does not make these papers any less interesting.The present volume has no particular thematicfocus other than warships in general and tends totouch on a range of themes. Chronologically, thepapers encompass the ancient world to the mod-ern era with an emphasis on more recent history.Geographically, the focus is clearly European,and more specifically the United Kingdom al-though there are contributions bearing on theMediterranean, India, as well as North and SouthAmerica. The rest of the conference papers are tobe published in a forthcoming companion volumeentitled Excavating Ships of War. The editor andpublisher hope these will be the first contributionsto a new series of publications dedicated tomaritime archaeology.

As seems to be common among conferenceproceedings, there is significant variability anduneven scholarship in the quality of the paperspresented. Predictably, some presentations showthat the authors took great pains in preparingsuperior works while others seem to be little more

than résumés prepared from speaking notes. Mostof the papers are brief and of a descriptive nature.A few, however, go beyond mere description ofthe vessels under study and make a positivecontribution to furthering the study of warships.A strength of the volume is that the papers,almost without exception, deal with real, and inmost cases, extant vessels.

Following a short introduction and preface,the papers are ar ranged into three main sections —Excavation and Interpretation; Ordnance; andConstruction, Reconstruction and Preservation.As might be expected, the first section is thelongest, with thirteen of the two dozen papers.This section is diverse, with survey and excava2tion repo rts on new sites as well as researchupdates on previously excavated sites. The papersare ordered chronologically although, due to alack of thematic focus, this does not provide anevolutionary perspective bearing on anythingsubstantial. For those interested in Renaissancenaval architecture, the papers on Hen ry V'sGrace Dieu (Hutchinson) and the Tudor warshipMary Rose (Rule and Dobbs) will be particularlyintriguing. Hutchinson's paper describes theunique triple-thickness clinker planking on theGrace Dieu and how the composite strakes mayhave been built up. In the case of the Mary Rose,recent research indicates no positive evidence of"dovetail tenons" joining the floors to the firstfuttocks or even of fore2aft treenails to fasten theframe members together. The lack of these fea-tures may signal a different architectural traditiondistinct from sixteenth-century Iberian practiceswhere these features are common and diagnostic.

An exemplary paper is John Broadwater'sconcerning an eighteenth-century British trans-port, part of Cornwallis' fleet at Yorktown duringthe American War of Independence. In it headdresses aspects of the naval transpo rt serv iceduring this period and illustrates this with hisarchaeological work on the collier brig Betsydiscussing its unusual construction features,provisioning, shipboard life and function atYorktown. Other noteworthy contributions in2clude Martin's concise and competent discussionof a Cromwellian shipwreck from Scotland andGuérout's more expansive and informative ac-count, albeit in French, of work on the US CivilWar vessel CSS Alabama discovered off Cher-bourg.

Book Reviews 87

The section on ordnance contains only threepresentations. Of these, two deal with East India-men: one, a straightforward historical study of thearming of ships for the English Comp any; and theother, a somewhat disjointed case study of gunsfrom the Dutch East Indiaman Mauritius thatgoes on to present a precise, ordered and detailedmethod of recording and describing cast iron andbronze artillery. The highlight of this section,however, is Robert Smith's paper on wrought2iron swivel guns from the fourteenth to sixteenthcenturies. Here, in a clearly argued fashion, Smithmarshals archival sources and information fromdated artillery pieces, primarily from underwatersites, to make sense of the myriad of names forthese guns and to produce a firm typology andchronology. This is a stellar contribution to theunderstanding of the early history and develop-ment of these shipboard weapons.

The final section of this volume contains apotpourri of articles ranging from aspects ofwooden ship construction, to restoration andreconstruction projects, to the pros and cons ofpreserving historical vessels. Of these, the mostsatisfying are the papers dealing with restorations.A paper on the Victory by a former commandingofficer of the vessel, outlining restoration effo rtson the vessel during the twentieth century, givesan insightful look into the complexity and diffi-culty of the work involved in maintaining extanthistorical vessels. Equally interesting is an articleon the revolutionary, screw-propelled ironcladHMS Warrior. While basically a description ofthe restoration process, the accompanying illus-trations provide a good understanding of thestructure of this remarkable warship.

Obviously, this volume's main appeal will beto those readers involved in the field of maritimearchaeology, although it may also hold interestfor those attracted to history, as many of thecontributions include sound historical accounts.In fact, most individuals with an interest in thingsnautical will find something appealing in thisbook, though the rather high price may be abarrier to many. This is a well produced, tightlyedited book, practically free of typographicalerrors and, for the benefit of those unfamiliar withunderwater archaeology or naval architecture, thewriting is not overly technical. Unusual forconference proceedings, this volume is alsoprofusely illustrated with good quality plans,

photos and drawings, both historical and modern,which greatly enhances each presentation. If itcan be judged by its inaugural issue, this newseries will be a welcome and worthwhile additionto the literature on maritime archaeology.

R. James RingerOttawa, Ontario

Dennis L. Noble. Lighthouses and Keepers: TheU.S. Lighthouse Service and Its Legacy. Anna-polis: Naval Institute Press, 1997. xv + 244 pp.,illustrations, photographs, maps, notes, bibliogra-phy, index. US $34.95, Cdn $48.95, cloth; ISBNI-55750-638-8. Canadian distributor, VanwellPublishing, St. Catharines, ON.

Dennis L. Noble, a retired US Coast Guardsmanwho holds a PhD in history, is the author ofnumerous books and a rticles dealing with mari-ti me and military topics. Noble now turns hisattention to the lighthouses and other navigationalaids of the United States that have benefittedcountless mariners over the last two centuries.

Lighthouses and Keepers is an overview ofa large, complex, and impo rtant subject. Nobleacknowledges the cursory nature of his historyand identifies the need for more scholarly workson the subject. Nevertheless, the author points outthat Lighthouses and Keepers updates previousgeneral histories written by George R. Putnam in1913 and F. Ross Holland, Jr. in 1972. He alsonotes that his book is designed to interest thelarge number of modern lighthouse buffs who arefascinated by virtually all aspects of their subject.

After referring to the handful of lighthouseserected in colonial America, Noble describes theinitiation of the federal navigational aids programby the Treasury Department in 1789. In 1820, bywhich time the government operated more thanfifty lighthouses, this program was placed underthe supervision of Stephen Pleasonton, the Treas-ury's fifth auditor, a responsibility he shoulderedfor over thirty years. Noble asserts that thisofficial impeded progress because of a lack oftechnical knowledge and a consuming interest ineconomy. In Pleasonton's era, US lighthouseequipment was inferior to European gear andthese facilities often were operated by incompe-tent keepers.

The Treasury Department's establishment in


1852 of the US Lighthouse Board reflected adetermination to correct a bad situation. Noble'sdiscussion of the origins of the board is all toobrief. But its creation was presumably related tothe major economic importance of the maritimeindustry in the antebellum United States. Sincenaval and army leaders held a majority of theboard's seats, one wonders whether the criticalneed to find additional billets to absorb the sur-plus of military officers available in the 1850shad something to do with this initiative. Finally,the appointment of two leading scientists(Alexander Bache and Joseph Henry) suggeststhat the growing role of science within the USgovernment may help to explain the origins of theLighthouse Board.

Whatever interpretations surround the estab-lishment of the board, Noble notes that it revolu-tionized the effectiveness of US lighthouses.Perhaps the most impo rtant advance was theoverdue adoption of the superior lenses devel2oped by the French engineer Augustin-JeanFresnel in the 1820s. The competence of light-house keepers also improved significantly after1852, despite the fact that these individuals werepolitical appointees until 1896. In the twentiethcentury, the Bureau of Lighthouses replaced theLighthouse Board. But Noble claims that US aidsto navigation continued to be highly effective.

The book also summarizes institutionaldevelopments after 1939, at which point thelighthouse service was absorbed into the CoastGuard. In recent decades, unmanned facilitiesreplaced most keeper-maintained lighthouses andlightships. The author also recounts the develop-ment of GPS and other electronic locationalsystems that reduced but by no means eliminatedthe need for navigational aids. The remainder ofthe book presents capsule histories of sevenrepresentative lighthouses and vigne ttes of someof their colorful keepers, retells a few lighthouseghost stories, and provides useful overall discus-sions of lightships, tenders, and buoys.

Lighthouses and Keepers may interest gen-eral readers, but it is light and unsophisticatedhistory. As Dennis Noble obse rves, we badlyneed more rigorous accounts of the history of theUS government's navigational aid program.

Dean C. AllardArlington, Virginia

Keith Keller. Dangerous Waters: Wrecks andRescues off the BC Coast. Madeira Park, BC:Harbour Publishing, 1997. 303 pp., maps, photo-graphs, illustrations, index. $28.95, cloth; ISBN1-55017-168-2.

British Columbia's coastal waters are among themost dangerous in the world. Tens of thousandsof commercial and pleasure vessels travel theInside Passage and open Pacific each year andwhile improved safety procedures and electronicnavigational aids have made travel safer, acci-dents still happen regularly. In Dangerous Wa2ters, Keith Keller chronicles shipwreck andsurvival in twenty-one accounts of marine inci-dents. What happens "When misfortune separatesus from the little islands we call boats" [10] is theissue Keller explores through the stories of thepeople involved in dramatic wrecks and rescues.

In two sections the book deals with incidentson the south and north coasts of British Colum2bia; four harrowing accounts relate to the sameparticularly violent storm in 1985. The broadvariety of incidents involve a cross section of thepeople who work and live on the coast — com-mercial fishermen, SAR (Search and Rescue)Techs, Coast Guard captains, rescue helicopterpilots, lightkeepers, pleasure boaters, kayakers,divers and loggers. The sources are equally broad,ranging from official incident repo rts and articlesin newspapers and marine magazines, to docksideconversations with fishermen. It is quickly appar-ent that the most important source is the words ofthe people involved: the fishermen forced toabandon sinking vessels, the SAR Techs danglingfrom rescue helicopters, the lightkeepers raisingthe alarm from the shore.

Dangerous Waters is as much an explorationof people coping with crises as it is a narrative ofcapsized boats and heroic rescues. Through thestories of the survivors, Keller examines howpeople react when suddenly thrust into an envi-ronment where they do not belong: water. Thestories reveal the instinct for survival that existsin life-threatening situations and that assistancecomes not only from trained professionals butfrom fellow mariners determined to save theircomrades at great personal risk: "When the worsthappens, people who can help do help." [10]

Keller presents dramatic portraits of marineincidents and rescues, depicting emotions from

Book Reviews 89

the shock of sinking to the elation of rescue tocoping with the deaths of crew members andfriends. There are also elements of humour in themiddle of desperate situations. In "Three Men Ona Raft," the crew of the sunken tug Kitmano hasjust abandoned ship; one crew member says tothe skipper, "I've only been working for you for12 hours and I'm already floating around in a raft.I think I quit." [ 107] Then there are the horrifyingmoments at Cape Beale when assistant light-keeper Mike Slater hears the cries of shipwreckedRusty Waters who clings to wave2washed rocks.Waters' body was never recovered. Some scenar-ios almost defy description and comprehension;the crash of the rescue helicopter attempting tosave the crew of the seiner Bruce I at Cape Beale,or the plummet of a SAR Tech into m assive seaswhen his line from the helicopter is severed.

Combining individual accounts into narrativehas challenged the author to resolve differences inwitness stories and to objectively portray theincidents. Keller carefully links each account withinformation providing context and continuity.Although some of the rescue scenarios are verydetailed and may confuse the reader with thesheer volume of information about sea conditions,weather and equipment on the vessels, the overalli mpact of the stories is powerful and moving.

Wrecks and Rescues is a testament to thedetermination of survivors and rescuers alike.These events transformed their lives — somereturned to sea, some could not face work on thewater again. Keller shows great sensitivity tothose involved in wrecks and rescues and pro-vides readers with a unique insight into life at seaand the will to su rvive against the odds.

Chris MillsKetch Harbour, Nova Scotia

Maria Coffey; Photographs by Dag Goering.Sailing Back in Time: A Nostalgic Voyage onCanada's West Coast. Vancouver & Toronto:Whitecap Books, 1996. x + 158 pp., photographs(b+w, colour), map, figures, index. Cdn $39.95,US $34.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55110-487-3.

This book is a tribute to Allen and Sharie Farrell— pioneer British Columbia boat builders, sailors,organic intellectuals and advocates of a simplelife at sea. The book is not the success it might

have been.The idea was that Marie Coffey and photo-

grapher-husband Dag Goering would accompanythe Farrells on a three-month cruise, documentingthe occasion in words and photographs. TheFarrells would be on their junk-rigged boat ChinaCloud, while Coffey and Goering followed alongin Luna Moth — an open dory. The result is amagnificent production job, with Goering'sphotographs beautifully presented, the pages laidout with generous white space, and an a ttractivetypography — a coffee-table book par excellence.Yet, despite the publisher's professionalism andthe charm of accompanying the Farrells on a"nostalgic voyage," the book fails to satisfy.Throughout the voyage the China Cloud persis-tently gets far ahead of Luna Moth; similarly,Coffey's diary of the voyage cannot keep up withthe anarchist essence of the Farrell lifestyle.

The entire voyage occurred within the Straitof Georgia, in areas visited by hordes of recre-ational and commercial boaters. Coffey tries tobreathe high adventure into routine passagesthrough, for example, Nanaimo Harbour andFalse Narrows. What lies ahead is presaged asChina Cloud and Luna Moth (trailing a kayak)leave Nanaimo Harbour. Still within sight ofcappuccino stores and the local gas station,Coffey reports: "After wrestling with the kayakfor several minutes, I end up flat on my back likea helpless insect, with the kayak on top of me andwaves rushing by only inches from my face."

The voyeurism of the book, without analysisof the more profound currents that ruled theFarrells' lives, also becomes an irritant. TheFarrells were unquestionably coastal characters(other books have been written about them) butthe deeper aspects of their story remain untold.

Sailing Back in Time is a lush coffee-tablebook and it presents a romantic view of the BClandscape. But the essence of the Farrells' — theiranti-consumerist lifestyle, the functional simpli2city of their designs, their attitude to mind andbody — remains hidden. Meanwhile, the LunaMoth (known locally as the Algeria Shoals) liesbeached at Ruxton Island where another islandcharacter has made repairs.

After years of escaping "civilization" theFarrells played the ultimate joke on Coffey andher husband. (who spent much of the voyagefixing the recalcitrant mast in Luna Moth); China


Cloud and the Farrells simply sailed away,escaping both pen and lens. Whilst lavish, thisbook does little to expose the charm, uniquenessand, most importantly, rebelliousness andpoliticality of the Farrells. Not long after the bookwas published Sharie Fa rrell passed away. Allenstill lives aboard China Cloud in Pender Harbour.We can only hope that Sailing Back in Time didnot change their lives.

Roger BoshierVancouver, British Columbia

Vernon Oickle. Busted: Nova Scotia's War onDrugs. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 1997. x +213 pp., photographs, map. $16.95, paper; ISBN1-55109-227-1.

Busted is Vernon Oickle's account of the thirty-two major drug busts made in Nova Scotia from1975 to 1997 and of the effect of the drug trafficon ordinary Nova Scotians, especially those incoastal communities. Oickle is a veteran of thecommunity newspaper industry and is currentlyeditor of the Bridgewater Bulletin. He has hadfirst-hand knowledge of several of the major drugseizures, especially those that were made inLunenburg, Queens and Shelburne Counties, allfavourite destinations for drug smugglers, and heinterviewed people on both sides of the law. Todemonstrate how ordinary people become in-volved in drug trafficking, he invents the story ofa fictional small trucker who helps move oneshipment only to become more deeply involved.In the final chapter he describes the effect of thedrug trade on individuals at all levels: distribu2tors, pushers and addicts. These characters maybe composites and the fruit of numerous inter-views, but their stories ring true.

Readers will no doubt be interested in thenautical aspects of anti-drug operations: theshadowing, interception and seizure of drugvessels at sea. Some interesting incidents aredescribed and photographs of several drug shipsappear among the illustrations, but the events atsea are not covered in detail because the mainpolicing activity usually occurs ashore. Thepolice prefer to let the drugs be landed as theirobject is to make arrests, even if this meansrisking some of the goods getting through. Al2most all of the big hauls by the police have been

the result of long, painstaking intelligence workor of blunders by the drug importers. One won-ders if shifting the emphasis from obtainingconvictions to active prevention by offshore airand sea patrols would not be more effective andperhaps cheaper in the long run. The CoastalWatch program has led to some impo rtant inter-ceptions, yet fishermen will privately tell ofobvious drug ships and transshipments to smallcraft going on undisturbed off the coast. Perhapsa more active patrol policy could be effective.

The controversial question of legalizingsome drugs is another theme of the book. Oicklepresents arguments on both sides of the issue, butallows readers to form their own opinions. Lawenforcement officers and social workers who see,every day, the plight of crack users, heroin ad-dicts and street people mainlining with infectedneedles oppose legalization of any drugs that arenow banned. Yet others want marijuana legalizedfor medicinal use. It is certainly helpful to thosesuffering from multiple-sclerosis and epilepsy andit can prolong the life of AIDS patients. In theterminal stages of agonizing diseases, heroinwould be more effective than morphine, yet thelaw does not allow it. Middle class recreationaldrug users do not agitate for legalization: this is ameasure of how easy it is to obtain drugs illegallyand why, according to one drug dealer, the de-mand is so great and there is so much moneyinvolved. It is a war that will never be over andwhich neither side can win. Although the bookdeals with events in Nova Scotia, the consider-ations that are addressed apply anywhere. VernonOickle is to be congratulated for shedding somelight on a pervasive social problem.

C. Douglas MaginleyMahone Bay, Nova Scotia

Norman R. Okihiro. Mounties, Moose, andMoonshine: The Patterns and Context of OutportCrime. Toronto and Buffalo: University of To-ronto Press, 1997. xxiv + 188 pp., photographs,maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $45,cloth; ISBN 0280202089127. $19.95, paper; ISBN0-8020-7874-5.

Mounties, Moose, and Moonshine is anethnographic accounting of criminal behaviour,community response to criminality and law

Book Reviews 91

enforcement in rural Newfoundland. Among theinteresting findings is that there are crimes com-mitted in outport areas that are considered crimi2nal offenses by the rules and regulations of theprovince and country but not necessarily by thecommunity, and acts that violate local normsalthough not criminalized by the province. Thematerial reflects the development of outportcriminal behaviour in relationship to settlementpatterns, the historical, economic and politicalcontext of a province dependant on multi-speciesinshore fisheries for livelihood.

Okihiro identifies three different types ofcrime. There are crimes that arise from economicsubsistence behaviours, such as hunting, gather-ing and domestic production; these crimes includebig game poaching, illegal fishing and fishingpolicy enforcement, and the production andconsumption of moonshine. Indeed, "game hunt-ing with or without a licence and the distilling ofliquor are seen as having a moral basis in eco-nomic necessity." [9] Interpersonal crime iscategorized as assault, theft and domestic vio-lence. Here, crime is personal in nature — perpe-trators and victims are known to each other andthe fear of criminal attack by strangers is almostnon-existent. The third type of crime, involving"exploitative" behaviour, arises from the continualstate of impoverishment and economic vulnerabil2ity in most outport areas. Okihiro provides manyexamples of crimes of the powerful in the out-ports — mostly about relationships betweenfisher-people and the buyers or between fish plantworkers and the plant owners. In one fish plant itwas said that "management was dictatorial andthat working conditions in the fish plant weregeared to get the maximum productivity withlittle consideration for the workers." [137]

The development of outport culture is attrib2uted to the geographical location of each village,the social isolation of the village and the inhabit-ants and the limited contact with outside persons.Social isolation made community memberseconomically dependant on merchants in a cash-less mercantile system. Dependency on the mer2chant and inadequate payment for the salt fish ledto a way of life based upon "individual resource-fulness and resilience." Community members inthe outports are mutually dependent on othervillagers for "community se rv ice," are tied intoextensive and overlapping kinship and friendship

relationships with almost everybody else. Thepatterns of interaction between individuals in theoutports are in part based on the need to maintainharmony and social order in the absence of regu-lar law enforcement.

Okihiro says that the informal means ofsocial control that heavily proscribed aggressionwas by all accounts highly effective because theultimate sanction was community ostracism.Outbursts of aggression were attributed to "cul-tural channelling of frustrations and/or hostilities,or the breakdown of the informal social order ofthe outport." [19]

This book makes a valuable contribution tothe study of crime and to maritime studies. In thefirst instance, Okihiro clearly addresses thedifficulty of crime designations and enforcementin rural areas and reveals the existing conflictbetween legal codes and local custom. The studyof rural crime as a distinct entity has been over-looked and this work with an apparent maritimefocus is unique. It challenges the assumptionsabout general patterns of crime and reveals thecomplexity of culture, community and criminal2ity. On the one hand, the community presents theopportunity for these types of crime and on theother protects those in the community fromprosecution. Okihiro's study clearly advances thecall in Ian Taylor, Paul Walton and Jock Young,The New Criminology: For A Social Theory ofDeviance (1973) for an adequate social theory ofdeviance. Finally, and quite apart from its aca-demic merit, this book is written without jargonand will be accessible to a general readership.

Anna LeslieCorner Brook, Newfoundland

Don Downer. Turbulent Tides: A Social Historyof Sandy Point. Portugal Cove, NF: ESP Press,1997. xvii + 361 pp., photographs, maps, illustra-tions, bibliography, index. $24.95, paper; ISBN0-9681156-4-0.

In her brief but warm forward to this book, LynnVerge recalls her family picnics at Sandy Pointand expresses her gratitude to the author forcreating a tangible record of the history of acommunity which was once the hub of economiclife in Bay St. George. I , too, can recall a numberof expeditions: seas of purple irises, diving terns,


and newly hatched gulls not much more thanballs of fluff nestled under protective vegetationon the upper beach. Reading this book shouldencourage others to find their way across Flat Bayto the old wharf, and it will certainly add interestand understanding to their subsequent explora-tions of Sandy Point.

Author Don Downer uses two methods to tellhis story. There are twelve chapters which covermany of the topics which you would expect tofind in any local history. For example, an over-view of the topography and ecology of the islandis followed by an account of the demographichistory of the community and a description of thebooms and slumps which this resource-basedeconomy experienced. Then the gradual growthof services like churches and schools is explored.Because the material is presented topically thereis a good deal of duplication, for major figureslike the Reverend Thomas Sears or the ReverendAlexis Belanger contributed to the community inmany different ways. Interspersed with thesechapters, and carefully identified by the use ofitalicized typeface, are ten historically basedstories. For example, "On Official Business"recounts the visit of the international commission-ers in 1859 through the eyes of two fictionalcharacters. Similarly, a brief entry in EdwardChappell's log of his 1813 voyage tells how hisship was met off Sandy Point by an Irishman in acanoe who offered to sell them fresh salmon.Downer uses this fragment as a basis for "TheGenuine Paddy" in which he imaginatively recre-ates the kind of early life which might have ledSeamus McFatridge to that meeting place. Someof these stories are based very closely on archivaldocuments, like the Grand Pond trek whichdescribes Jukes' expedition to Grand Lake in1839. Others are entirely fictional like "TheLegacy of Billy" which explores the excitementand romance which developed when ships of theRoyal Navy visited the bay on a regular basisduring the 1930s. Still other stories, like "LastNail" and "At the Gap," are based on the memo-ries and recollections of some of the "SandyPointers" who the author interviewed. This tech-nique of overtly mixing what the historical recordsuggests did happen, with what might havehappened, must be recognized as a brave innova2tion, for Downer risks being shunned by histori2ans for mixing fact with fancy! But it is clear that

his laudable objective is to infuse his story withlife and humanity. The degree to which he suc-ceeds must be evaluated by each reader, for it isa matter of personal taste.

The author interviewed more than fortyformer residents of Sandy Point and uses theirtestimony to inform both his imaginative storiesand his factual analysis. If the average age of hisinformants was perhaps between sixty and sev-enty, then they would have been children duringthe Great Depression and young people duringWorld War II. I therefore find it surprising thatthese two searing periods in world history receivesuch cursory treatment. Moreover, one cannothelp thinking that Downer allows himself to belured into nostalgia when he reviews "Growingup in the 1940s and 1950s." There may have beenno unemployment, [287] but there was underem-ployment, extreme poverty, malnutrition, andinaccessible health care. The real contemporaryproblems of widespread functional illiteracy, highdrop2out rates and youth unemployment mustsurely have their roots in what Downer unabash-edly describes as "the good old days."

I was disappointed too that no attempt wasmade to move from the particular to the general.Why is the story of Sandy Point of particularinterest to those of us who were not raised there?What does it tell use about the process of reloca-tion? What light does this particular case throwon contemporary outmigration? While the authorconveys very well the political uncertainty underwhich permanent settlement evolved along TheFrench Shore, this turmoil is hardly unique, sinceit is one of the attributes of most frontier commu-nities. It would be helpful if some of these con-textual links were explored.

Apart from a magnificent cover featuring apainting by Lloyd Pretty based on a photographof Sandy Point taken in the 1950s, I found theillustrative material to be a mixed bag. There wasa lot of duplication. If half the photographs hadbeen culled out, there would have been room formore full plate pictures and above all for morecareful explanations. The pictures were append2ages rather than an integrated pa rt of the text. Forexample, the oblique air photograph of the com-munity on which the cover painting was based,could have been used to identify functionalgroupings of buildings and individual merchants'premises. Similarly, enough pictures of individual

Book Reviews 93

houses are presented to allow some comments ondomestic architecture. The "ecological pictures"of"Fir, Spruce and grassland `trees and beachrocks"'are dull and dark. As a whole they sufferfrom being taken at one season of the year. Fewbirds or flowers were illustrated. The pictures ofthe island simply do not convey the sense ofbeauty, complex variety, and ecological dyna-mism which I remember. On the other hand, Ifound the portraits and "snaps" collected fromfamily albums had immense appeal. The pictureof the sailor with a young woman [196] relatedvery closely to the story "The Legacy of Billy."

"Sandy Point is clearly a treasure" concludesthe author, and in his book, he has polished it andheld it up to the light for our enjoyment and ad-miration. The march of time and the economyhave rendered all talk of restoring the communityas a tourist attraction redundant. Yet the possibil-ity of enhancing the capacity of the island to be asanctuary, by developing a partnership betweenlandowners and wildlife interests, seems attain2able. Some modest changes in the timing andintensity with which grazing is practised might beall that is required, especially if it were coupledwith an educational programme in the localschools which pointed out the many values of the"treasure" to which the young people are heirs.

Simon M. EvansCalgary , Alberta

Margaret McBurney and Mary Byers; John DeVisser (photo.). True Newfoundlanders: EarlyHomes and Families of Newfoundland and Lab2rador. Erin, ON: Boston Mills Press, 1997. 240pp., photographs (b+w, colour), illustrations,maps, select bibliography, index. Cdn $34.95, US$29, cloth; ISBN 1-55046-199-0.

True Newfoundlanders "is the compelling story ofthe people of Newfoundland and Labrador," saysthe dust jacket blurb. But it isn't so, particularlyif we take "true Newfoundlanders" to be the typeof those who "rant and...roar" in H.W.LeMessurier's The Ryans and the Pitmans, fromwhich, I assume, the title is taken. Indeed, thelikes of Bob Pitman, or Tim Brown, or Clara fromBrule, or John Coady's Kitty, or Biddy McGrathappear nowhere in this book. Those who do infact appear are, by and large, representative of the

"merchantocracy" or of the Colonial Civil Estab-lishment. This is, in fact, a book about the uppercrust and has very little to do with "the people ofNewfoundland and Labrador." True, there are afew exceptions like the Cantwells of Cape Spearand the Youngs of Lobster Cove Head. And thereare a few others, near-legendary larger2than-lifesealing captains and banking skippers who werestrong enough to force their way through "thedoor called push" into the privileged circles ofwealth and power.

If we examine the sub-title Early Homes andFamilies of Newfoundland and Labrador, thesame argument applies pari passu. The book saysalmost nothing at all about early homes andfamilies. Most of the structures depicted in JohnDe Visser's superb photography are of middle- tolate nineteenth-century provenance; though veryfar removed from the palatial splendour of oldcountry stately homes, most represent the bestthat the more modest wealth of a desperately poorcolonial backwater could afford. The lighthousesand churches that are well represented do, ofcourse, address in an indirect fashion, the lives ofthe "people." But as to their workaday world, onlya single photograph shows a flake full of dryingsalted cod, and that has as a backdrop the compar2atively imposing business premises of theCrosbies. From another perspective, we mightnote that the section on "The Northern Peninsula,"for example, is totally committed to Sir WilfredGrenfell who wasn't a Newfoundlander at all. Bythe same token, Labrador is represented byMoravian missionaries, Grenfell again, and JohnSlade and his mercantile successors at BattleHarbour, where Robe rt Peary , who merits nearlya full page of text, was once constrained to spendten days. A single concession to the homes andfamilies of the "people" of Labrador is the refer-ence to the Isaac Smith house recently rebuilt bythe Battle Harbour Historic Trust.

Having said what the book is not, we cannow look at what it is: a pictorial record of se-lected surviving elements of what has been calledNewfoundland's built heritage. Almost all thestructures chosen for illustration are those thathave been identified by the Newfoundland andLabrador Heritage Foundation as worthy ofpreservation. It is, perhaps, inevitable that thoseshould have been the well-constructed and, hencedurable buildings that only those of comparative


wealth could afford.So long then as we remember that we are

reading about a very small subset of "true"Newfoundlanders" and about the homes andfamilies of a nineteenth-century élite group, wecan read the book with great pleasure and profit.For the text is well written, informative andentertaining. The historical introduction is, per-force, highly generalized, and contains someelements that might be described as popularmythology. But that does not detract from thelively, and by and large, judicious selection ofhistorical material touching the lives of the build-ers. For the antiquarian, the tidbits of informationincluded in the sidebars with which many pagesare replete, are a gold mine of delight and mightprompt the reader to seek a copy of Mosdell'sWhen was That? from which, I suspect, mostwere culled. These, incidentally, do cast somelight on the lives of the ordinary people whosebuilding did not become heritage structures.

John De Visser's photographs are superb,and photographs from other collections, allproperly credited, are judiciously chosen. Thereis a useful select bibliography and a good index.Perhaps we should note that in respect of thecolour photographs between pages 128 and 129,two captions are incorrect. The Roman CatholicBasilica in its St. John's setting is identified as St.Paul's Church, Trinity; while the last picture inthe group is identified as St. John's, which itobviously is not.

Leslie HarrisSt. John's, Newfoundland

Mark Kurlansky. Cod: A Biography of the FishThat Changed the World. Toronto: Alfred A.Knopf, 1997. viii + 294 pp., illustrations, photo2graphs, maps, recipes, bibliography, index. Dis-tributed by Random House Canada, Toronto, ON.$27.95, cloth; ISBN 0-676-97061-3.

Mark Kurlansky has written a book out of itstime, though one with a thoroughly modern andoverly-simplistic message. In sty le and presenta-tion, it resembles the work of a Victorian anti-quarian — delightful to handle and entertaining tobrowse through but lacking in substance once oneprobes deeper. It is highly decorated, not onlywith reproductions of woodcuts and engravings

but also with scattered cod recipes, ranging fromMedieval to modern, and literary quotations fromCervantes, Dumas, Melville, Zola and others.These embellishments finally out-run the maintext and fill a forty-page appendix of their own.

Before the decorations overwhelm the sub-stance, Kurlansky presents the glorious and sorrytale of the Atlantic cod fisheries through the last500 years, with some reference also to the previ-ous half millennium. (He blithely declares thatcod fishing was an Iron Age development andthus avoids probing its Neolithic variants.)Whether codfish really changed the world duringthis period, as implied by his subtitle, is question-able but they were certainly an impo rtant eco-nomic and food resource for some No rth Atlanticnations. In particular, they provided early NewEngland with the staple product on which itscommerce was based and thus under-wrote muchof the revolution that produced the United States.The direct impact of the fisheries even reachedbeyond the northern shores inhabited by codsince their preserved catch provided a primarysource of protein for the large slave populationson Caribbean islands, thus allowing both a planta2tion economy that would otherwise have beenecologically impossible and all the accompanyinghorrors of the middle passage.

Meanwhile, cod supported sufficient colour-ful events and inserted itself deeply enough intoWestern cultures that a writer with Kurlansky'sgifts could have filled several volumes with theirstory. Outside of scattered areas, from Nordmarkto New Bedford by way of Newfoundland, thattale has been purged from our national myths infavour of the fur trade, cattle ranching and thelike. Even Canada's nautical self-image empha2sizes privateers, deepwater sailing ships andwartime corvettes, more than the cod fishermenwho first opened the route from Europe to thenorthern reaches of the New World. Kurlansky'sbook should help to restore some balance.

He does not, however, let the facts get in theway of a good story and his book is riddled witherrors — too many to even summarize. Theyinclude an insistence that the B asques had a majorfishery off Newfoundland before Cabot's voyageof 1497, for which there is not a shred of evi-dence. There is also a claim that the offshore doryfishery began two hundred years before its latenineteenth2century appearance, while the inven-

Book Reviews 95

tion of longlining is set several centuries after itsactual origin. Elsewhere, Kurlansky manages toconfuse the Newfoundland and Nova Scotianfisheries of the eighteenth century in order toexplain those colonies' refusal to join the NewEnglanders in their revolt. (At the time, NovaScotia had an outgrowth of the Massachuse ttsfishery, quite unlike Newfoundland's. It remainedBritish primarily because of the power, includingthe financial power, of the naval base in Halifax,not because of cod.) He even manages the bizarrestatement that the early No rth Sea trawlers werelongliners, though what he thinks those termsmean is anyone's guess. Most of these historicalerrors affect only details, of course, and thegeneral impression that the average reader willretain may not be affected by them. However,where the book moves into current affairs andmodern policy choices, the mistakes are perhapsmore significant. There is utter confusion ofCanadian fisheries management decisions in 1977and 1983, errors in the dates of closures of thefisheries around Newfoundland and so on. Thelist is endless; or as long as Kurlansky's book.

Cod is an entertaining read but not one to betaken seriously; and certainly not a reliable refer-ence source.

Trevor KenchingtonMusquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia

Joan Goddard. A Window on Whaling in BritishColumbia. Victoria: Jonah Publications, 1997[3974 Lexington Avenue, Victoria, B.C. V8N3Z6]. viii + 114 pp., maps, illustrations, photo-graphs, appendices (incl. sources and suggestedreadings), index. Cdn $16.95, US $12.95, paper;ISBN 1-895332-14-1.

Whale-watching is now one of the most populartourist activities on the British Columbia coast,and generates more money than was ever realizedby harvesting whales in the same area. But whatabout the bad old days? Robert Lloyd Webb's Onthe Northwest: Commercial Whaling in thePacific Northwest 1790-1967 (Universi ty ofBritish Columbia Press, 1988) is the definitiveaccount of whaling activities on this side of thecontinent. What has been lacking up to now issomething more modestly priced, appealing moreto the general reader rather than the academic,

and focussing on the specifically Canadian as-pects of West Coast whaling history. JoanGoddard's account fills this gap nicely, and herwork is based on careful research in the availablearchives in this country and in Norway, conversa-tions with folk who were active in the localwhaling industry, and personal exploration of thesites of the whaling stations on Vancouver Isl and.

As the grand-daughter of William Rolls, whomanaged the Kyuquot whaling station in the early1900s, the author comes by her interest in thesubject honestly. This connection is reflected inthe many family photographs featured in the bookwhich date back to that era. She points out thatcompared to the industrial scale of activitieselsewhere in the world, the catch in BritishColumbia was relatively insignificant. Nearly 1.4million whales were taken in the Antarctic be-tween 1904 and 1978, while those caught in ahalf century of whaling in British Columbiatotalled only about 25,000. Whale stocks are nowincreasing in a satisfactory fashion, but unfortu-nately this coincides with rumblings of resump2tion of hunting activity.

The catchers and equipment used until themid-1960s by Canadian and Japanese whalinginterests, who worked from the station at CoalHarbour on Vancouver Island, were of up2to-dateNorwegian design. However, as recently as 1942,catcher boats of 1910 vintage, armed with black-powder muzzle-loading cannon, which wouldhave been considered museum pieces in Norway,were still in use. There is a great photograph [50]of William Schupp, president of the ConsolidatedWhaling Company, grasping the stock of such awhaling-cannon, and the cover features a splendidpainting by Victoria artist Harry Heine, showingone of these early catcher-boats hunting a whale.The recollections of folk like William A.Hagelund, author of Whalers No More (1987),who served in such boats, offer a remarkablewindow into the past and the whaling technologyof almost a century ago.

I loved this book. It deserves a place on theshelves of anyone remotely interested in Cana2dian whaling, or the history of Canada's WestCoast.

John H. HarlandKelowna, British Columbia


Andrew David, (Chief Ed.). The Charts & Coast2al Views of Captain Cook's Voyages, Volume 3:The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery1776-1780 With a Descriptive Catalogue of allthe known original surveys and coastal views andthe original engravings associated with themtogether with the running journal of James King1779-80. London: The Hakluyt Society , inassociation with the Australian Academy of theHumanities, 1997. cxxxvi + 319 pp., illustrations,charts, appendices, indices. £210.00, cloth; ISBN0-904180-5527.

This is the third and final volume of AndrewDavid's magisterial edition of Cook's charts andviews, and it continues the high standard ofscholarship and production set by the first twovolumes. Beautifully crafted and presented, thisbook is an invaluable resource and a work of artin its own right — a tribute to its chief editorAndrew David, associate editors Rudiger Joppienand Bernard Smith, and to the Hakluyt Socie ty .(Readers should however be warned that thisvolume costs nearly as much as the first twovolumes combined.)

The third voyage was overshadowed byCook's death at the hands of Hawai'ian islandersin February 1779, but this did not diminish itscartographical significance and David gives usover two hundred of its charts and views, many ofthem previously unpublished. The introductionsets each into the context of the voyage and minesthe voyage journals for details about the objec-tives and conditions of the original surveys. Manyof the ships' officers contributed to the draught-ing of charts — each of these individuals is intro-duced — while John Webber, William Bligh andWilliam Ellis drew the coastal views.

The introduction also covers every aspect ofthe third voyage's objectives and scientificachievements, with detailed discussion of Cook'semergence from semi-retirement, the contents ofhis instructions, and the equipment and scientificsignificance of the voyage. This is David's fo rte;his detailed, empirical research stands out bravelyamid a burgeoning literature on the racist, colo-nialist subjectivities of Pacific exploration. Yetone wonders whether it is wise to ignore alto2gether the sensitivities that have developed inrecent decades. It seems inexcusable today towrite that Cook was killed by "the natives." On

the other hand, David's annotation of JamesKing's running journal carefully notes the indige2nous names of peoples encountered in the farnorth Pacific; perhaps the book's introductionwas written much earlier than the King material.

The King journal was included in memory ofHelen Wallis, who had been working on it at thetime of her recent death. It is easy to see thei mportance of this document, which covers partof the time of King's command of the Discoveryfrom Petropavlovsk to the Cape of Good Hope,August 1779 to April 1780. David found thejournal in the Hydrographie Department archivesin 1973, and he makes a splendid job of editingand illustrating it. King was interested in whatwas happening ashore, as well as what happenedon board ship under his command, and throughhim we have documentation of some extremelyimportant aspects of north Pacific history, includ-ing the decimation of Kamchatka's native popula-tion by smallpox.

Knowing the threat that Russia posed tohopes for the expansion of British trade in thearea, King also observed what he could of thegeography, natural history, and current Russianmilitary strength in Kamchatka and tried (unsuc2cessfully) to glean intelligence about the Russianimperial cou rt from his interpreter at Petropav-lovsk. Reaching Macao on 3 December, the offi-cers and crews received their first news of homein over three years: the American Revolution hadfollowed almost on the heels of their departure,and now Britain was at war with France andSpain as well. "What a conflict of passions didthis mighty flood of new matter occasion," Kingdeclared, [297] as he and his fellow voyagersrejoined the late eighteenth-century story ofEuropean imperial rivalry. As we know, the northPacific that he had just left would soon becomethe focus of Anglo-Spanish confl ict; one ofKing's last entries mentions the sea otter peltswhich Cook's officers had already discovered tobe of considerable value in China. In this andGeorge Vancouver's subsequent survey voyage,the Royal Navy would initiate a series of naviga2tional and commercial relationships that wouldculminate in new colonies and new trade routes inthe Pacific.

Jane SamsonEdmonton, Alberta

Book Reviews 97

Reinhard A. Krause. Zweihundert Tage imPackeis. Die authentischen Berichte der HansaManner der deutschen Ostgrönland-Expedition1869 bis 1870. Hamburg: Ernst Kabel Verlag forthe Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum, 1997. 348 pp.,maps, illustrations (b+w, colour), photographs,bibliography, indices. DM 78, cloth; ISBN 3-8225-0412-2.

If you were asked to list the nations involved inthe exploration of the Arctic, the chances are thatyour list would not include any of the Germanstates of the late nineteenth century. Yet, someintrepid German geographers, explorers, andseamen did participate in several excursions toboth polar regions. This volume details the expe-riences of one particularly unfortunate group ofthe Second German Northern Pol ar Expedition of1869-70. It is a story for which the author is wellqualified to recount; in addition to being a scien2tist and seaman, the author has participated inthree Antarctic expeditions.

The expedition consisted of two ships, theGermania and the Hansa, neither of which wasdestined to fare exceptionally well. TheGermania group spent most of their voyagetrapped in a sea of ice which defied all theirefforts to regain the open sea. The men aboard theHansa were far more unfortunate. Their ship ranaground and was ultimately destroyed on an icefloe, obliging the men to live for over two hun-dred days by their wits, their hunting skills, andby whatever they could salvage from their haplessship.

The volume is divided into two principalparts. The first focuses on the experiences of theHansa group. In essence, it consists of a reprint-ing of the diaries of three of its sailors. Thesecond section provides a general overview of thehistory of German Polar expeditions and research.The text is complemented by a very large numberof illustrations, contemporary maps and a fewphotographs. The majority of the illustrationswere drawn by Carl Koldewey, who participatedin this expedition aboard the Germania. Theremainder stem mostly from official sources,contemporary photographs and a few other writ-ten accounts of this expedition. Overall, themajority of the various illustrations are wellchosen and effectively highlight the text.

The diaries of the seamen are interwoven by

date, giving readers the opportunity to compareand contrast how they described their plight anddaily struggles. Krause has resisted the temptationto standardize their vocabulary, reminding us thatGermany was not yet a unified count ry . Theircontradictory attitude towards wildlife stands out.Although they hunted extensively, they also madeseveral efforts to tame some animals. Theirarduous spring journey through Greenland'sfrigid spring waters and desolate landscape is ahighlight of the book. It is also a testament toman's determination to surv ive in the face ofextreme adversity. In the end, all of the men ofthe Hansa managed to survive their ordeal, andonly one member of this hardy band sufferedfrom an adverse psychological setback.

Readers unfamiliar with the general historyof Polar explorations might want to considerreading the second part first. This provides notonly an excellent summary of the pre2history ofthe Second Expedition, but also the general stateof European, and particularly German, knowledgeand theories on the nature of the Arctic region.The various German Polar expeditions, financedby both Austria2Hungary and Prussia, are welldetailed. The text chronicles the struggle of theorganizers, led by August Petermann, of thisexpedition to find financial, scientific, and politi-cal support for this venture, as well as the scien2tific theories that underlay it.

At best, the German tradition in explorationis very weak. Certainly, the degree to which thefate of the Second Polar Expedition contributed tothis lack of exploratory zeal is definitely debat2able. Nonetheless, Krause has illuminated amuch-ignored aspect of German and world his-tory, and for this reason alone this work deservesa wide audience.

Peter K. H. MispelkampPointe Claire, QC

Roland Huntford. Nansen: The Explorer as Hero.London: Duckworth, 1997. xiv + 610 pp., b+wplates, maps, notes, bibliography, index. £25,cloth; ISBN 0-71562274026.

When FridtjofNansen (1861-1930) died, it wassaid that while Norway had born him the worldhad lost him. Since then, his fame has dwindledoutside his native land. It is hard to say whether


this has been caused by ethnocentricity or by thefact that his career was not shadowed by contro-versy or tragedy. In any case, it is time for theEnglish-speaking world to give Nansen oncemore the acclaim which is his due. This book, bythe dean of polar historians, is the first full2lengthbiography in English for many years. It is basedon previously unused sources, including ones inthe Norwegian language. With it, Huntfordcompletes the cycle of books which began withScott and Amundsen (1979) and continued withShackleton (1985). The life of the man manybelieve to be the most accomplished and innova-tive polar explorer of all is a fitting capstone tothe trilogy.

Nansen was a man of extraordinary gifts,both physical and intellectual. Astonishinglygood-looking as a young man, he was also adaring athlete, renowned in Norway for hisexploits as a skiier. While in his twenties heconducted the research into the central nervoussystem which made him one of the fathers ofmodern neurology. He defended his doctoralthesis in April 1888 and, four days later, set offfor the journey on skis across Greenland whichmade him famous for the rest of his life. TheFram expedition (1893-1895), using a shipspecially built for drifting in the ice, failed toreach the Pole. Yet Nansen and his companion,Hjalmar Johansen, in the course of a separateventure by skis, sled and kayak, set a new recordof Furthest No rth by almost 150 miles.

A hard act to follow, one might think, but thesecond half of Nansen's life was as remarkable asthe first. He played an important role in the win-ning of Norway's independence from the Swedishcrown in 1905. He served as Norway's ambassa-dor to Britain from 1906 to 1908. He returned toscientific endeavours with pioneering oceano-graphic research. He was also active in humani2tarian work, for which the Nobel Peace Prize for1922 was awarded to him. He was involved bothin famine relief and the settlement of displacedpersons; his greatest achievement was the ex2change of ethnic minorities between Greece andTurkey under the 1923 Convention of Lausanne.

Huntford brings to the telling of this life hisconsiderable gifts as a writer. Even a pedestrianauthor can thrill us with polar tales full of horrorand pathos. Huntford's forte is competence inpolar exploration. He is able to make such un2

promising material as the lengthy period thatNansen and Johansen spent in a hut measuringten by six an enthralling read. A master of narra-tive pace and drive, Huntford also has a keen eyeand ear for details. Phrases such as "the homelytramp of a sewing machine" [214] or "the shabbysnowbound sprawl of wooden houses liberallystocked with petty officials that was Tyumen"[169] bring the past splendidly to life.

Huntford loves the way things — from skibindings to ships — are made and how they work.His explanations are so vivid that even readersindifferent to technology share his enthusiasm.He is also shrewd about the ways men cope witheach other. This shrewdness, presumably honedby years of studying men in the extreme condi-tions of polar travel, stands him in good steadwhen he surveys Lenin's regime and the world,apparently only slightly more savoury, of interna-tional good works.

Perhaps Huntford's greatest achievement ishis treatment of Nansen's personality. When inaction — skiing, dancing, riding to hounds, play-ing bridge, flirting — Nansen was a happy man.He wrote that one day, mending clothes whilewintering in the hut with Johansen, he "discov2ered that it was possible to get 12 threads from apiece of string, and I am as happy as a younggod..." [327] When he was not achieving he wasdesperately unhappy. He seems to have had noclose male friends. Although he loved the com2pany of women, as women loved his, he neverenjoyed a satisfactory long-term relationship. Heand his first wife seemed to have loved each othermore when apart and writing letters than whenactually living in the same house. His secondmarriage, to a woman with whom he had carriedon an affair while his first wife was still alive,was miserable. As a father, he was a disaster.

Huntford may love to explain things but heknows better than to explain Nansen. Instead, hisaim is to show us why Nansen is a modern hero.He employs the motif of the Faustian striver, theman blessed with great gifts and the determina-tion to achieve in ways commensurate with thosegifts, who yet never feels that he has achievedenough. Nansen wanted the approval of only oneman — Fridtjof Nansen — and that he was nevergoing to get. It is legitimate to wonder if in theend he turned to the relief of human sufferingbecause it was a goal that could never be fully

Book Reviews 99

achieved and thus could never disappoint.Nansen's life sums up the modern sense of

despair about reconciling humanity's victoriesand defeats. Since his death, science and technol-ogy have continued to advance, yet the problemshe sought to solve — man-made famine, ethnicconflict in the Balkans — are with us still. Istarted to read this book expecting to learn moreabout a great polar explorer. By the time I wasdone I realized that Nansen counts for far morethan what he did in the world's high latitudes.

Anne Mo rtonWinnipeg, Manitoba

Marijke Spies; Myra Heerspink Scholz (trans.).Arctic Routes to Fabled Lands: Olivier Bruneland the Passage to China and Cathay in theSixteenth Century. Amsterdam: AmsterdamUniversity Press, 1997. 168 pp., illustrations,maps, sources. 159,50, US $37.50, paper; ISBN90-53562263-X. Distributed in North America byUniversity of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI.

Olivier Brunel is not a well-known name. Thispredecessor of William Barents in the search fora northeast passage was born near Brussels in thefirst half of the sixteenth century. Fie made aseries of extended trips to northern Russia, ven-turing far past the White Sea, reaching as far as

Novaya Zemlya in 1585. The better-known Dutchexplorer Barents later thought of himself asstanding where Brunel once stood. Marijke Spies'short book is designed not simply to bring to-gether what little we know of this earlymerchant-explorer but also to re-create theintellectual milieu of the low-country geographersin this period. Spies is concerned to locate Brunelwithin the world of the great cartographerAbraham Ortelius, or even within the cosmos ofthe half-mad scholar Guillaume Postel, as well asthe intersecting commercial empires of theStroganovs and the great Antwerp merchant GillisHooftman, who actually employed Brunel in histrading ventures.

This discussion is based on publishedsources, many of the period itself, but does notpresent fresh documentary evidence. This is, inother words, a product of diligent library researchrather than a repo rt of crumbling documentsnewly retrieved from the archives. Spies repro-

duces many early maps and illustrations, provid-ing a comprehensive view of geographical know-ledge of the Arctic in the period. Her treatment ischronological, following a brief introduction toBrunel himself and to late-medieval geography.The discussion is lively, though sometimesheavily freighted with forgotten names, like aRussian novel with a cast of hundreds. Thepresentation of Arctic Routes is unusual in onerespect, as the author interrupts her well-docu-mented exposition with brief fictional passages,re-imagining sixteenth-century conversationsabout the difficulties of exploration.

How successful this unusual approach willbe, depends on the reader. This middle-aged,annales2style, modernist found the introductionof imagined material off-putting at first, or evenalarming, with the inevitable whiff of fabricatedevidence. In the end, though, the reader mayaccept fictional dialogues as a poly-vocal presen-tation of forgotten debates that presents conflict-ing points of view clearly. They do make Spies'Brunel more like, say, Steffler's Cartwright ratherthan , say, Quinn's Gilbe rt or Williamson's Cabot.Marijke Spies is a professor of literature and herbook is, predictably, not a conventional history.This is not a work of analysis, concerned to tracethe interconnections of capitalism and the emerg-ing modern science of cartography. Nor is it even,really, an historical synthesis, attempting to tracea significant narrative. Arctic Routes is more avery erudite gossip column, in which one discov-ers, for example, that Richard Hakluyt was happyto do contract research on arctic geography forthe Antwerp merchant De Moucheron. Theapproach is not to be despised, for it se rves wellthe author's purpose of re-creating at least theillusion of intellectual context.

In physical terms this is a well2producedvolume and a pleasure to hold, read and contem-plate. The bibliography is complete and thetranslation idiomatic, with the exception of theterm "gulf stream," which Myra Scholz misunder-stands as a common rather than proper noun.There is no index, which makes this publicationmuch less useful than it would otherwise be,particularly given the a ttention paid figures littleknown in the English2speaking world.

Peter PopeSt. John's, Newfoundland


John Logan Allen (ed.). North American Explora-tion. Volume I: A New World Disclosed. Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 1997. xvii + 538pp., illustrations, maps, notes, selected bibliogra-phy, index. US $75, cloth; ISBN 0-8032-1015-9.

New World Disclosed comprises the first segmentof a three-volume overview of the Europeanexploration of the North American continent andadjacent waters from prehistorical times to theend of the nineteenth century. Eight essays traceEuropean awareness of, and involvement in,North America from medieval folklore to theearly seventeenth century. Each is written by anacknowledged expert in the area, evenly balancedbetween the disciplines of history and geography.Most of the contributors assess developmentswithin a specific geographic region, ranging fromDavid Beers Quinn's treatment of the NorthwestPassage in theory and practice, to Robert S.Weddle's account of the Spanish penetration ofthe Caribbean and Central America. As is fittingfor this period and subject, half of the chapters aredevoted primarily to Spanish endeavours.

The editor conceived of this volume as acomprehensive investigation into the process ofEuropean exploration, rather than simply anotherreiteration of the events of discovery. An empha-sis upon the role of human imagination should, itis stated, enable a reader to understand howimages and ideas shaped the course, and meaning,of exploration. The terrae incognitae of NorthAmerica became "known" to Europe in a subjec-tive fashion within a particular cultural context.These are admirable goals. Unfortunately, in spiteof significant accomplishments, the volume as awhole falls well short of the mark. Too fre-quently, we are provided with the bald story ofexploration. Contributors, confronted with thetwin challenges of describing events within theirareas of study and accounting for them, havetended to tell readers, once again, about theexploits of Ponce de León, Hernando de Sota, andtheir contemporaries. The stories are inherentlyinteresting, and frequently are narrated expertly.However, little space remains for analysis andinsightful appraisal. Certainly, the objectives ofthe editor are rarely realized to their full. A pre-sentation focused upon the narration of eventsfrequently leads to slap-dash examination ofcomplex political, economic, or intellectual

contexts. The human imagination becomes littlemore than the quest for mythical straits andi maginary kingdoms. Contributors routinely failto provide readers with a clear, early statement oftheir thesis. Argument, indeed, normally takes aback seat to description.

One essay which does achieve the agendaestablished by the editor is G.M. Lewis' detailedinvestigation of native North Americans' cosmo2logical and geographical beliefs and their influ2ence upon European exploration and knowledge.In an innovative and captivating study, Lewisreveals the depth of the conceptual divide whichseparated indigenous and European views of phy-sical geography. The twin themes are the inabilityof the European explorers to understand, and thuseffectively utilize, most of the information passedon to them, and the likely reliance upon indige-nous sources during this early period for a sur-prising amount of cartographical information.

The organization of the volume possessesboth beneficial and negative consequences. Intreating the theme of the assimilation of geo-graphical knowledge for all North America's eastcoast between 1524 and 1610 as a coherent unit,Karen Kupperman is able to provide a useful,thoughtful portrayal of a large theme, and of therelationships which existed between geographicalunderstanding and settlement pa tterns. Similarly,Alan Macpherson and David Quinn aptly summa2rize extensive information in their cautious stud2ies, respectively, of pre-Columbian discoveriesand the quest for a Northwest Passage. Repeti-tion, however, runs through this volume. Readerswill find the same pen-nail sketches of individualexplorers and voyages, and the same anecdotes,repeated two or three times. Surely, an astuteeditor could have overseen the removal of someof this overlap (none of it consequential to thearguments advanced). Certainly, a careful editorwould have noticed when quotations purportedlyfrom the same published text are at variance,could have gently informed a contributor when asuperior text is used by a fellow author, or mighthave pointed out how one writer's balancedassessment makes mincemeat out of another'sconfident, but rash, pronouncement. But then acareful editor would also have ensured that theindex is reliable (it is not).

Individual factual errors, mostly on smallpoints of little consequence, have been identified

Book Reviews 101

in many chapters. The principal limitation, how-ever, rests in a perhaps excessive general relianceupon standard texts and established views. When,as in the case of W. Michael Mathes' examinationof the early exploration of the Pacific coast, thereare eighty-two citations to his own work withinthe ninety-four endnotes, it is clear that the essaycan not help but be a rehash of existing views andinformation. This is the most telling criticism ofthe volume: Lewis' contribution excepted, A NewWorld Disclosed tells an old story, in reasonablyfamiliar terms. In the hands of experts, this isoften done admirably, and there is considerablevalue in having the overviews collected withinthe pages of one volume. We are not led far,though, into a new world of the cultural valuesand meaning of physical geography.

J.D. AlsopCanborough, Ontario

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (ed.). The EuropeanOpportunity. "An Expanding World," Vol. II;Aldershot. Hamps. and Brookfield, VT: VariorumPress, 1995. xxi + 360 pp., maps, tables, illustra2tions, index. US $107.95, cloth; ISBN 0-860782501-7.

The fifteen previously published essays collectedhere (twelve in English and three in French) formthe second volume in a series edited by A.J. R.Russell-Wood that addresses broad questionsrelated to European exploration and its aftermath.The first five selections ("Means") deal with theissue of how Europeans were able to conceiveand carry out long2distance voyages into un-known oceans. Thomas Goldstein (1965) arguespersuasively that Florentine scientists in the earlyfifteenth century first theorized that the southernhemisphere was suitable for human habitation andthat the western oceans might logically lead toAsia. Their insights were pa rt of the intellectualmilieu that inspired later generations. Similarly,Paul Adam (1960) argues that the techniquescrucial to celestial navigation, which existed byabout 1480, evolved from centuries of marinersfollowing the stars. Richard Unger's a rt icle onPortuguese shipbuilding and African exploration(1987) is the only one in the collection to dealspecifically with ships, featuring an excellentsummary of the development of the caravel. The

essays by Jacques Heers (1960), and CharlesVerlinden (1953), were among the first to studythe crucial role of Italian merchants in financingearly voyages of discovery.

" Motives," often summarized as "God, Gold,and Glory," defines the theme of the next fiveessays. P.E. Russell and Guy Beaujouan, bothwriting in 1960, brush aside the clouds of mythsurrounding Prince Hen ry of Portugal. Beaujouandemonstrates that the prince's "book of secrets"was a work of astrology, not astronomy as someclaim, debunking the persistent notion that theearly voyages were based on secret nauticalinformation. Russell presents the prince as apractical man, concerned that Portugal's Africanvoyages show a profit but who also defined themas a chivalrous crusade against the Muslims.Without Prince Henry's religious vision, Portugalwould not have pioneered the age of discovery.

C.F. Beckingham (1979) examines the spi-ritual motive driving expeditions to Africa insearch of the legendary Christian potentate knownas Prester John, who was viewed in Portugal as apotential ally against the Muslims. Similarly,Pauline Moffitt Watts moves away from thenotion of Columbus as a modern man of scienceto rediscover the importance of Biblical prophesyand scripture in shaping his outlook. Her 1985essay provides an impo rtant corrective to earlierhistoriography, reminding readers of Columbus'zeal to liberate the Holy Land from the Muslimsand to spread the knowledge of Christ to allpeoples. Andrew M. Watson (1967) argues thatthe differing ratios of gold to silver in the Chris-tian and Muslim worlds influenced flows ofbullion back and forth across the cultural divide.A relative shortage of gold in fifteenth2centuryChristian Europe provided a powerful incentive toseek out the gold-rich kingdoms of Africa.

The third group of essays, headed "Momen2tum," explores various traditions in medievalEurope that were later adapted to colonial experi-ence in the Americas. Charles Verlinden's 1966essay traces the organization of frontier societiesand sugar plantation agriculture to the Crusaderkingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean. CharlesJulian Bishko's 1958 conference paper examinesmedieval Castile, where borderlands disputed byChristians and Muslims were exploited by herd-ing until more settled conditions made agriculturepossible. In Ireland and Wales (Rees Davies,


1992), other Europeans also developed a traditionof frontier warfare alternating with truces and cul-tural accommodation. These traditions servedEuropeans well as they explored beyond theknown world. So did the mapping of real (andimaginary) places. Felipe Fernández-Armesto's1986 article examines cartographic evidence toargue that the Azores were discovered in thefourteenth century. Commercial documents, likemaps, provide some of our only records aboutmedieval long-distance trade. Robe rt S. Lopez's1943 article examines the most famous of theseaccounts and suggests that Italian experience inAsia was more extensive than these few docu-ments indicate.

Specialists in the Age of Discovery arealready familiar with most, if not all, of thesevenerable essays, whose elegant and path2break-ing arguments have now become commonplace.The collection will be useful mainly for scholarsin other fields and for libraries lacking a richassortment of scholarly periodicals. The editorcould have served those audiences better byproviding a fuller historiographical context for theessays. For example, what is the current state ofscholarship regarding Columbus' intellectualformation, discussed (with key differences) byboth Goldstein and Watts? Has Watson's call forserious scholarship in monetary history beenanswered by subsequent decades of work oninternational bullion flows? How many of thetopics covered by the essays were significantlyadvanced by works published for the 1992Columbian Quincentary? By providing answersto these questions, the editor could have greatlyenhanced the value of this classic collection.

Carla Rahn PhillipsMinneapolis, Minnesota

Om Prakash (ed.). European Commercial Expan-sion in Early Modern Asia. " An ExpandingWorld," Vol. X; Hamps. and Brookfield, VT:Variorum Press, 1997. xxvi + 330 pp., tables,figures, illustrations, maps, index. US $112.95,cloth; ISBN 0-86078-508-4.

This book is a collection of fifteen trend-settingpapers published in different journals between1960 to 1992. These encompass the commercialactivities of the different European powers in the

Indian Ocean, such as the Portuguese, the Dutch,the English, the French and the Danes. Thevolume is the tenth in the series dealing withEuropean impact on World History from 1450 to1800. The goal is to provide a reference book onEuropean presence beyond Europe in the earlymodern period which also encapsulates changinghistoriography on the subject. The focus thenshifts from dominance, conquest and control tointeraction with non-European communities andgroups within a broader global perspective.

Trade between Europe and Asia dates to atleast the beginning of the Christian era. Therewas nevertheless a structural change in the patternof this trade after the entry of the Portuguese andother Europeans in the Indian Ocean network atthe end of the fifteenth century. It is now acceptedthat rather than a bilateral arrangement betweenthe countries of Europe and Asia, this tradeshould appropriately be termed Euro-Asian.Traditional historiography had accepted thatluxury cargoes comprising of textiles, spices ortea were transported from Asia and sold in thehome ports of Europe. Recent research presents afar more complex picture.

European trading companies found it neces-sary to procure cargoes from one pa rt of Asiawith goods they had obtained in another, anobvious example being the shipment of Indiancloth to Indonesia to pay for spices. The Europe2ans were often unable to supply goods at compe2titive prices in Asia, nor could they generate anadequately large demand for them. As a result,they had to rely on precious metals for paymentof local commodities. This need for preciousmetals, largely of American origin, to pay for thegoods from Asia led to the development of anorganic and interactive relationship between thetwo ends of European expansion.

This complexity of the trading network in theIndian Ocean is also reflected in the variety ofwatercraft used. These were of several kinds:those built in Europe but kept in Asian waters;those commissioned by Europeans and built atAsian shipyards; or locally built vessels operatedby private individuals. From the seventeenthcentury onwards, more than any other Europeanpower, it was the English who were more heavilyinvolved in shipping. It was this vigorous 'private'sector that gave the British a domin ant position inintra-Asian trade.

Book Reviews 103

In contrast, large-scale official involvementand the forging of commercial links marked theactivities of the Dutch East India Company acrossthe Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Animportant partner in this was Japan where theDutch established a factory in 1609 to be fol-lowed by the English in 1613. Though suspicionand hostility marked the relationship between theJapanese Shogunate and foreign merchant groups,it nevertheless continued, as it was advantageousto both partners.

It has been argued that trade cannot bestudied in isolation as an economic phenomenon,but needs to be looked at within the larger socio-political and military context. In keeping with thisobjective, van Santen's study compares the per-formance of Dutch and Gujarati merchants trad-ing from Surat to the region of the Persian Gulfand dealing in cotton piece goods. The analysisshows that differences in entrepreneurial behav-iour between the Asian and western trader wereinsignificant. But where the VOC had an edgewas in their control of superior technological andmaritime means for enforcing their policies ascompared with those available to their Asiancounterparts. Nor was the Company averse tousing this advantage; in most cases market con-trol over a product was established only afterviolence was used against Asian traders and theirrulers.

Another paper that departs from the generaltheme of commercial expansion relates to naviga-tion between Portugal and Asia in the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries. Based on a quantita-tive analysis of data collated from shipping lists,the paper argues that for seven decades in thesixteenth century, from 1521 to 1590, theCarreira da India dominated Indian Ocean trade.The carrack emerged as the craft of commerce,though earlier fleets comprised a combination ofnaus, galleons, caravels and pinnaces, with a greatdiversity of tonnage. The complement of thesevessels was equally disparate and included sail-ors, gunners, carpenters, cooks, etc. as also elitegroups such as military and naval officers, bu-reaucrats, merchants and missionaries. 1t was thislatter category of captains and Jesuits that had anedge over the others in matters of survival, bothin terms of better nutrition and a guaranteed placein the ship's longboat in case of shipwreck. Sig-nificantly both these aspects of trade and eco-

nomic activity are somewhat under-represented inthe present collection.

Himanshu Prabha RayNew Delhi, India

M.N. Pearson (ed.). Spices in the Indian OceanWorld. "An Expanding World," Vol. XI; Hamps.and Brookfield, VT: Variorum Press, 1996.xxxvii + 359 pp., tables, figures, illustrations,index. US $115.95, cloth; ISBN 0-86078-510-6.

This is a collection of fifteen a rticles in Englishand French and one excerpt from Gracia de Orta,"Colloquios das simples e drogas da India" on thespice-trade, mainly focusing on the pepper tradefrom 1400 to 1700. Some, such as Frederic C.Lane's "The Mediterranean Spice Trade: FurtherEvidence of its Revival in the Sixteenth Century"(1941), are quite old and set much of the termsfor the debates. Most are well known to special-ists (for example, two articles by Jan Kieniewiczon Kerala, Charles Wake's a rticle on pepper-imports in Europe or Charles Ralph Boxer'sarticle on Atjeh and the spice-trade to the RedSea). This reviewer did not know two a rt icles —by Peter Musgrave and C.R. Da Silva.

There is a brief introduction to the a rticles byMichael Pearson (22 pages) which — as alwayswith Pearson — does an excellent job in summa-rizing the state of knowledge on this topic untilabout 1985. But as these are mostly "classic"articles, Pearson does not confuse us with dis-cussing recent literature in his introduction. Thus,James Boyajian's challenge to the establishedviews on the size of the return2cargoes of theCarreira da India is not mentioned. Yet Pearsondoes include Niels Steensgaard's older a rticle onthe return-cargoes of the Carreira, though it isnow seriously outdated. Similarly, new writing onthe Dutch East India Company is not mentioned.We now know that the VOC had a lead over theEnglish in the trade in Indian textiles as much asin spices until the early eighteenth century (con-trary to Pearson's claim on p.xxxiii).

It is this which makes this both an easy anda difficult volume to review. Easy, because it ishard to argue with a collection of articles which,presumably, have been vetted by peer2review notonce but thrice (although not every statement cango unchallenged. It is simply not true, for


instance, that "over a broad price range the de-mand for spices in India was inelastic" as OmPrakash asserts in an article on the VOC [336]).Generally, then, the articles are fairly representa-tive of the scholarship in this field.

What makes the volume more difficult toreview is the logic of the publication itself. Whatkind of a market do the publishers seek to reachwith this volume? It is too difficult and too spe-cialized for students and can hardly se rve as agood introduction. For the specialists it hardlyreflects "revisionist interpretations and newapproach" as Russel-Wood claims in his introduc-tion [xi] since it is a collection of older a rticleswhich instead reflect the idéé recues. It may bevery useful to collect older articles if these are notobtainable in libraries anywhere (for example,why is there not a reprint of the Chronistas doTissuary or the Revista das Colonias?). But onecan hardly claim that access to articles whichappeared in journals like The American HistoricalReview is difficult.

As such this volume is the academic equiva-lent of Terminator 2 and Jaws 3. With mountingproduction-costs publishers tend nowadays onlyto pick books with proven sales, whether it be abook by Robert Ludlum or this one. "Establishedscholars" see their views published and re-pub-lished, while younger scholars or those fromcountries like Denmark, Holland, Russia or Spainwhich do not have an Anglo-Saxon academictradition are either published not at all or onlywith obscure local publishers. Such volumes tendto reinforce the "winner take all" tendency in aca2demic publishing and by implication in a narrowacademic job-market. If all publishers go for"safe" books as Variorum does (and they increas-ingly do), then the result will be that a smallgroup of scholars will totally monopolize theacademic discussion and jobs — for the simplereason that they get their views published andothers do not.

Given that universi ty-budgets are limitedexpensive books like this will crowd out workspublished with smaller or non-English publishers.I am therefore not happy with this book — notwith its contents so much as with the conceptbehind it — and would strongly encourage Vario2rum to publish either original research or olderwork which is difficult to obtain, rather than merecompilations of art icles which have already been

published in established and accessible journals.

R.J. BarendseLeiden, The Netherlands

Sinnapah Arasaratnam. Ceylon and the Dutch,1600-1800: External Influences and InternalChanges in Early Modern Sri Lanka. CollectedStudies Series; Aldershot, Hamps. & Brookfield,VT: Variorum, 1996. xii + 332 pp., map, index.US $97.95, cloth; ISBN 0286078-57923.

The late Sinappah Arasaratnam was an activehistorian during forty prolific years. He contrib-uted extensively to numerous reputable journals,to the point where readers without access tospecialized libraries face real difficulty gettingaccess to his publications. Ceylon and the Dutchis therefore a welcome collection.

The collection opens with "Ceylon and theDutch, 1630-1800: an essay in historiography"(1995), in which Arasaratnam comments on theDutch sources documenting Sri Lankan history:" We are thus left with a situation in which historyhas to be written primarily from the record of therulers and aggressors. Fortunately, the abundanceof the material available and the diversity ofcircumstances of its origin enable the criticalresearcher to engage in reconstruction with a viewto getting as close to the truth as possible." Statearchives in The Hague, Colombo, Madras andJakarta contain hundreds of meters of documents,all dealing with the so-called Dutch Period. TheDutch archives are particularly abundant anddiverse, yet only a very limited pa rt has beenpublished. The archivists in the National Archivesin Colombo have engaged in a praiseworthyattempt to edit an impo rtant series of Englishtranslations of "Memoirs" of the Dutch Governorsand administrators (Colombo 1910-1974). It isobvious from his footnotes that Arasaratnam hasmade considerable use of these printed sources,and though he rarely gives us the kind of detailsthat these sources are capable of supporting,Arasaratnam has provided us with a considerableamount of information, as when he underlines therole of local trade by members of the fishers'caste in his synthetic survey of "Ceylon in theIndian Ocean trade: 1500-1800" (1987).

Through his articles, Arasaratnam describesthe drastic effects of the colonial presence in the

Book Reviews 105

Sri Lankan economy between the sixteenth andeighteenth centuries. The island had much to offerto the outside world — everything from cinnamonto elephants to precious gems. The returnsfinanced imports of Indian cotton, rice and othercommodities, while the profits benefitted foreignand Sri Lankan traders alike. This situation,however, changed thoroughly after the arrival ofEuropeans in the sixteenth century. Sri Lankantraders and shippers gradually lost their share inthe long distance trade as well as in the valuableregional connections maintained with SouthIndia. The Sri Lankan economy was increasinglysubordinated to the interests first of the Portu-guese and then the Dutch. Under the Dutch EastIndia Company (VOC), locals were excluded,with few exceptions, from all international trade.

These themes are carefully explored in sev-eral articles. In "The Kingdom of Kandy: aspectsof its external relations and commerce" (1960),Arasaratnam examines the struggle between theDutch and the Kings of Kandy to regain revenuesfrom the trade with India. According toArasaratnam, "Loss of political independencebrought commercial dependence in its trains." In"Dutch sovereignty in Ceylon: a historical surveyof its problems" (1958), Arasaratnam discussesthe subject of the legitimacy of the Dutch pres-ence in the island by delving deep into the viewsof each party on the issue of sovereignty over theisland. In "Baron van Imhoff and Dutch policyand Ceylon 1736-1740" (1963), Arasaratnamexplains how the Governor wished to retaliateagainst the Kandyan Kingdom by creating enmitybetween the two parties who fought for succes-sion — a strategy similar to that employed suc-cessfully to divide the Sultanate of Mataram inJava early in the eighteenth century. Van Imhoffeven considered invading Kandy, but was eventu-ally convinced by the superiors in Batavia thatwarfare would be too costly, if possible at all. Thewar which eventually took place between theDutch and the Kandyan kingdom in 1761 provedthem right.

In "The indigenous ruling class under colo-nial rule in Dutch maritime Ceylon" (1971) and in"Elements of social and economic change inDutch maritime Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 1658-1796"(1985), Arasaratnam discusses the impact ofDutch domination on social and administrativesectors in the Sri Lankan society. For instance, he

shows how members of governing castes adaptedto the new situation while still maintaining theirpositions through conversion to Christianity. Yettheir acceptance of baptism for their children,their attendance at church, and their willingnessto send their children to schools managed by theCompany proved to be superficial, even insincere,in the opinions of the Dutch. Tamil officials in thenorth certainly adhered to their Hindu practices,while their colleagues in the South never gave upBuddhism. Labour is another theme explored byArasaratnam in these essays. The Companyordered the construction and maintenance ofdefence works, warehouses and other buildings,all of which required mobilization of local labouras well as slaves from South India or from theIndonesian Archipelago. Members of the fishers'caste developed into major professional groupssuch as transporters, craftsmen and carpenters.The fishers' caste, Arasaratnam explains, there2fore moved upwards in the social strata under theDutch administration.

At this juncture Arasaratnam shifts hisattention to the history of the Dutch educationsystem. In "Protestants: the first phase, 1650-1880" (1978) and in "The first century ofProtestant Christianity in Jaffna, 1658-1750"(1985) he examines the Dutch Seminary ofNallur, founded in 1690, and the Seminary ofColombo, founded in 1696. Both institutions,established to educate the children of Sri Lankanelites, operated successfully.

The collection closes with an essay on "SriLanka's Tamils: under colonial rule" (1994). It isan understandable choice. Arasaratnam was bornin the North, so that the history of the old King-dom of Jaffna was close to his heart. Based on hisbroad learning, Arasaratnam gives a beautifulsynthetic survey, starting with the first Tamilmigrants in the third century BC. He focuses onthe changes and developments of Tamil societyunder colonial rule, some of which in his opinioninfluenced Tamil identity. Arasaratnam insiststhat "there were positive factors that contributedto the building of communal solidarity and self-consciousness." It is always risky to connect thepast and present too closely in a causal way. It is,moreover, sheer coincidence that 1994, the yearArasaratnam wrote this a rt icle, was the year thatthe old Dutch fort of Jaffna was demolished bythe Tamil Tigers. Arasaratnam might have been


astonished, since wiping out these unique monu-mental traces carries no weight to change the p ast.The Dutch period is a part of Sri Lankan history,a period in which many changes have occurredthat are worthwhile to study. Throughout his veryproductive life, Arasaratnam was fascinated bythis process of change; as he notes at the end ofthe opening article, the interaction of Ceylon andthe Dutch presents an "interesting interactionbetween a traditional Asian society and a modern-ising European power which is intruding intomany sectors of that society."

Lodewijk J. WagenaarAmsterdam, The Netherlands

Holden Furber; Rosane Rocher (ed.). PrivateFortunes and Company Profits in the India Tradein the Eighteenth Century. Collected StudiesSeries; Aldershot, Hamps. & Brookfield, VT:Variorum, 1997. xi + 322 pp., frontispiece, index.US $89.95, cloth; ISBN 0-86078-619-6.

The Variorum Press continues to reprint a rt icles,lectures and essays of well-respected scholars. Itis apparently a profitable business, though theprice of these volumes must surely discourage theindividual buyer. Several Indian historians, C.R.Boxer and others have meanwhile seen theirshort-length output reprinted. The articles in theiroriginal sty le are always simply photocopied andassembled, with the original pagination main-tained. This "Collected Studies Series" has bynow become so extended that no longer are onlytop rank scholars having their work re-published.

This particular volume, however, belongs tothe old tradition. Between 1950 and 1975, HoldenFurber (1903-1993), professor at the Universi tyof Pennsylvania, was one of the best-knownexperts of the history of European expansion inAsia. Since 1976 students have profited from hisstandard work Rival Empires of Trade in theOrient 1600-1800. Furber's broad knowledge ofBritish, Dutch, French and Scandinavian archivesand literature had made him the ideal person towrite such a nice comprehensive survey, in whichhe compares and characterises the differentEuropean Asiatic companies. The Variorumvolume contains fourteen minor products of hispen, published between 1935 and 1976; twolectures are published here for the first time.

The articles are printed in the order in whichthey originally appeared. This seems an obviousdecision, if the intent was to show the evolutionof Furber's interests. Sometimes, however, onereturns in a later phase to one's old favourites —and Furber did so — and then a thematic orderbecomes more logical. The priority given to thechronological appearance of the articles ratherthan their thematic consistency means that thefirst article deals with proposals for Anglo-Span-ish commercial agreements concerning the tradeof India, China, the Philippines and SpanishAmerica in 1793, while A rticle XII covers theIndian trade in the Pacific 160021800; A rticle IVdescribes Madras in 1787, while A rticle X dealswith Madras in the mid-eighteenth century. AndA rticle V on the overland route from Europe toIndia is followed by an essay on the financialrecords of the East India Company.

Human relations and conditions in trade inAsia, particularly in eighteenth century India,have Furber's interest. He takes his readers to thearchives, showing them the shipping-lists, corres-pondence, and other documents. Amazed by thesteady increase of the British count ry trade inAsia from the 1720s onwards, Furber then dis-covered the importance of this trade, of which theDutch VOC became the most significant victim inthe eighteenth century. He shows how interwoventhe interests of Europeans and non-Europeanswere in this trade and how rich individuals be2came while in their companies' se rv ice. The titleof this volume alludes to this, but does not coverthe full cargo. Though four art icles deal with thethree British presidencies in India (Madras,Bengal and Bombay), most of the others do nothave a direct relation to the title. Thus, one essayexamines American trade with India between1784 and 1812, another focuses upon a mysteri-ous scheme for an entrepôt on an uninhabitedisland in the Eastern seas, offered in 1786 to theSwedish crown, while another concerns the stock-holders in the E ast India Company, among whomwere a large number of Dutchmen. Between 1783and 1791 about one thousand Dutchmen boughtor sold India shares, so that one could almost callthis company the Anglo2Dutch E ast India Com2pany. The volume is full of such insights.

Jaap R. BruijnLeiden, The Netherlands

Book Reviews 107

Pieter Emmer and Femme Gaastra (eds.). TheOrganization of Interoceanic Trade in EuropeanExpansion, 1450-1800. "An Expanding World,"Vol. XIII; Aldershot. Hamps. and Brookfield,VT: Variorum Press, 1996. xxvi + 429 pp., maps,tables, figures, index. US $134.95, cloth; ISBN 0286078-505-X.

European colonial empires may now be virtuallyextinct but their legacy is still very much with us.It was most recently manifested in the attentionlavished on the quincentenaries of the voyages ofColumbus and da Gama. Outstanding for value,scope and quality in the resultant flood of learn-ing old and new is Variorum's republication ofkey essays dealing with nearly every aspect ofEurope's initial expansion into the wider world.In the volume under review the distinguishedDutch scholars Pieter Emmer and Femme Gaastrabring together eighteen art icles concerned, di-rectly or indirectly, with the ways in which thisprocess affected the organization of trade. In acrisp introduction they neatly sketch the salientfeatures, arguing, as few would deny, that thoughthe impact of expansion was substantial it was notfundamental and that the roots of Europe's subse-quent industrialization lay elsewhere. Theyoutline the different ways in which differentpowers attempted to handle new long-distancetrades, contrasting the royal or private monopo-lies favoured by the pioneering Iberian monar2chies with the joint-stock (and also monopoly)corporations eventually employed to such goodeffect by Holland and England. They consider thecircumstances in which such companies failed,and they stress the extent to which even the mosteffective were unable to control the doings ofprivate individuals, whose role in oceanic com-merce remained as vital as in Europe's earliertrade. Pursuing the theme of the fragility ofmetropolitan authority they further note thatimperial growth was accompanied by the spreadof piracy and privateering, whose economicimpact was not, however, necessarily harmful —at least on those engaged in it.

Given the limited amount of space availableto the editors and the sheer mass of material con-fronting them, some topics inevitably receive lessattention than they deserve and some are simplysqueezed out. There is little, other than inciden-tally, on the growth of the European redistributive

trades in exotic products. There is nothing ofsubstance on the English Navigation Acts andtheir bearing on the country's subsequent com-mercial and naval primacy. Smuggling, whichwith tea, silver and tobacco reached an unprece2dented scale, importance and sophistication, islargely ignored. And most remarkably, indige-nous commerce is overlooked, notwithstanding(and contrary to what the editors assert) an exten-sive literature on everything from the No rthAmerican fur trade to successful local competi-tion with Europeans in Asia.

The articles reprinted amply illustrate thegeneral points raised in the editorial introduction.The oldest dates from 1929 and the most recentfrom 1990, giving readers a bird's eye view ofshifts in historical interests and fashions. Someare primarily presentations of the fruits of detailedarchival work, such as Herbert Heaton's attractiveaccount of the fortunes of a Leed's merchant inNapoleonic Brazil (which incidentally throws aflood of light on the social and economic condi-tions then prevailing there). So, too, in their res-pective contributions, Bowen and Vermeulenexamine, with solid statistical backing, the diffi2culties of recruiting Europeans to serve in Asia,and the even greater difficulties of getting themthere. Other authors suggest revisions to thereceived wisdom of their time, with JonathanIsrael sharply criticizing the depiction of Dutchactivities in the Mediterranean in 1590-1713 byFernand Braude! and Ralph Davis. A few papers,notably those of Pearson and Chaudhuri, inge2niously and fruitfully apply ideas and techniquesderived from other disciplines to historical data.

Naturally enough, some of the essays repro-duced are starting to show their age. The statisticsin A.P. Usher's classic account (1932) of thefailures of the Spanish shipbuilding industry aresuspect and need to be compared with those(themselves not above suspicion) in PierreChaunu's massive Seville et l'Atlantique, 1504-1650. But the oldest piece in the collection, that(1929) of Violet Harbour discussing the differingevolution of English and Dutch ships, still holdsthe field. An even more ancient truth, the dictumof St. Francis Xavier that empire meant no morethan to conjugate the verb "to rob" in all itsmoods and tenses, is notably confirmed byZahedieh's paper on early Jamaican piracy. Yetthis also reveals the extent to which such prime-


val means of capital accumulation could underpineconomic growth.

To assemble a representative collection ofessays on so large a theme as trade and Europeanexpansion is a formidable task with which Emmerand Gaastra have striven valiantly and on thewhole successfully. They have reprinted andmade generally available seminal a rticles other-wise hidden in various specialist journals. Theyinclude contributions from eight countries in threecontinents which will be of value to expe rts andstudents alike, not only for the ideas and informa2tion which they contain, but also for the indica-tions which they give as to how thinking on sofundamental a matter has evolved.

G.V. ScammellCambridge, England

Susan Socolow (ed.). The Atlantic Staple Trade.Volume I: Commerce and Politics and Volume II:The Economics of Trade. "An Expanding World,"Vo l. IX; Aldershot. Hamps. and Brookfield, VT:Variorum Press, 1996. xxiv +807 pp., tables,figures, index. US $215, cloth; ISBN 0-86078-511-4.

Those interested in early modern contributions to"globalization" will want to know about thisambitious reprint series from Variorum Press,currently projected as thirty-four volumes underthirty-one titles. The series subtitle, "The Euro-pean Impact on World History, 1450-1800," isappropriate, though one remembers SusanSubramanyam challenging its "North Atlantictriumphalism" while introducing an earlier vol-ume in the same series.

Susan M. Socolow, a Latin Americanist atEmory Universi ty , assembles two volumes thatare representative of the general approach of thisseries. Thirty-three English2language articles andbook chapters, originally published between 1936and 1992 though two-thirds of them were pub-lished since 1980, are given continuous pagina-tion in addition to their original, allowing a usefulgeneral index. The editor's introduction is sur-prisingly brief and, like the selection, makes itclear that the focus will be on specific empiricalwork. She shows little interest in the original"staples theory" of Harold 1nnis and Mel Watkins,or the controversial claims of the dependency

theories of Andre Gunder Frank and ImmanuelWallerstein. "Mercantilism" is little more than acliché here, rather than an economic milieu withinwhich there were changing priorities.

The introduction can afford to be briefbecause the first of the eight a rticles reprintedunder the title "general trade" is Teodoro Hampe-Martinez's thoughtful overview "Structure andMagnitude of the Colonial Economic Interdepen-dencies (1500-1750): A World Trade in Develop-ment" (1990). The European perspective is dis-cernible, and a more specifically Iberian slant toboth argument and sources adds to the article'sfreshness. (The same can be said for these twovolumes more generally.) In sketching the Afri-can, American and Asian trades with Europe,Hampe-Martinez discovers no "crisis of theseventeenth century" in world trade. Jose Jobsonde Andrade Arruda's 1991 essay on mercantileinvestment in the Luso-Brazilian Empire alsoincludes a wide-ranging and insightful theoreticaldiscussion. The theoretical and empirical bothlead to the conclusion that it paid to have colo-nies. He also suggests that highly mobile, non2specialized, and very pro fitable merchant capitalbecame blended with less profitable and lessmobile investments in production (agricultural orindustrial) only when profit margins from tradingwere reduced. Other reprints in this categoryinclude Ralph Davis' two classic articles onEnglish foreign trade, R.C. Nash on the IrishAtlantic trade (1985), Paul Butel's 1986 a rticle,"Traditions and Changes in French Atl antic TradeBetween 1780 and 1830" and the pioneering"Trade Between Western Africa and the AtlanticWorld in the Pre-Colonial Era," by David Eltisand Lawrence C. Jennings (1988).

The five articles chosen to represent studiesof "political economy" avoid discussion of theeconomic policies of fiscal-military states, andemphasize Spanish American smuggling and war.Engel Sluiter's fifty-year2old article on earlyDutch-Spanish rivalry in the Caribbean continuesto be useful, detailing the place of the Araya Bay(Venezuela) salt as the lure that brought thou2sands of Dutch mariners to become familiar withnavigation in the area where they raked salt,smuggled, and eventually raided. ZacariasMoutoukias' article (1988) on the seventeenth-century trade of Buenos Aires explores a morestructural weakness in Spanish control, namely

Book Reviews 109

government connivance at illegal trade to helpfinance local administration. Ironically, thearrangements actually strengthened a smuggler-landlord élite that needed and supported the sameimperial regime it violated. The first of two sho rtarticles by Jerry W. Cooney (1987, 1989) dis2cusses Yankee smuggling in the Rio de la Plata inthe decades after the American revolution, reveal-ing smuggling in its more traditional role as asolvent of imperial loyalties. Cooney's secondarticle studies the merchant consulado of BuenosAires between 1796 and 1806. The volume closeswith Selwyn H.H. Carrington's familiar 1987article on the devastating impact of the AmericanRevolution on British West Indian economies.

The ten articles on "specific commodities,"which dominate the second volume, avoid thefish, fur, timber, or wheat that might have specialinterest for readers of The Northern Mariner/LeMarin du nord. Nor is there anything on the sugarindustry except Gilman Ostrander's durable 1956article on the colonial molasses trade. TheCarolina rice trade is represented by R.C. Nash'sexcellent 1992 article, which supercedes Hen ry C.Dethloff's 1982 study, also reproduced here.Nashexemplifies the newer commodity histories thatdetail markets as thoroughly as production. JacobM. Price's general article, on the relationshipbetween Chesapeake economic development andthe rise of the French tobacco monopoly, antici-pates many features of his definitive subsequentwork on various aspects of the trade. Only thecomment "Local regulations against smokingwere still being passed in Burgundy in the1680s." [441] reminds the reader that the a rt iclewas written in I 964.Catherine Lugar's companionpiece, on the Bahia tobacco industry in the latecolonial period, reveals a very different pa ttern.Also included are well-known a rticles on cochi-neal, logwood, cacao, and hides, by RaymondLee (1947), A rthur Wilson (1936), EugenioPinero (1988), and Rudy Bauss (1986) respec-tively. This section ends with Dauril Alden's1964 study of Yankee sperm whaling in Brazilianwaters at the end of the eighteenth century.

If the discussion of commodities shows astrong Latin American emphasis, the articles on"shipping" do not. Jerry W. Cooney's third a rt iclein this collection, on merchant shipbuilding onthe Paraguay River in the decade after 1796, isthe only study with a Latin American focus.

Christopher French's 1987 sketch of productivitychanges in British Atlantic ship utilization iscomplemented by Kenneth Morgan's 1989 studyof Bristol's Atlantic shipping patterns. JulianGwyn's "Shipbuilding for the Royal Navy inColonial New England" completes the offeringson shipping. Geoffrey Rossano's engaging, ifindiscriminate, 1988 account of the colonialAtlantic shipowning ventures of SamuelTownsend of Oyster Bay, Long Island, shouldhave been included in this section as well, ratherthan later in the volume.

The concluding reprints, on "trade and eco-nomy," include Morris Altman's (1988) statisticalstudy of economic growth in early eighteenth-century Canada, as well as the familiar magiste-rial overviews of Jacob Price (1984) and John J.McCusker and Russell Menard (1985).

Readers of this journal will likely be familiarwith many of the classic articles reprinted herethat concern the English-speaking Atl antic,though it is helpful to have a number of them sohandy. It is notewothy that, of the sixteen a rticlesthat concern Latin America, only two concern thesixteenth-century heyday of the Iberian Atlantic.This may be accidental, or it may reflect theinterests of those Latin American scholars whoare likely to write in English. This collection willbe of special value to those readers without aknowledge of Spanish or Portuguese who arecurious about recognized scholarship on colonialLatin American trades. However, the main marketfor this rather high2priced cargo of historicalstaples will be those libraries that do not have anestablished collections of the relevant journals.

Ian K. SteeleLondon, Ontario

Patrick Manning (ed.). Slave Trades, 1500-1800:Globalization of Forced Labour. 'An ExpandingWorld," Vol. XV; Aldershot. Hamps. and Brook-field, VT: Variorum Press, 1996. xxxiv + 361 pp.,maps, tables, figures, index. US $115.95, cloth;ISBN 0-86078-512-2.

This collection of reprinted articles forms a partof the multi-volume series A n Expanding World.The European Impact on World History, 1450-1800, edited by A.J.R. Russell2Wood. The pur-pose of the series is to collect a rt icles on various


aspects of the global impact of the Europeanoverseas expansion, scattered in publications ona broad range of often unrelated topics. Theseaspects include cross-cultural encounters, tech-nology, commerce, governments and notions ofempires, societies and cultures created by theexpansion, exploitation, and the power relation-ship between Europe and the world. Although thepresent volume, Slave Trades, is listed in the"Trade and Commodities" segment, the selectionof material makes it relevant to most of thethemes covered by the Expanding World series.

The collection is divided into five sections,supported by a general bibliography. The firstsection, with three articles, offers an overview ofthe African slave trade. It highlights the majorcarriers, volume estimates, and the impact onAfrican and American societies. The next twosections form the bulk of the collection. The firstfive essays deal with various aspects of the slavetrade from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centu-ries. They are followed by six a rticles studyingthe trade and its abolition in the eighteenth andearly nineteenth centuries. The last section con-tains three case studies illustrating the effects ofthe slave trade outside Africa.

The selection of essays stresses the geo-graphical and topical diversity involved in thestudy of the export of slaves from Africa. In-cluded are not only articles that deal with Africaand the Americas but also a few that focus on theMediterranean and southwestern Asia. The paperspursue a broad variety of themes, including theneed for labour, the engine behind the growth ofAtlantic slave trade; its demographic dimensions,social and political links, and economic impor-tance; and last but not least the slaves themselves.They are shown not only as passive objects of thetrade, but as proactive players who resistedenslavement, sought to avoid exploitation, andpursued strategies aimed at improving their lot.

Patrick Manning, the volume's editor, se-lected articles both by scholars who had mademajor contributions to the study of slavery andthe African slave trade, and by those whose focususually lies elsewhere. Since the key objective ofthe collection was to illustrate the thematic com-plexity and geographical extent of the slave trade,the editor was obliged to work with papers ofvarying quality, length, and level of specializa-tion. As a result, some important authors and

seminal articles were left out, while others wereincluded because they dealt with impo rtant butpoorly covered areas or themes. Overall, Man-ning's strategy was very successful, for thevolume presents the African slave trade and itsramifications from a remarkably rich kaleido2scope of perspectives.

Despite its impressive breadth of coverage,however, the collection does not fulfil the missionexpressed in the title: to document the variousforms and branches of trade in slaves in theperiod 1500-1800. The volume is conceptualizedaround the export of slaves from one continent,Africa, primarily to the Americas. The enslave-ment of native Americans constitutes a secondaryfocus. Slave trade and slavery in other parts of theworld, in particular Asia, are either poorly cov-ered or entirely neglected. This is an impo rtantomission, given the claim expressed in the vol-ume's title that the overseas expansion broughtabout globalization of slavery and forced labour,a notion that many would consider overstated.

Scholars of maritime history will find thevolume of interest if only because much of theslave trade was seabome. The essays offer data oncarrying capacity of the transoceanic trade, cargocapacity of ships, and the transportation logisticsof the Atlantic slave trade. However, only onearticle, by Jean-Michel Filliot, deals directly withshipboard issues, such as manpower and dailyoperations of the slave ships, illness on board,and so on. Unfortunately, this a rticle is one of theweakest in the collection: it is only eight pageslong; parts of it are in outline format; and it mixesextremely general information with very interest-ing but undeveloped data.

Overall, the volume presents a well2con2ceived, rich, and inspiring selection of recentwritings on the history of the African slave trade.It effectively illustrates the complexity and multi-ple dimensions of a key and haunting aspect ofEuropean overseas expansion and its impact onworld history. Although weak in its coverage ofregions and issues that did not form a part of theAfrica-Americas slave trading nexus, SlaveTrades, 150021800 represents not only a valuablecomponent of the Expanding World series, butalso a very useful research and teaching tool.

Ivana ElblPeterborough, Ontario

Book Reviews 111

William F. Page. The Dutch Triangle: The Neth2erlands and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1621-1664.New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1997.xxxv + 262 pp., tables, illustrations, maps, photo-graphs, notes, index. US $66, cloth; ISBN 0-8153-2881-8.

This is a curious work. Ostensibly a revision of a1975 New York University PhD thesis, it con-tains few of the primary sources that one wouldexpect in a dissertation, there is little evidence ofrevision (if by this is meant incorporation of therecent literature) and, despite its title, it is notparticularly focused on the slave trade. A moreaccurate description would be a survey of Dutchactivities in the seventeenth-century Atlanticworld based on the older secondary literature.Thus the author is able to write "European histori-ans rarely accept the proposition that an Africanboy was better off growing up in his village...thanbeing taken away to some `civilized' world,enslaved." [218] But it is hard to believe this wastrue in 1975, much less a quarter century later.

The volume might see serv ice as an introduc-tory survey of the early Dutch Atlantic empire. Ithas a short introduction on slavery in the Atlanticworld, and a brief review of the European back-ground to Dutch expansion into the Atlantic. Themain body provides a chapter each on the Dutchin Africa, South America and the Caribbeantogether, and North America except for the Carib2bean. North America so defined gets an extrachapter on Africans in the New World, thoughthere were far fewer peoples of African descenton the North American mainland than in SouthAmerica and the Caribbean. As this suggests,there are striking and unexplained imbalances.Ninety pages of text deal with New Netherlands— the destination of a tiny fragment of the slavetrade incorporated into the title as well as theslavery that concerns the introduction — com-pared to a mere sixty pages on Dutch Brazil,Surinam, and the Dutch Caribbean together.Moreover, at times, the book does not even focuson the Dutch. The chapter on Africa is sub-titled"Europeans in West Africa," yet the Dutch do notappear until nearly half way through it. The dis-cussion on New Netherlands makes heavy use ofdirect quotes from published collections of docu-ments, some of them a page long. This sectionalso contains numerous descriptive tables, most

of which are lists of slaves or merchandise thathave little analytical value. Apart from an appro-priate sense of outrage at the treatment of slaves,it is hard to divine an overall thesis. The bookdoes provide a useful account of the tensions andstruggles within the New Netherlands colony andDutch relations with Amerindians and English, aswell as anecdotes of people of African descentwho lived under Dutch rule.

The book is easy to read, with a genial and attimes colloquial s ty le; narration invariably takesprecedence over analysis. Thus, "[t]hat the Frenchsuffered great losses by these raids suited theDutch just fine, for after all, the French wereCatholics, the Dutch were Protestants." [150] Inno sense does the book engage the historiographyor challenge existing conceptions of the Dutchrole in the early modern Atlantic World. Thesections on the slave trade offer nothing beyondthe work of Johannes Postma, Pieter Emmer andErnst van den Boogart, but as a summary ofDutch activities involving Africans, with particu2lar reference to North America, it is a usefulsource for students and teachers.

David EltisOttawa, Ontario

Maggie Montesinos Sale. The Slumbering Vol2cano: American Slave Ship Revolts and theProduction of Rebellious Masculinity. Durham,NC: Duke University Press, 1997. x + 264 pp.,notes, bibliography, index. US $49.95, cloth;ISBN 0-8223-1983-7; $16.95, paper; ISBN 028223-1992-6.

As the abolitionist crusade intensified during thesecond third of the nineteenth century, and radi-cals openly sought to redefine the meaning ofAmerican nationalism by redefining the role ofblacks in American society, slaves successfullyrevolted aboard the schooners Amistad andCreole. Contemporary readers not only knew ofthese "mutinies" but also had the opportunity toread two fictionalized accounts of slave shiprevolts published shortly thereafter — FrederickDouglass' "The Heroic Slave" (1853) and HermanMelville's "Benito Cereno" (1855).

Maggie Montesinos Sale's ambitious bookuses these slave ship revolts and stories as depar2ture points to reconsider American nationalism,


Lockean natural rights, and race as they were thenunderstood. At her best, Sale presents the ironiesunderlying Americans' trope of revolutionarystruggle in light of popular responses to slaverebellions aboard ship. Clearly the notion that"the cause of liberty justifies rebellion" had veryexplicit limitations in a post-revolutionary societythat still embraced plantation slavery.

As a practitioner of Cultural Studies Sale'sconcern is not with "what happened" (which shewould probably claim is unknowable); or withnarrative stories that make sense of what hap-pened. Instead, following Michel Foucault, she isconcerned with the intrinsic contradictions thatdefine concepts such as "American" or "man," andthe struggles in which people engage to redefinethose concepts. Her book is less about slave-shiprevolts than it is about the normalization of mas-culine white supremacy during the middle of thenineteenth century, and the racialization of themasculinity at the heart of American politicalidentity. She approaches these concerns by theo2rizing a variety of discourses — legalistic, nation-alistic, racialistic, and masculine. The book doesa fine job comparing public reaction to the fic-tionalized accounts of revolt with public reactionto the actual episodes of revolt. But the author'sconcerns with so many questions and so manycomplex relationships give the book a certainentropic quality, despite its probing analyses.

The power of this text is its indictment of thelimitations of liberal political theory. Saleachieves this by historicizing masculinity andestablishing linkages between masculinity, raceindividualism and property. These concepts arerevealed as fluid, protean, and contested. Thus,.Sale knows that "Racialism, like other discourse,does not operate according to rules of reason andcoherence, but rather disperses multiple, oftencontradictory asse rt ions, thereby becoming in-creasingly powerful and persuasive." [161]

The book consists of an introduction, aconclusion, and five chapters. Chapter One,"Rhetorics of Nation, Race and Masculinity,"presents three competing versions of Americannational development — a Northern version, aSouthern version, and an African Americanversion. Sale uses these to contextualize thedebates about slave-ship revolts. She then ana-lyzes the discursive strategies employed byvarious groups as they "produced, debated, and

limited the possible range of meanings of therebellions in the popular press." [64]

The next four chapters are devoted , oneeach, to the Amistad revolt, the Creole revolt,"Benito Cereno," and "The Heroic Slave." Al-though the chapter on the Creole is noteworthyfor its attention to international law and thei mplications of legal language, Sale generallyseems more comfortable analyzing the fictionthan the actual revolt. In an elegant assessment of"Benito Cereno" she shows how Melville normal-ized white supremacy, and denied Blacks' voices.

Her critique of "The Heroic Slave" is themost compelling. Frederick Douglass, she argues,"appropriated a late-eighteenth-century notion ofmanhood, of republican male virtue, characterizedby bravery, eloquence, moral restraint, concernfor the common good, and a willingness to die forliberty , and transported it into a different histori-cal context...in which racial difference had be-come one of the most salient ways of signifyingsocial power." [185] Through Douglass' fictionalprotagonist, Madison Washington, gender soli-darity among men transcended racial difference,thus redefining the rhetoric of the Revolution, butat a cost of marginalizing black women.

Provocative, complex, and tantalizing, TheSlumbering Volcano is nevertheless not an easyread. Sale is at once historian, literary critic, andtheorist exploring a variety of discourses. Theresult cannot help but be a bit fragmented. Never-theless, there are many rewards here for studentsof cultural studies interested in the interrelation-ship of gender, race and rhetoric. Readers of thisjournal will each decide for themselves how TheSlumbering Volcano contributes to our ongoingdiscussion of the definition of maritime studies.

W. Jeffrey BolsterBarrington, New Hampshire

Charles E. Davies. The Blood-Red Arab Flag. AnInvestigation into Qasimi Piracy 1797-1820.Exeter: Universi ty of Exeter Press, 1997. xix +453 pp., illustrations, maps, bibliography, index.£40.00, cloth; ISBN 0-85989-509-2. Distributedin the USA by Northwestern Universi ty Press,Evanston, IL

It is, perhaps, fitting that this book should bereviewed by the resident of a country that contin-

Book Reviews 113

ues to agonize over the question why the captainof its cruiser Sydney in November 1941 allowedhis ship to approach the camouflaged Germanraider Kormoran so closely that it could be sunkvirtually without trace and with the loss of all onboard. Much of the events painstakingly des-cribed and analysed by Charles Davies revolvearound the meeting at sea of British vessels (bothcommercial and naval) with hostile craft that onlyin the very last moment showed their true colours— often with disastrous results.

The purpose of Davies' study is to provide adefinitive revision of what for the moment maybe called the question of the "Qasimi Piracy,"which provoked the E ast India Company to maketwo attacks on the Qasimi capital Ras al2Khaimah, 1809/10 and 1819/20 and establish thesystem of treaties that culminated in the 1853Perpetual Treaty of Maritime Peace. This Britishinfluence, in turn, prevented the participatingemirates from being conquered by the Sa'udisand resulted ultimately, in 1971, in their constitut2ing the independent United Arab Emirates. Todevelop these themes and arguments, Davies hasmeticulously and exhaustively researched allavailable primary sources, in both English andArabic, that can throw light on his subject.

The significance of the subject of Qasimi"piracy" lies both in the immediate and long-termconsequences of British policy and in the neces-sity of reevaluating the orthodoxy of colonialistand imperialist historiography in a post2Eurocen-tric world. The classical image of Arab piracy inthe early nineteenth century in the Gulf andwestern Indian Ocean was built on the Europeanmaritime and legal models of the seventeenth andeighteenth century, in which pirates were seen asstanding outside all human society, carrying noflag of any recognized state, and being liable tocapture and sentencing by all nations. This viewwas strongly challenged in 1986 by a truly indig2enous voice, Sultan Muhammad al2Qasimi ofSharjah, who, in his The Myth of Arab Piracy inthe Gulf turned the tables on previous Britishhistorians by claiming that his forebears had beenlegitimate maritime traders engaged in bi tter butperfectly legal struggles with other Arab powers— above all, with the EIC's major ally, Oman. Nopiracy there, but a complex form of naval warfaresanctioned and carried out by organized states.

Al2Qasimi's work was far-reaching in its

revisionism but many traditionalists, inevitably,accused it of a smaller or greater degree ofpolemicism and biased partisanship. Although Ifeel that such charges were hugely exaggeratedand largely based on orientalist inclinations, it ismost welcome that Davies has now presented uswith the results of his m assive research, painstak-ing analysis and well-considered judgements.Indeed, if his book has any fault, it is that it is sodense that it might deter some readers who do nottrust their intellectual staying power. That, how-ever, would be a real shame: The Blood-Red ArabFlag offers such a detailed and surgically sharpanalysis of British policy and action, on the onehand, and the maritime history of the Gulf ingeneral and the Qawasim in particular, that it mayindeed, for a considerable time, be regarded as thedefinitive work on the subject.

The range of themes canvassed by Davies inorder to explain the intensity and nature ofQasimi activity and operations at sea is vast as hedelves into the political, economic, social and cul-tural dimensions of contemporary Arab life. Hecorrectly emphasizes both the extent and rela-tively great value of maritime trade in the Gulfand western Indian Ocean and the close connec-tions between land and sea. In particular, and herelies the major factor of the sudden rise in Qasimiactivity and its violent character, the eastwardthrust of the Wahhabi Sa'udis into Qasimi terri2tory and Oman is discussed and assessed in itsfull ramifications, as is their sudden collapsethough the intervention of Egypt's Ibrahim Pasha.

Arab maritime culture, Davies suggests, hadmany elements in common with that of the desertbedouin: a freebooting nature in which raids andindividual valour were written highly within acontext of seemingly interminable intertribalrivalry with ever changing alliances and enmities.But there were also major differences: ships didbelong to certain political entities and maritimewarfare, therefore, had to be seen as much morethan a ritualistic, if occasionally violent, rite ofpassage. Raids at sea were undertaken for botheconomic gain and political advantage that ac-crued from it. One might well say (Davies himselfdoes not make the point) that the Gulf in thisrespect hardly differed from the endless wars thathad characterized European waters in previouscenturies, especially when it is taken into accountthat there was, indeed, one political constant: the


enmity between the Qawasim and Oman, whoserulers cleverly entangled the British in theircomplex manoeuvres. Davies is especially goodand convincing in following and explaining thekaleidoscopic political changes in southeasternArabia; here his comprehensive research paysrich dividends.

For readers interested more in naval opera-tions, Davies' book is as rich in its analysis andjudicious in its judgements. Again, attention isgiven to both affairs of high policy and matters ofpractical detail; especially poignant (hence theparticular introduction to this review) is hisdiscussion of the very real dilemmas faced bynaval commanders who approached or wereapproached by boats that displayed no sign orsymbol of their identity. On this point, I shouldhave liked to have seen more about the crucialquestion of flags: was it indeed so that all Arabsbasically carried the same red flag (see, for in-stance, p. 144) or could they differ from place toplace in shades of red that escaped the British eye(see the colours of the still current flags of Bah2rain, Qatar and those of the individual shaikh-doms of the UAE)? Why the "blood-red" in thetitle of the book — is it a mere marketing deviceor does it refer to any "official" definition of theQasimi colour? Why did the new Qasimi flagproposed in Bruce's provisional agreement of1814 with the Qawasim include the Shahadah"There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is hisMessenger"? Was it an acknowledgement of theQasimi alliance with the Sa'udis who still bearwitness in their green, Wahhabi, flag?

One can argue with Davies on some minorpoints. Basing his text specifically on primarysources, he eschews "public" discussions withearlier historians. Although the book would havebeen more voluminous, its impact would havebeen greater, as readers now must make their owncomparisons and judgements. Arab boats andpearling should also have been discussed in moredetail and much earlier in the book. On the otherhand, although the dichotomy between the narra-tive of all the various incidents and the interpreta-tive part of the book loaded me with reservationswhen I saw its table of contents, having read thebook I must concede that this organisation doeswork. Equally effective are the appendices, andthe eighty-nine pages of fine2print footnotes are areal treasure trove. Even with a price tag of £40,

this book is highly recommended. Davies hasmade a major contribution to a crucial period ofGulf and British history which maritime histori-ans will read with great advantage.

Frank BroezeNedlands, Western Australia

Jesse Lemisch. Jack Tar vs. John Bull: The Roleof New York's Seamen in Precipitating the Revo-lution. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997. xx+ 180 pp., bibliographical note, index. US $41,cloth; ISBN 0-8153-2788-9.

The title of Jesse Lemisch's Jack Tar vs. JohnBull: The Role of New York's Seamen in Precipi2tating the Revolution is fairly self-descriptive.This is a study of seamen in New York on the eveof the American Revolution and their politicalinteraction ashore as the American colonies beganto drift toward revolution. Lemisch originallycompleted the work in 1962 as his PhD disse rta-tion at Yale Universi ty . Ever since, Jack Tar vs.John Bull has been a formative and impo rtantwork in American historiography, both in termsof the originality of the topic and the author's"from the bottom up" approach to history.

Nevertheless, the present volume is disap2pointing on several accounts. Marcus Rediker's"Foreword," which begins with himself andLemisch searching Moscow for Siberian minerson a hunger strike, painted an almost patheticpicture of not-so-"New Left" historians apparentlytraumatized by the collapse of the Soviet Union,a mood that I believe trivializes Lemisch's workby focusing on it as a political rather than aserious historical effo rt. That is not, of course, todeny the political aspect of Jack Tar vs. JohnBull, but I think the staying power that Redikerlater rightly attributes to Lemisch's work hasmore to do with his historical adroitness than hispolitical astuteness. After all, the bottom line issimple: Jack Tar vs. John Bull outlasted theSoviet Union! Another major disappointmentwith the text is that, despite the passage of thirty-five years, Lemisch has still not followed throughon his promise [xviii] to develop more fully andto expand his thesis into a "completed work" thatwould "deal with other colonies as well." Instead,the reader is presented with a manuscript that theauthor four decades ago himself termed "frankly

Book Reviews 115

fragmentary," born of "the naïve faith that thehistorian can find answers for whatever questionshe chooses to ask," and marred — as it was in itsoriginal form — by Lemisch's failure to car ry thetale into the actual outbreak of the AmericanRevolution in something other than a breezy"Epilogue." One has to wonder: given the abbre-viated maritime careers of most seamen, howmany of those who took to the streets during theprotests of the late 1760s, most notably those thatoccurred in response to the Stamp Act, were stillseamen when the American Revolution began in1775? And if the answer is not many, then whatmotivated that next generation of seamen-revolu-tionaries? The work, for all its originality anddepth, still smacks (as is so often the case withdissertations) of an effo rt cut artificially short tomeet graduation deadlines.

One wonders as well why the book has beenreprinted. Lemisch's thesis is already well knownand its major parts appeared in article form and as

chapters in anthologies decades ago. Above all,why was the book deemed part of Garland's"Studies in African American History and Cul2ture"? This seems odd for a work, the index ofwhich lists only a single page entry for "Blacks."

In short, Garland's publication of Lemisch'sdissertation, still "as-is" thirty2six years after itscompletion, is more an occasion to be lamented,than to be celebrated.

Michael A. PalmerGreenville, North Carolina

Joan Druett. Petticoat Whalers: Whaling Wives atSea, 1820-1920. Auckland: Collins New Zealand,1991. vi + 213 pp., photographs, illustrations(b+w, colour plates), chapter notes, appendix,select bibliography, index. US $25, cloth; ISBN1-86950-043-1. No rth American distributor,Harper Collins , Scranton, PA

Joan Druett. Hen Frigates: Wives of MerchantCaptains Under Sail. New York: Simon &Schuster, 1998. 274 pp., photographs, illustra-tions, figures, appendix, index. US $25, cloth;ISBN 0-684-83968-7.

There has been a small fashion in recent years,perhaps an offshoot of the feminist movement, forpublishing books, sometimes fiction, sometimes

diaries, sometimes a mixture of both, aboutwomen who for various reasons went to sea inmerchant sailing vessels. I made a small pioneer-ing contribution as collaborating author ofIi omen Under Sail. There are now ten books inour own library on the subject, of which my ownfavourite (and many other peoples') is James W.Balano's edited, but still very frank, version ofthe diary of his mother published as The Log ofthe Skipper's Wife in 1979. She was a remarkablewoman who married Fred Balano, Master andpart owner of the tern schooner R. W. Hopkins, inwhich she herself became a shareholder.

The two books reviewed here are of a differ-ent nature. Each comprises passages based ondocumentary material — diaries, letters — inwhich the wives of master mariners who weretaken by their husbands to sea recorded theirexperiences. The greater part of this material wasof American origin and not surprisingly much ofit from New England, and there is a surprisingrichness of it. In Hen Frigates — incidentally aterm I have never met before for a vessel with themaster's wife on board — Ms. Druett drew on noless than seventy-five different sets of documentswritten by girls and women who accompaniedtheir husbands or fathers to sea in many differenttypes of sailing vessels. In a comprehensiveappendix including "all such manuscripts knownto the author" she lists a further sixty-nine poten-tial sources. Todd Gray's forthcoming compre-hensive catalogue of maritime material held inBritish County Record Offices when it is pub-lished may show the extent of similar documenta-tion in Britain, but I doubt that the material willprove to be on the same scale.

Druett's women experienced most facets oflife at sea under sail in the nineteenth century andthe book comprises a valuable social record. Sheis frank in her discussion of the special problemswomen met with in bearing and bringing upchildren — conceived usually while in harbourbecause of the sheer physical difficulty of sexualactivity at sea — in their relations with theirhusbands and other crew members and in justsimply passing the time, often in endless sewingoperations. They went to sea very often simply tobe with their husbands, or because all the hus-band's capital resources had gone into investmentin the vessel under his command and they had nohome of their own ashore.


A criticism of the book might be that Druettdoes not compare the women's experiences withthose commonly met with ashore. In describingthe hardships and tragedies they at times encoun-tered it is well to remember that life at all levelsashore and afloat was incomparably rougher,harder and dirtier than anything conceived of bymost young people in the western world today.

If the life on board nineteenth century mer-chant sailing vessels has been romanticised bylater generations, even more so has been the lifein sailing whale hunting vessels, particularly NewEngland ships. In fact, a harder, more filthy andmore dangerous and more socially isolated anoccupation is difficult to imagine. The voyagesoften lasted for years and since the alternativewas often almost perpetual grass widowhood it isnot surprising that masters' wives so often accom-panied their husbands. In Petticoat Whalers —again perhaps an unfortunate title which tends tocontradict the author's own definition of "whaler"

Druett lists seventy2six "logs , journals andreminiscences of the whaling sisters in publichands." Considering that compared with merchantvessels the whale ships were relatively few innumber this is a remarkable total and the authorhas drawn impressively on its riches.

Both books are well produced and ade-quately illustrated though the quality of reproduc-tion in Hen Frigates is not as good as that in thewhaling book, while Ron Druett's coloureddrawings in the latter are rather wooden and notup to standard. These minor criticisms apa rt , thetwo comprise the product of commendable andoriginal historical research and valuable contribu-tions to social maritime history.

Ann GiffardWest Boetheric, Cornwall

William L. Lofstrom. Paita, Outpost of Empire:The Impact of the New England Whaling Fleet onthe Socioeconomic Development of NorthernPeru, 1832-1865. Mystic, CT: Mystic SeaportMuseum, 1996. xv + 232 pp., figures, maps, illus-trations, appendix, notes, glossary, bibliography,index. US $24.95, paper; ISBN 0-913372-74-9.

Paita, located on the northern coast of Peru, istoday a small and sleepy seaside town. But in thefirst half of the nineteenth century it was a busy

and prosperous po rt, mainly due to the largenumber of American whaling ships that calledeach year. The whaling grounds off the coastwere popular with American whalers, and Paitabecame a preferred port of call for vessels need-ing to refresh and repair.

A large protected bay offered a safe anchor-age for visiting vessels, and the irrigated farms ofthe nearby Chira valley produced a wide range ofagricultural produce for the visiting ships. Thetown had enough cantinas and friendly local girlsto keep the sailors happy, and the local men werewilling to serve on whaling ships for low pay. Somany American vessels called that in 1833, theAmerican government decided to establish aconsulate in Paita and, in the 1840s, set up ahospital for sick and injured American seamen.

The money spent by the American whalingfleet provided substantial economic benefit to thetown and its hinterland. Po rt and other facilitiesdeveloped, business flourished and workers wereattracted to the area by the high wages available.However whaling has always been an ephemeralindustry with fluctuating benefits for all involved,including the residents of se rv ice ports like Paita.The size of the American whaling fleet reached itspeak in the 1840s, and then began a gradual dec-line that was accelerated by political events, suchas the US Civil War. By the 1860s, few Americanwhalers called at Paita, and the US consular postand hospital there were closed in response.

Apart from the immediate economic benefits,the author contends that the visits by Americanwhalers "[were] a catalyst in the subsequent mod2ernisation of northern Peru and its integration intothe export-oriented economy that characterised[its economic development in] the second half ofthe nineteenth century." [x] He suggests that thecapital accumulated by local entrepreneurs duringthe American whaling ph ase helped to finance thenext important economic development in the area,the production and export of cotton. During theUS Civil War, federal blockades stopped cottonexports from the southern states reaching Europe,and this provided an opportunity for Peruvians todevelop irrigated cotton plantations in the Chiravalley. Cotton exports continued from northernPeru after the civil war ended, and providedlasting economic benefits to the region.

Lofstrom is probably right about the eco2nomic importance of American whaling to Paita.

Book Reviews 117

Yet he cannot say exactly how important it wasdue to a near-total lack of statistical data for theregion in this period. This has forced him to basehis argument on estimates in American consularreports, plus a few figures in published accountsby visiting foreign travellers.

The book will probably appeal most to whal-ing historians for its detailed description of Paitaduring the period concerned. There are somesuperb illustrations of the town in 1837 and auseful appendix lists American whalers and mer-chant ships calling there between 1832 and 1865.

Mark HowardMelbourne, Australia

Eileen Reid Marcil. Tall Ships and Tankers: TheHistory of the Davie Shipbuilders. Toronto:McClelland & Stewart, 1997. xi + 604 pp., illus2trations, photographs, figures, maps, appendices,notes, bibliography, glossary, indices. $45, cloth;ISBN 0-7710-5666-4.

The history of Canadian shipbuilding, a broadand fascinating topic, is indebted to Eileen Marcilfor her work on nineteenth-century wooden ship-building at Quebec, The Charley2man (1995).With Tall Ships and Tankers, she has madeanother major contribution to the subject. Theauthor was asked by Davie Shipbuilding to writea history intended for the Davie employees, pastand present, and their families. Marcil complied,writing a company history spanning the years1811-1996. Yet her study goes well beyond ourusual notion of a "company" history.

The book is organized chronologically intotwenty-five chapters, many of which (especiallythose dealing with the nineteenth century) focuson a key individual or Davie family member andhis or her role in the development of the com2pany. This approach works well and is faithful tothe request to write for the employees and theirfamilies, many of whom had several generationswork in the Davie yards. Marcil provides essen-tial details of the major turning points in thecompany's history from an early (1820s) decisionto engage in ship repair work, to Davie's longrelationship with Canada Steamship Lines, toTakis Veliotis' emphasis on developing theGeneral Engineering Division in the 1960s eventhough the company's shipbuilding business was

good, to recent decisions to diversify and embracenew technologies and markets.

Throughout this lengthy study, Marcil main-tains the narrative pace by providing interestingbiographical information on a wide range ofindividuals from ownership, m anagement, and, onoccasion, down to the shop and yard levels. Theauthor discusses the evolution of the variousyards, family connections, variety of vessel typesbuilt by Davie, changes in technology, crises,triumphs and failures, and family tragedies thatmake up the history of Davie. Marcil also pro-vides ample evidence of the emergence of acorporate culture, through the 1950s at least,embraced by Davie employees. This cultureemanated from early Davie family members whofocused on leadership, community, mutual res-pect, work ethic, and fairness. While by no meansimmune from labour disputes, it appears thatDavie avoided many of the more bitter battlesassociated with shipbuilding and the maritimetrades. Marcil touches on the interconnection ofpolitics, economics, and personalities associatedwith the Davie corporate history but does notpursue the details of city, provincial, and nationalpolitics as they influenced Davie corporate life.

Tall Ships and Tankers is generously illus-trated with photographs of vessels, shipyards andshipyard scenes, employees as well as vesseldrawings. Appendices include the Davie familygenealogy, lists of shipyard and union presidents,and a twenty-four2page yard list of vessels builtby Davie that documents the impressive range ofvessels built by the company, both commercialand military. The footnotes and especially thebibliography should encourage further researchinto many aspects of Davie's history only brieflydiscussed in this survey. A brief glossary ofshipbuilding terms is also included.

As a survey of almost two centuries of com2pany history, Tall Ships and Tankers is an un-qualified success. Yet, as with any broad treat-ment, readers may wish that Marcil had writtenseveral other books on topics such as labourrelations, technology transfer, material culture inthe maritime trades, conflict of culture and lan2guage, government's role in the economy, amongothers. Let us hope that other historians willexpand on the many rich topics only brieflydiscussed by Marcil. Hers is a significant con2tribution to the literature of Canadian shipbuild2


ing and I strongly recommend it to historiansinterested in corporate, urban, and maritimehistory and to libraries, archives, and museums inthese fields.

Robert W. GrahamBowling Green, Ohio

David R. Owen and Michael C. Tolley. Courts ofAdmiralty in Colonial America: The MarylandExperience, 163421776. Durham, NC: CarolinaAcademic Press, 1995. xxxiii + 421 pp., illustra-tions, tables, appendices, bibliographical essay,index. US $45, cloth; ISBN 0-89089-856-1.

Careful scholarship bristling with enthusiasm andset within a comparative framework is an irresist-ible mix. Accompanied by a full bibliographicalapparatus, this study is distinguished by a them-atic approach and by invaluable appendices thatsummarize the almost 150 admiralty cases fromMary land extant in US and English archives.

Novices will find this an informative intro-duction to the historical evolution of admiraltyjurisdiction and practice in the Americas. Themore experienced may learn new things from thecareful distinctions drawn here: for examplebetween the origins and development of vice-admiralty's jurisdiction in instance cases (inMary land, mostly seamen's wages and charterparties) as separate from that over prize (capturedenemy ships in war), which was assumed at anearly stage and confirmed by imperial statute in1707. Both are distinct from the colonial cou rts'unique jurisdiction in trade (the Navigation Actsfrom 1696), and from cou rts of Oyer and Termi-ner hearing charges of piracy upon which viceadmirals sat (1700), and from admiralty sessionswhich heard criminal charges back in England.

Concerning practice, the authors are sureguides to admiralty's sometimes arcane manifes-tations of nomenclature, forms of action, courtprocedures and forums for appeal. Readers mayoccasionally suspect that distinctions do notalways signal differences, for instance whethervice-admiralty cou rts were established by thegovernor acting under his m andate from the HighCourt of Admiralty in London (which gave nojurisdiction in prize) or under his instructions asgovernor (which did); or whether appeals lay tothe Privy Council or to the HCA. However, this

study emphasizes the big issues: the power ofproceeding in rem rather than in personam,permitting the arrest of the vessel as security forthe libellants' (plaintiffs') claims; speedy sum-mary trial on written evidence; joinder (consoli-dation) of seamen's actions and their preferredclaims on the proceeds of sale of the ship's assets.

Obvious gaps in these procedures were theinability of the parties to testify in person and theabsence of ajury. Both reflected admiralty's wishto facilitate commerce. Critics of imperial policyon the eve of the American Revolution arguedthat these denied colonists their rights as free-born Englishmen. Yet the authors argue convinc2ingly that such criticisms were really aimed atLondon's revenue raising policies especially after1763. That admiralty in Mary land, and in othercolonies, had proved popular and efficient wasevident in the decision to perpetuate the jurisdic2tion and practice of the pre-war admiralty cou rtsin the Constitution and in the Judiciary Act of1789. The framers did add the options of vivavoce testimony and a jury. But in fact, these hadbeen pre-war features of admiralty practice inMaryland. Courts of vice admiralty, established in1694, had not enjoyed an exclusive jurisdiction.For half a century the governor in council, andthe common law courts, the Provincial and that ofOyer and Terminer, had adjudicated maritimecauses, with or without a ju ry . Accordingly, weare reminded that to understand the law, we mustsee it in its historical context.

Among the strengths of this study is the carewith which it clarifies the issue of what law wasreceived in Mary land. First and notably, thecolonists had a wider jurisdiction in admiraltythan did England itself. The restrictions placed byparliament on the territorial and substantive reachof English admiralty in the late fourteenth centurypredated the arrival of English settlers in Americaand were of no force. Secondly, the common lawcourts in Mary land had their own way to make,whether against the Proprietor or London, and feltno compulsion as had the English common lawcou rts, to restrict admiralty's jurisdiction. Inaddition the variety of cou rts — common law,civil, and occasional hybrid mixtures of the two— encouraged forum shopping and pragmaticpractice. Yet another feature distinguished colo-nial from English admiralty. There were noMary land practitioners trained in the tradition of

Book Reviews 119

the civilian lawyers of Doctors' Commons (sepa-rate from the Inns of Court and the common lawcourts at Westminister). The absence of ecclesias2tical courts in the Thirteen Colonies (admiralty inEngland falling, with priestly discipline andprobate, under their jurisdiction), may haveoffered wider scope to local lawyers. In any case,they proved capable practitioners of admiraltywhatever the forum or level of cou rt .

Admiralty in Maryland was responsive tolocal needs. It worked, and its place in Americanjurisprudence then and now attests to the continu-ities of both jurisdiction and practice. Whateverthe validity of Horowitz's contention in TheTransformation of American Law (1977), thatpost-revolutionary America was distinguished bythe transformation of the common law to meet theneeds of an expanding commercial and entrepre-neurial economy, there were no fundamentalchanges in admiralty. This was not surprising. Forcenturies admiralty's jurisdiction, practice andevidentiary norms had promoted economic andcommercial efficiency. In seeking to achieve abroad and uniform jurisdiction in the nineteenthcentury, American common law embarked on avoyage which admiralty had already made.

Christopher EnglishSt. John's, Newfoundland

Watkin Tench; Tim Flannery (ed. & intro.). 1788;Comprising A Narrative of the Expedition toBotany Bay and A Complete Account of theSettlement at Port Jackson. Melbourne: TextPublishing, 1996. map, illustrations, table. AUS$16.95, paper; ISBN 1-875847-27-8.

The early and troubled history of Australia holdsgreat fascination. From the dramatic explorationsof James Cook to the first European encounterswith the Aborigines, from the convoluted OldWorld imaginings of lost continents to the harshrealities of convict settlements, the initial Euro2pean forays to the South Pacific continent haveshaped the identity and nationalism of Australiaand, seemingly, have forever fixed an image ofthis far-flung outpost of the British Empire in theeyes of the world. Australia's early history bene-fits, in particular, from a powerful combination ofthe individual and the general, from an under2standing of the role and perspectives of specific

people and groups and from an appreciation ofthe broad social and cultural context in which thissociety functioned.

Watkin Tench, a captain in the marines, wasin his late 20s when he arrived in Botany Bay in1788, a member of the famous First Fleet. Tenchwas very much a man of his age. He entered themarines when sixteen and was promptly dis-patched to North America to battle against theupstart colonies, then engaged in rebellion againstthe British Crown. Several years after the Ameri-can Revolution ended, and reduced to half pay, heapplied for a spot on the fleet heading to Austra-lia. He departed for Australia in 1787 and re-mained in the new colony until 1792. His militaryservice continued after his return and includeddistinguished action during war with France in1793-1793. Tench died in 1833.

That Watkin Tench remains a notable figurein early Australian history is due primarily to thepublication of two small books, A Narrative ofthe Expedition to Botany Bay (published in 1789)and A Complete Account of the Settlement at PortJackson (1793). Much excitement, and no smallamount of worry, attended the dispatch of theFirst Fleet to Australia. Relatives of the trans-ported criminals — many of them incarcerated forminor crimes — anxiously awaited news from thedistant land. Government officials and businesspeople wished to learn of the prospects for settle-ment and development in Australia. And the geo-graphically and culturally curious — a large andactive group in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies — were desperate for word about thisexotic colony, its mysterious wildlife and itsunique indigenous population. Publishers weretherefore anxious to rush first-hand accounts ofthe Botany Bay experience into print, knowingthat a large and enthusiastic audience awaited.

The editor wisely lets Tench speak forhimself. 1788 includes a brief introduction andthe complete text of Tench's two small books.The material is annotated, with brief and helpfulasides that explain otherwise obscure references(the editor explains that 1788 is not intended tosupplant a more extensively annotated edition ofTench's writings, published by L.F. Fitzhardingein 1961). A map from Tench's second book isreproduced but is unclear and difficult to read.The introduction is a model of brevity and con2ciseness, with a short overview of the marine's


life and career (little is known of Tench before orafter his expedition to Australia and few personalrecords survive) and a short guide to the mainthemes of the two publications. Not surprisingly,given the primary granted Aborigine2newcomerrelations in modern Australia, Flannery describesTench's extensive relationships with the indige2nous people and suggests how Tench's observa-tions reveal the complexity, violence and misun2derstanding that characterized cultural encounterin the early years of British settlement.

This is not a book about Tench's maritimeadventurers, and the voyage to Australia is givenbut a few, undramatic pages. The almost perfunc-tory account of the voyage, which includestraveler's comments on the Canary Islands and"the Brazils," masks the richness of what follows.The remainder of the first book, A Narrative, andthe second volume, A Complete Account, offerdetailed descriptions of the tenuous first Britishsettlements in Australia. Watkin Tench was acreation of his time, and his language and des-criptions carry the weight of British assumptionsand the misunderstandings inherent in the adjust-ments to a new land. But his acute and humanenarrative provides a remarkable window on theformative stages of Australian society. His bookswere intended to explain Australia to peopleliving thousands of miles away. Quite deliber-ately he offered himself as the eyes of the Britishand provided descriptions and explanations thatanswered their most pressing questions. As anaccount of ocean travel to the South Pacific, 1788has limited value; as a window on early Britishsettlement in Australia, this book, assembled andintroduced by Tim Flannery, is excellent.

Ken CoatesSaint John, New Brunswick

Douglas C. Meister, Sharon Pfeiffer and BrianVanDeMark (eds.); Jack Sweetman (ed.-in-chief).New Interpretations in Naval History: SelectedPapers from the Tenth Naval History Symposium.Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1993. xix + 418pp., figures. US $35, Cdn $48.95, cloth; ISBN I255750278221. Canadian distributor, VanwellPublishing, St. Catharines, ON.

The publications of the various Naval HistorySymposia held every two years at the US Naval

Academy have long been a convenient way tokeep abreast of new work. This volume bringstogether twenty-three of the more than fiftypapers given at the 1991 Symposium. My mostgeneral observation on the collection is that theessays as a group reflect both the strengths andweaknesses of current naval history in theCanadian-American academic world. The needfor spatial qualifier reflects the fact that sixteen ofthe papers were written by individuals currentlyworking in the United States, three by scholarsworking in Canada, and only four by historiansworking outside those two nations (significantly,those written by non-North Americans are amongthe weakest in the book). In terms of subjectmatter, the spatial spread is slightly less concen-trated: twelve of the essays focus primarily on theUnited States; four on Britain; and seven on therest of the world (including one on Canada).

One of the strengths of naval history as it iswritten today is the ability of practitioners to tellthe human side of the story; several of the papersreflect this. In "John Paul Jones and the Cam-paign of the Liman," James Bradford has un-earthed new sources that allow him to reinterpretJones' Russian campaigns, adding new dimen-sions to Jones' persona in the process. ClarkReynolds does the same in his piece on "CarlVinson, Admiral John H. Towers, and the Cre-ation of the Two2Ocean Navy," though readersinterested in Towers might well want to consulthis Admiral John H. Towers: The Struggle forNaval Air Supremacy (Annapolis, 1991).

Another of the field's strengths is the abilityto link strategy and tactics. At its most myopic, ofcourse, this can also be a weakness, but Joseph A.Moretz's essay on "Liddell Hart and Naval War-fare: The Missing Dimension" is an example ofthis sort of thing done well. Moretz argues con-vincingly that while Liddell Ha rt 's ideas onstrategy were generally sound, he was a techno2logical illiterate. His failure to grasp either thepotentials or weaknesses of technology weakenedan otherwise brilliant set of principles.

Fortunately, few of the essays reflect one ofthe real weaknesses of naval history: a lack ofconcern for the larger context. Two that do,however, are Jeffrey G. Barlow's "The U.S.Navy's Fight against the Kamikazes" and ElbertB. Smith's "Men against the Sea: The Loss of theUSS Warrington." Since I like much of Barlow's

Book Reviews 121

work, I was somewhat surprised to read an essaythat treated the US Navy as though it were uncon-nected to a larger society. Smith's study (likePaolo Coletta's on "Dirigibles in the U.S. Navy")is pure antiquarianism, telling us nothing signifi-cant about either the navy or American society.

Perhaps the most serious criticism levelledat naval history is its predilection to ignore largerissues that animate debate in the wider historicalprofession. Certainly a number of the essays inthis book could be accused of this flaw. But whatis especially encouraging is that several exem-plify the approach practitioners must take if theyare to improve their standing among historians.One is Paul C. Forage's impressive examinationof "The Foundations of Chinese Naval Suprem-acy in the Twelfth Century," which situatesChinese technological superiority in the contextof the society. Another is Mark Grimsley's "ThePirate and the State: Hen ry Morgan and IrregularNaval Warfare in the Early Modern World,"which contrasts piratical behaviour with thepolicy goals of the British state. And a third isD'Ann Campbell's "Fighting with the Navy: TheWAVEs in World War II," which continues herlengthy string of publications on gender in themodern US Navy.

While space precludes a discussion of all thepapers, on balance this is an encouraging collec-tion. If most of the essays are fairly traditionalnaval history, some do extend their inquiries inexciting directions. I hope that future volumeswill continue this promising trend.

Lewis R. FischerSt. John's, Newfoundland

Rif Winfield (illus. John McKay). The 50-GunShip. London: Chatham Publishing, 1997. 128pp., illustrations, photographs, tables, plans,cutaway drawings, appendices, notes, index. £30,Cdn $69.95, cloth; ISBN 1-86176-025-6. Cana2dian distributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. Catha-rines, ON.

Ambiguity is the chief characteristic of 50-gunships. Though they possessed two complete gundecks, they are usually thought to have been toosmall to se rve as ships of the line. But during thelate seventeenth century they were frequently themost numerous type of ship in any real line of

battle. Ambiguity characterized 50-gun shipsanother way. For though they became too small tofight in the line, they lacked the manoeuvrabilityand speed of frigates. Finally, there is ambiguityin this book's title for it really concerns the RoyalNavy's warships known as fourth rates whichrarely mounted fifty guns.

Rif Winfield has produced a valuable andstimulating study of this often ignored class ofwarships from the Age of Sail. Far from being asort of freak or mutation lacking any clear pur2pose, he contends that the 50-gun ship or fourthrate occupied a special place in the evolution ofwooden warships and contributed to the evolutionof both the battleship and the frigate. Whether hepresents a convincing case is perhaps less impor-tant than the bright light that he has cast on thedevelopment of this interesting type of warship.

Winfield traces the origins of the 50-gun shipto the frigates of the Commonwealth period. Ori-ginally possessed of a single, low2placed gundeckwithout a forecastle, the quarterdecks of thesefrigates were extended forward to turn them intotwo-decked vessels. They mounted forty guns,but some built with a broader beam carried forty-four guns and constituted a separate class offourth rates that came to car ry 24-pdrs on theirgundeck and lighter guns above. Few new shipswere built during the Restoration, but all had theirordnance increased. By 1688 they mounted fi fty-four to sixty-four guns, and constituted the mostnumerous rate in the Royal Navy. The qua rtercentury of warfare after 1689 marked the highwater mark of the fourth rate, and though theyfought in the line in major fleet actions, theirinadequacy was soon revealed; many were lost.As naval warfare expanded overseas and Frenchguerre de course forced the navy to escort con-voys and cruise against privateers, the 50-gunship ran into challenges that it could not wellmeet. Curiously the 1703 establishment of gunsraised the 482gun fourth rates to fifty-four guns,but lightened their ordnance from 24-pdrs and 8-pdrs to 12- and 6-pdrs, respectively. The navyspent the next half century gradually re-gunningthese ships back up to their original weight ofmetal. It seems that fourth rates really did becomestrange under-gunned hybrids that were neitherfrigate nor cruiser. Though two2decker fourthrates remained in se rv ice until the end of theNapoleonic Wars, they seem to have lost their


purpose by the end of the War of the AustrianSuccession which ended in October 1748, not ayear later. [511

The text is so concerned with technicaldetails and dates that the trees sometimes obscurethe forest. Why the navy reduced the armament offourth rates in 1703 and then spent the next halfcentury increasing it is never satisfactorily ex-plained. The emphasis on fleet actions leads toinsufficient attention being paid to the numerousdemands made on fourth rates during the firstgreat period of Anglo-French warfare between1689 and 1713. This reader wishes the author haddevoted more attention to the many fourth ratesthat operated overseas in the West Indies, off thecoast of Africa and in the Mediterranean, attack-ing enemy colonies, escorting sugar-laden mer-chantmen, protecting fisheries and fishing ves2sels, and cruising against privateers and pirates.What combination of strength and manoeuvra-bility yielded maximum operational efficiency atthe lowest cost? Too much attention is paid toships lost and captured rather than to their func-tions as the Admiralty conceived them. Theproblem seems to have been that small two-decked ships provided no real alternative tosingle-decked frigates. They could not car ry theirmain armament with sufficient freeboard to use itin all conditions at sea. Is this why they were solightly gunned after 1703?

The material is arranged in two parts of ap-proximately equal length. The first deals with thedevelopment of the type, the second with thetechnical details of the ships themselves: Thedepth of detail is mind-numbing in places, but thepublishers clearly know their market. They are tobe congratulated for the high quality of the illus-trations that grace nearly every page. Ship model-ers will find an added bonus in John McKay's setof drawings of HMS Leopard (1790); plan,elevation, and lines (1/8 inch to 1 foot), togetherwith mast and rigging plans are located in the endpocket. Perspective cutaway drawings of eachdeck showing the arrangement of the ship'sinternal features are in the text. This is a fineaddition to the publisher's ShipShape series anda mine of information for anyone seeking detailsabout the 50-gun ship.

James PritchardKingston, Ontario

Denis Orde. Nelson's Mediterranean Command:Concerning Pride, Preferment and Prize Money.Bishop Auckland, Durham: Pentland Press, 1997.xv + 228 pp., illustrations, bibliography, index.£15, cloth; ISBN 1-85821-493-9.

When I saw this book announced, and noting thename of the author, I presumed that it would bean apologia for Admiral Sir John Orde, whoseappearance in naval history is largely centred ontwo withdrawals, both in somewhat ignominiouscircumstances, from the seas off Cadiz to Englandand subsequent disgrace. While this elementcertainly forms a principal part in the book, theauthor, as befits a senior judge, and despite hisfamily connection, has delivered a much morebalanced appreciation of his ancestor's conduct,placed within the setting of the great events of theperiod 1798 to 1805 in which they occurred. Asthe sub-title suggests, the narrative, in attributingexplanations of these curious proceedings, exam-ines the personal relations between various seniorofficers, arising from the three factors thereinmentioned. On the way, we are told of connec-tions between various distinguished Northum-brians who were prominent at the time.

It must be made clear, however, that the titlehas to be taken as a whole. The book is not anaccount of Nelson's Mediterranean command,though the main events of it are covered, but ofthe effect of Nelson's two appointments i.e. in1798 and in 1803 on relations between him andhis contemporaries such as Orde, St. Vincent andothers including the various First Lords of theAdmiralty. On the first occasion, Nelson's selec-tion to command the force in pursuit of Napo-leon's Egyptian expedition was over the heads ofboth Orde and Parker, who were senior to himand felt much aggrieved. Added to some subse-quent minor disputes, it led to Orde's being senthome by St. Vincent. Both were evidently diffi-cult and tactless men. St. Vincent was reproved.Orde, when offered another command by way ofconsolation by Spencer, foolishly declined it. In1804, when Nelson was already in command,Orde was selected to command a squadron withthe task of blockading Cadiz when Spain enteredthe war, the part of the Mediterranean station westof the Straits of Gibraltar being placed under hiscommand. Now it was Nelson's turn to be un-happy, for, he alleged, it was the most lucrative

Book Reviews 123

area for prize money, and he regarded this changeas directed against him, whereas obviouslyenough, the course of events required such anappointment, as Nelson was too remote. Whenthe Toulon fleet appeared unexpectedly, en routefor the West Indies, Orde quite properly withdrewto the Channel Fleet, but was subsequently criti-cised by historians. Having already asked to berelieved, he came ashore on anchoring atSpithead.

The result is an interesting account withoutthe signs of axe-grindery which your reviewerhad feared. While the author has evidently readwidely, it is not clear how far he has used originalsources, though in this period the number ofprinted documents is so great that the need forconsulting originals is correspondingly less.However, it was disconcerting to find that SirJulian Corbett's The Campaign of Trafalgar didnot appear in the bibliography, as not only is thatbook the most thorough survey of the campaign,but Sir Julian was the first to show Sir John's1805 withdrawal in a favourable light.

The main fault of the book is to explain toomuch in the wider world, leading to some exces-sively simplified accounts of say, the SevenYears' War, and discursive character sketcheswhich, though useful, also divert attention fromthe main thread of the story. Some avoidablemistakes are made such as that Anson establishedthe rating of ships in the Navy, and one notes anexcessive number of mistaken spellings, of which"Boscowan" is perhaps the worst, while peopleare "on" ships, whose gender appears as neuterrather than feminine. The illustrations are repro-duced as well as the quality of paper allows, andinclude portraits of the principal figures. The bestwhich can be said of the bibliography is that thereare better ways in which it could be organized togive references from the text. The la tter are,however, numerous, though a few are inadequate,such as "Letter 185, Public Records [sic] Office."

Taken in all, the book is a useful contributiontowards an understanding of two complex epi-sodes; useful too as indicating the undercurrentsof high command, while it justifies the proud,capable but tactless Sir John Orde.

A.W.H. PearsallLondon, England

Robert Malcomson (ed.). Sailors of 1812: Mem-oirs and Letters of Naval Officers on Lake On2tario. Youngstown, NY: Old Fo rt Niagara Asso-ciation, 1997 [Fort Niagara State Park, P.O. Box169, Youngstown, NY 14174-0169]. 96 pp.,maps, illustrations by George Balbar. US $7.95,Cdn $10.97, paper; ISBN 02941967-19-0.

This is an affordable, entertaining and usefulcompilation of some of the diaries, letters andmemoirs of four minor players in the War of1812. Some of these documents can be found inprint elsewhere, but in obscure places, and theyare usually overlooked.

Bishop James Richardson, an authenticUpper Canadian hero whose notice, in the Dic-tionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. X, makesonly passing and cavalier reference to his braveand resourceful efforts as an officer in the Provin-cial Marine, provides the continuity for this col-lection. Complementing Richardson's narrative,which was written many years after the event, issome of the correspondence of Arthur Sinclair, aregular officer in the US Navy who constantlysought fame and never quite found it. He is bestknown for a less than glorious record in the foot-steps of Oliver Hazard Perry on Lakes Erie andHuron. Despite overwhelming naval preponder-ance in 1814, he lost four vessels by the exploitsof two enterprising young officers in the RoyalNavy, Miller Worsley and Richard Dobbs. Morei mportantly, he lost Mackinack to the British.

Bob Malcomson does not refer to thesedisasters in his introduction, presumably becausethe documents were selected to illustrate opera2tions on Lake Ontario, yet the letters he chose tellus something of Sinclair's personality. He wasevidently a devoted family m an , delighting in thebeauty of the lakes and their surroundings. Per-haps more than most of his contemporaries heoften complained about his lot. He corroboratesRichardson's account and offers fresh insightsinto the so-called Burlington Races of 1813.Whether Sinclair could have done any better thanChauncey we will never know. He certainlybelieved he could, though his later performancebelies his self confidence.

Henry Kent's understated narrative about the1814 march of seamen, from Saint John, NewBrunswick to Kingston, Ontario in the dead ofwinter, is one of the most stirring accounts of


endurance and devotion to duty ever written. Itfirst appeared in the Naval Chronicle, and RearAdmiral Hugh Pullen published it in the 1950s asan "Occasional Paper" of the Maritime Museumof Nova Scotia. That version, however, is out ofprint and difficult to find. We should be gratefulto Malcomson for printing the account here.

Almost as an appendix to these narratives isan excerpt from the journal of Barzallai Pease ofthe US Army Transportation Service. It tells ussomething, but not enough, about the use of shipsand seamen on the lakes by the US Army, a topicthat deserves more attention by historians.

Malcomson set out to add to our understand-ing of operations in Lake Ontario. He uses hissources well to provide a framework for thedocuments, providing admirable explanatorynotes. Would that the maps were equally informa-tive; they could easily have replaced some of therather romantic illustrations.

W.A.B. DouglasOttawa, Ontario

David Curtis Skaggs and Gerard T. Altoff. ASignal Victory: The Lake Erie Campaign 181221813. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997. x +244 pp., maps, tables, illustrations, appendix,notes, glossary, bibliographic essay, index. US$34.95, Cdn $48.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-030-4.Canadian distributor, Vanwell Publishing, St.Catharines, ON.

The Battle of Lake Erie, also known as the Battleof Put-in Bay, 1813, has long interested histori-ans. It was the one instance in which a Britishfleet was captured in battle. It is also a remarkableepisode in which "command of the sea" wasacquired by battle, giving the victors great possi2bilities for campaigns on land that were not fullyexploited. Fought in the continental Great Lakesheartland, the episode is the more remarkable, forvirtually all war materials had to come from greatdistances, though the ships themselves were builtlocally. Similarly, officers and men had to comefrom hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Ifthis was a ship-builders' war, then it was also onein which amphibious operations played a promi-nent role in follow-on campaigns. Indeed, in therun up to the 1813 battle, had amphibious opera2tions been undertaken by forces of either side

(and the enemy's ships torched on the stocks, soto speak) no such fleet engagement would havebeen necessary. And had the British army assistedthe small British naval forces on Lake Erie, andtaken out the American squadron at Presque Isle(now Erie, Pennsylvania), no such battle shouldhave occurred. The encounter is also of interest inthat it involved two battle-experienced command-ers: Barclay on the British side and Perry on theAmerican. Their lives and experiences play aninteresting additional theme to any study of theBattle of Lake Erie.

The authors concentrate on the battle itself,but with conspicuous care to the surrounding andrelated questions of strategy and logistics. Theystress the error of American strategy: not attack-ing Montreal. In this they follow various after-war views. They also have a familiarity with howthe British and Canadian forces had carefullynurtured the Indian alliance. They provide, for thefirst time, a thorough analysis of the materialforces of the two sides in the Battle of Lake Erie,pointing out the hopeless nature of the British cir2cumstances, especially the isolated nature ofBarclay's command, limited as he was in suppo rtfrom Commodore Yeo on Lake Erie and fromGeneral Rottenburg on the central, Niagara front.Poor Barclay lost the war before he could beginit, though with true Nelsonian spirit. Indeed, hehad to fight for he could not run away — at leastone of his larger ships drew too much water toease through the shallows of Lake St. Clair.

This fine book is based on an extensiveknowledge of the primary sources and secondaryliterature of the subject. It is not likely to besurpassed in its even-handed treatment of thevarious matters handled. True, the s ty le is mixed,as is common with jointly authored volumes, andthe momentum of the narrative and analysisfrequently stalls. It is a pity, too, that more illus-trations about ships could not have been included,though there is a fine rogues' gallery. The book isheavily referenced, contains a brief bibliographi2cal essay, and has a useful glossary of nauticalterms. The book therefore advances the profes-sional study of the naval War of 1812 on theGreat Lakes and sets a fine model for what otherbattles might reveal. We can hope that the authorsmight turn their attention next to Lake Ontario,where the imperial stakes were equally high if notmore so, but where no conclusive result in naval

Book Reviews 125

ascendancy occurred. Perhaps they will turn toLake Champlain. In my own research, on navalactivities and amphibious waters in Lake Huronand Georgian Bay, realization has occurred thatfighting such a war was a logistical nightmare forboth sides. Skaggs and Altoff show how the LakeErie campaign was vital to fo rtunes in the heart-land, though campaigns both terrestrial andamphibious could work around the margins ofAmerican command of the sea recently acquired.

Barry GoughWaterloo Ontario

Roger Morriss. Cockburn and the British Navy inTransition: Admiral Sir George Cockburn 177221853. Exeter: University of Exeter Press andColumbia: Universi ty of South Carolina Press,1997. xiv + 338 pp., illustrations, maps, notes,bibliography, index. £35, US $39.95, cloth; ISBN0-85989-526-2 (UEP) or I-57003-253-X (USCP)

Until recently those interested in the early nine-teenth-century Royal Navy depended on C.J.Bartlett's Great Britain and Sea Power, 1815253and a scattering of joumal articles. This neglectedperiod has experienced a scholarly renaissance oflate, primarily in the works of Andrew Lambe rt

and David Brown, and we may now add RogerMorriss to that list. His subject, Admiral SirGeorge Cockbum, was an influential figure in thisera but he had no serious modern study until now.

Morriss contends that Cockbum's reputationas a blinkered reactionary, resistant to technicalinnovation during his years as First Naval Lord,was the product of political hostility. As a To ry ,Cockburn suffered greatly from later historians'Whig sympathies. Morriss maintains thatCockburn was as forward2looking as could beexpected in an era of rapid technological develop-ments, and was responsible for many crucialbreakthroughs in the transition to a steam navy.

He served under Nelson in the Mediterraneanin his early career, rising rapidly from 8th Lieu-tenant in 1793 to senior Captain in Nelson'ssquadron by 1795. Further meritorious serv icefollowed, including the capture of Ma rtinique, aspell in India, and the Walcheren expedition. Heis most remembered for his se rv ice in the War of1812, where he was a driving force in the Chesa-peake Bay operations under Cochrane, proving

himself a vigorous and courageous officer.His cool and unflappable bearing led to a

most delicate assignment, the transportation ofNapoleon to St Helena and to se rve as the island'sGovernor for the first phase of his exile. Therewas a battle of wills between the two, Napoleoninsisting on imperial dignity and Cockburnrefusing (on orders) to give him any more defer-ence than was due a general. The time on StHelena was even more tense, as it was necessaryto mount a discreet guard over Napoleon, withoutoverly restricting his personal liberties. The fearof rescue attempts was so great that for a time allvessels were forbidden to call at the island.

Cockburn returned home in 1816, and beganan almost uninterrupted (except for a spell in theI 830s) career at the Admiralty, eventually becom2ing First Sea Lord, until 1846. In many ways thisis the most interesting part of the book because itdeals with the crucial issues of the introduction ofsteam propulsion, iron ships, engineering officers,screw propellers, and the winding down of thebeloved sailing navy. The hoary view that theAdmiralty was too reactionary to adopt the newtechnologies was demolished years ago by Bart-lett: with over a hundred wooden line of battlesailing ships, and over three hundred similarfrigates, a huge advantage in skilled seamen, andno apparent rivals, only a complete idiot wouldhave initiated a technological revolution in war2ships. However, as Morriss demonstrates, admin-istrators like Cockburn kept a close eye on thenew developments, formed high-powered com-mittees to investigate changes, authorized experi-mental craft to test concepts, carried out numer-ous experiments with iron construction and shellguns, and were prepared to move ahead quicklywhen foreign competition made delay too risky.Ultimately, the Royal Navy did adopt steam, ironconstruction and shell guns, and it was by nomeans a last2minute panic response by frightenedelderly admirals which produced this transition.Cockburn, as First Sea Lord, naturally exercisedsome due caution in rushing into new schemes,partly because the Admiralty was often delugedby proposals, many of the crackpot variety. In anage of massive cuts to naval budgets after thewars one had to choose the experimental projectswith care. Cockburn's responsible management ofslim resources, as well as the hostility of Whighistorians and commentators, produced the for-


mer unflattering picture. In some ways he was hisown worst enemy, because he disdained to defendhimself against attacks in print, and seems not tohave left much in his papers, so that the officialrecords are almost all Morriss has to work on.

This is a very valuable book, and Cockburnwill not likely need another biographer in ourlifetimes. Morriss has tried to place Cockburninside broader national history — a growing trendin naval writing — and to a large extent he suc-ceeds. Certainly the navy's place in the politics ofthe day is made very clear. Morriss has a veryfirm knowledge of all the administrative practicesof the day, and explains how things were decidedand implemented without tedious detail. There arefew errors, though Map 6 on the War of 1812 willsurprise: Labrador is in New Brunswick, New-foundland has drifted into Cape Breton, QuebecCity has shifted to Montreal, and Montreal isnicely settled in Ontario, but they are closeenough to be almost twin cities, and the State ofWest Virginia has miraculously appeared fiftyyears early. On page 185 it should be noted therepeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828opened public employment for Catholics as wellas non-Anglican Protestants, and I am not sure itis right to refer to Puseyites (who were somewhatto the right of the Jesuits) as "nonconformists."These are small flaws in a very solid book, how-ever, and there is no hesitation in recommendingit to anyone as an excellent source for the RoyalNavy in the Cockburn years.

Paul WebbLondon, Ontario

Nathan Miller. The US. Navy: A History. 3rd ed.;Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997. 324 pp.,notes. US $22.95, Cdn $31.95, paper; ISBN 1-55750-595-0. Canadian distributor, VanwellPublishing, St. Catharines, ON.

This survey history of the US Navy, first writtenin 1977, has now been revised for the second timeby its venerable author, Nathan Miller. The onlyconceivable reason for releasing the book in itsthird incarnation is for use as a textbook. Itspurpose, states Miller in his Preface, "is to pro2vide the present generation with the story of thenavy, its people and the role they played in thecreation and protection of the United States. For

the most part, I have relied on the research andwritings of others. In the text and in the notes, Ihave tried to acknowledge the debt I owe to thosewho have sailed these seas before, and if I haveoverlooked any, it is not by intention." This is allwell and good. However, the book appears to dolittle beyond compiling the works of others. Nooriginal research appears to have been undertakenfor this work. Most of the material is thereforestandard fare; more attention to the personalitiesinvolved and thinking behind the scenes wouldhave enhanced the value of the work consider2ably. As it is, the book is probably best suited forfirst2year students of naval or maritime history.

The book itself is arranged in eleven chap-ters, with the first half of the book devoted rough-ly to the period from the conception of the USNavy to the beginning of World War I. A fewpoints of particular historical interest appear earlyin the book, such as the attention given to theperiod between the War of 1812 and the CivilWar, an era little covered by historians to date.The various wars with Mexico are especiallyworthy of note. Also of interest is the account ofthe duel involving naval heroes Stephen Decaturand James Barron in 1820. Due to various in-trigues, both "seconds" at the duel had a vestedinterest in seeing both parties dead. Both duelistswere gravely wounded; Decatur later dying of hisinjury. The ensuing public outcry led to the pro-hibition of dueling between senior officers,though it was not banned outright until 1857.

Most of the book appears little changed fromthe first edition published in 1977. Indeed, thequotation by Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, thencommander of the Soviet fleet, in the final sen-tence of the tenth chapter sounds anachronistic:"Sooner or later, the United States will have tounderstand it no longer has mastery of the seas."The final chapter appears to have been reworkedtwice for the second and third editions. The mainjustification for this third edition appears to be thedesire to include treatment of two of the USmilitary's most traumatic events in the pasttwenty years — the suicide bombing of the 24thMarine Amphibious Unit in Beirut in 1983 andthe Gulf War of 199021991.

It is a shame that the extensive bibliographyis buried within a twenty-seven2page section ofnotes, since a separate bibliography is an invalu-able tool for those wishing to pursue further

Book Reviews 127

research. It also seems a shame that no biographi-cal sketch of the author is included; all we canlearn from the book is that Miller is the author often other works to date, mostly concerned withAmerican historical figures. Serious students ofnautical history will recognize his name. Forreaders not so familiar with him, a brief biogra-phy would have been welcome.

Within these limitations, this remains auseful book for students or anyone interested in ageneral history of the US Navy.

David J. ShirlawNo rth Vancouver, British Columbia

Jon Tetsuro Sumida. Inventing Grand Strategyand Teaching Command: The Classic Works ofAlfred Thayer Mahan Reconsidered. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins Universi ty Press and Washington,DC: The Woodrow Wilson Press, 1997. xix + 164pp., bibliography, analytical index, general index.US $24.95, cloth; ISBN 0-8018-5800-3.

We have heard the litanies before: "the Army hasClausewitz, the Navy has Mahan"; each is "oftenquoted, rarely understood." The credibility ofAl fred Thayer Mahan would seem to be in tattersas the West celebrates victory in the Cold War bymeans other than the decisive naval battle whichhe espoused. But Jon Sumida has produced astudy which advocates the continuing relevanceof the American naval strategist. Comparingnaval command to the arts of musical perfor2mance and of zen enlightenment, Sumida seeksnothing less than the rehabilitation of Mahan forthe post2modern reader.

There are few better qualified to undertakethis task. Sumida is a distinguished historian ofthe Royal Navy in the period 188921914. Thesewere precisely the years when Mahan was pro-ducing his famous studies of the influence of seapower upon history and other lesser works, whichin turn would influence the course of naval devel-opment for the next century. Virtually everysubsequent analysis of Mahan — not to mentionany pretender to Britain's legacy of command ofthe seas — has invoked the universal truths as-cribed to him: that naval supremacy was theprerequisite to national greatness, and that thedirection of naval operations according to certainstrategic principles resulted in victory. Sumida's

view is that these generally accepted interpreta-tions are, in a word, "wrong." [4]

This contention is bound to be controversial,but he has a point. We are reminded that Mahandid not undertake the Influence of Sea Powerseries as a strategist, but as an historian concernedfor the declining professionalism of the Americannavy. He believed that constant and rapid me-chanical innovation had upset planning andeducation to the detriment of command confi-dence and authority. "He feared the consequencesof a navy led by indecisive men, bred by bureau-cratic routine ... to follow rules or act politically."[24] That timeless insight, and others, Sumidaargues, were lost when Mahan's publisher in2sisted upon the late addition to his first majorbook of an introductory chapter on "The Elementsof Sea Power." This blatant marketing ploy, donesolely to capitalize on the growing debate in theUnited States over the future of naval construc2tion, has defined our perception of Mahan'swriting ever since.

And what of that writing? Sumida examinesMahan's "Professional Purpose, GeopoliticalVision, and Historical Technique," then his "Poli2tical, Political-Economic, and GovernmentalArgument" and "Strategic and Professional Argu-ment," exposing how they evolved over hiscareer. Important shifts in Mahanian thought arerevealed, not as the unimportant inconsistenciesor contradictions contended by others, but ratheras nuances on his central theme of adaptability asthe essence of naval command. Conscious of thetendency of doctrine to interfere with the exerciseof intelligent judgement, Mahan strove to conveya sound understanding of core principles of navalwarfare — not a slavish adherence to them. Thecontemplation of contradictory lines of thought —as in musical performance or zen meditation —are signs not of inconsistency, but of complexity.

Sumida concludes that, while Mahan's worksmay be dated or are incomplete in their analysis,they remain "a source of provocative methodolog-ical suggestion and a worthy subject of seriousphilosophical discussion." [116] To prove thepoint, he ends with the tantalizing propositionthat the rise of US naval mastery, conventionallyinterpreted as having been at the expense of thatof Britain, reveals a continuum of Great Powercooperative action when seen through theMahanian concept of a transnational conso rtium.


Along the way, we are treated to equally refresh-ing reviews of Mahan's thoughts on the educationof officers, ship design, naval administration, andthe complexity of sea warfare — all subjects ofcontinuing interest to sea officers.

This is an important book. If only in makingthe preeminent American naval historian-strate-gist relevant for the coming century, Sumida hasaccomplished his purpose. For those who thinkthey knew Mahan, this volume is a useful rejoin2der. Far from resolving the debate over Mahanand his in fluence on history, it is likely to renewit. And if it encourages a new generation of navalpractitioners to give Mahan a read, all the better.

Richard H. GimblettBlackburn Hamlet, Ontario

Richard Brooks. Fred T Jane: An EccentricVisionary. Coulsdon, Surrey: Jane's InformationGroup, 1997. xii + 260 pp., illustrated, bibliogra-phy, index. £26, cloth; ISBN 02170621751-8.

Fred T. Jane; (intro. Anthony Preston). TheBritish Battle-Fleet. Its Inception and Growththroughout the Centuries. London, 1912;"Conway Classics" reprint; London: ConwayMaritime Press, 1997. xvi + 406 pp., photoplates(b+w, colour), figures, maps, tables, index. £15,cloth; ISBN 0-85177-723-6. Canadian distributor,Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, ON.

Fred T. Jane, who gave his name to the famousreference book, has long required a biography.Richard Brooks' study places him into context, asa leading naval journalist of his day.

Born in 1865, Jane spent his early life inExeter, where he learned to draw. Moving toLondon in 1885 he worked as an illustrator; by1890 he was reporting on naval manoeuvres.Both his art and his writing reflected boundlessenthusiasm, initially for torpedo craft, but ulti2mately for all aspects of naval life. In 1895 hewrote Blake of the 'Rattlesnake' a future-warbook based on real officers and ships. It set apattern. Jane had a powerful imagination; therewere more ideas in any one of his novels than halfa dozen books by other authors, but he rarelydeveloped them, and as Brooks observes, "thewhole does not live up to the promise of strongbeginning." After dabbling in science fiction Jane

drew and tabulated every warship afloat for hisannual All the World's Fighting Ships in 1897.He had found a formula to exploit the "NewNavalism" of the 1890s, and the contemporarymania for technical detail. The linked "Naval WarGame" was developed with the assistance ofleading British officers, including Hen ry May andPrince Louis of Battenberg.

Jane moved to Portsmouth, where he devel-oped a unique rapport with the Royal Navy, andsome of the foreign navies that frequented theharbour. He wrote The Imperial Russian Navy in1898, after a Russian Grand Duke had invitedhim to tour ships and bases in the Black Sea andBaltic. This success led to a Japanese invitation towrite a similar study. While the Russo-Japanesewar of 190425 helped sales, it divided his loyal-ties. Ultimately his concern with the "yellow-peril," with Chinese manpower mobilised and ledby Japan, led him to argue that Russia was "fight-ing Europe's battle."

Despite his financial success and interna2tional reputation, Jane had no quantifiable influ2ence on British naval policy. Brooks suggests thisreflected class prejudice, although he admits thatthe serv ice did not take any civilians seriously.More likely it was Jane's refusal to fall in withthe cycle of panic and alarm that propelled navalpolicy through the Edwardian era. He had no timefor the bleatings of the Navy League, and al-though generally supportive of Fisher, was al-ways prepared to criticise. Jane shared many ofFisher's enthusiasms, notably speed, anticipatingthe batt le-cruiser in 1902. Despite this he pre-ferred Lord Charles Beresford, an aristocrat witha common touch, to the secretive Fisher. In hismost significant book, Heresies of Seapower(1906), Jane attacked the prevailing Mahanian"blue2water" orthodoxy as over-complex andunduly historical. His interest in the conditions onthe lower deck developed into the Social Darwin-ist concept of "Fitness-to2Win." Once again therewere ideas to spare, but few of them were suffi-ciently worked through to satisfy an audience pre2disposed to criticise. The most significant theme,the critical importance of bases in steam agenaval warfare, reflected nineteenth-century expe-rience, and predicted the twentieth century betterthan any other naval strategic thinker of the era.As Brooks demonstrates, the failure to synthesisehis thought was a reflection of the numerous calls

Book Reviews 129

on his time; he continued to edit Fighting Ships,began writing a weekly newspaper column, tookup motoring (using an eight2litre Mercedes racingcar!), founded All the World's Airships, stood forParliament and joined the Scout Movement.

His 1912 study, The British Battlefleet ,reprinted in 1915 and reproduced, without W.L.Wylie's colour illustrations, in 1990, has nowappeared with the colour plates. Although it wasJane's last book, it was not his best. He hoped hisbas ic theme, how ship design reflected the navalusage, would remove the "poetry" from navalhistory. He used the example of Sir Robe rt

Seppings' inspection of the shattered bow of theVictory after Trafalgar, arguing that the roundbow was a response to Nelson's tactical revolu-tion. Having adopted an original approach to thesubject, Jane failed to develop this argument. Thebook is a conflation of half-read history, technicalsummaries of ships, many of which he did notunderstand, and a catalogue of errors. However,he did stress that the prime function of Britishnaval power had always been deterrence, citingRaleigh, and attributing the peace of the last twodecades to the fleet built by Sir William White.Despite a useful reading list, he had not masteredthe subject, confusing Lord Hood first with LordHowe, and then with his brother Lord Bridport.Once he reached the technical developments andoperations of the ironclad era, Jane's grasp im-proved. He recognised the impo rtance of basesand offensive operations on the li ttoral, themesoutlined in Heresies, but did not develop theirtactical or technical implications. He relied tooheavily on a few texts — H.W. Wilson, NathanielBarnaby and in particular Edward Reed. Theperiod after 1882 is warped by hero-worship ofBeresford. His discussion of the torpedo gunboatexploited personal experience of the 1891 exer-cises to demonstrate their role in blockadingFrench torpedo boat bases. He also recognisedthat changing the naval enemy from France toGermany forced a complete redesign of contem-porary destroyers. His technical interests ensuredthat he was less critical of Fisher than otherConservative naval writers. However, he linkedthe Dreadnought with Cuniberti's ideas, pub-lished in Fighting Ships, when Fisher's conceptwas actually quite different. Like Fisher he be-lieved the torpedo had doomed linear tactics, andgave aircraft, airships and submarines a promi-

nent place. Jane approved of the battle-cruiser,and recognised the trend towards smaller numbersof larger and faster capital ships, used in tacticallyflexible units, supported by flotilla craft. Despitehis familiarity with the "real" navy he repeatedFisher's claims about speed and armour, notablythe mythical 31.7 knots achieved by Lion: per2haps he understood the deterrent value of lies!Then he claimed that during the 1911 AgadirCrisis there was not enough coal for the Navy togo to war, a situation rectified by 1912. Janeconcluded with the "Fitness-to-Win" concept of1906. The key to success was having the rightships for the job, and crews welded together byhard discipline. The last was of such pre-eminentimportance that it should give all reformers pausebefore they altered any aspect of the se rv ice.

While The British Battlefleet is not Jane'sbest work — the Russian book is more useful,while Heresies has lasting merit — there is littlequestion that it has been the most influential.Later writers, notably Oscar Parkes, repeated hisopinions, re2used his drawings and ensured thathis errors were perpetuated. Jane's attempt towrite a naval history that examined the inter2relationship between tactics, strategy and shipdesign was ambitious, but badly delivered. Janewas too busy to do the job properly. By 1912Jane's currency as a journalist was declining.Increasingly aware that modern war would notconform to the simplistic expectations of thenation, and most of the navy, he hoped that theArms Race would satisfy its real object, deterringconflict. He was surprised when war broke out in1914, probably because the conflict had nothingto do with Anglo-German issues. Although thewar revived his journalistic career his messagewas too darkly realistic for an audience thatexpected a new Trafalgar or Tsushima. He spentmuch of his time defending the Admiralty, andexplaining that in apparently doing nothing thenavy was winning the war. It was a difficultmessage to get across, and in his effo rts hepushed himself too hard, enduring long drives inan open car that brought on influenza and thenheart failure. He died in March 1916, aged 50.

A man of astonishing energy, lively humourand boundless enthusiasm, Jane had a talent fortaking pains with details, but rarely the time tothink through the ideas that his original mindgenerated. Brooks' biography will be required


reading for those interested in Jane, and the yearsbetween the Naval Defence Act and the Battle ofJutland. Jane deserves to be remembered as anunusual, original journalist with the talent to spota gap in the market, the ability to fill it, and theforesight to ensure that his annuals survived hisuntimely death.

Andrew LambertLondon, England

Ian Sturton (ed.). All the World's Battleships:1906 to the Present. London: Conway MaritimePress, 1997. 190 pp., photographs, figures, tables,index. £15, cloth; ISBN 0-85177-691-4. Canadiandistributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines,ON.

This is a compact inexpensive reference bookoverflowing with facts and details of all theDreadnought2type ships of fifteen countries,including the Netherlands that planned but neverbuilt a Dreadnought. The national sections, writ-ten by such scholars as Norman Friedman (UnitedStates, Japan 1906-22) and Antony Preston,(Great Britain), are arranged alphabetically.Within these chapters, each design and class isdiscussed separately in chronological order.

A book such as this cannot be all things forall people, and for economy and space, sacrificesmust be made. The writing throughout is clipped,sometimes at the expense of clarity. Re2reading tocatch the meaning is occasionally necessary.Abbreviations abound. "BU" is self-evident("broken up") but the description of GermanKaiser-class main mountings as DrhLC/1909escaped this reviewer. To say that it was similarto C/1909 does not help. The lack of a glossary toexplain these abbreviations and the widespreaduse of technical terms without explanation, meansthat this is a book for the expert and the buff.There is little analysis, though it cannot reason2ably be expected. Preston had only fifty pageswhereas Parkes in his British Battleships devotedover two hundred pages to the same period. Theeditor makes no attempt to bring together parallelor sequential developments of different countries.The lack of references or a bibliography willannoy researchers who want to pursue something.

Against these shortcomings there are somenoteworthy strengths. The book is richly illus-

trated. Every ship described, whether it never gotoff the drawing board or was altered severaltimes, has at least one scaled lines drawing. Thoseclasses of ships that survived the 1922 Washing-ton Treaty frequently have a lines drawing foreach modernization. The photographs are excel-lent. Many are full and even double page spreads.Features, such as torpedo bulges, pagoda s ty lebridges, and tripod and lattice masts are all clearlyillustrated. Each design is accompanied with astandard format table enumerating displacement,dimensions, machinery, armour, armament, andcomplement. If an order for construction wasplaced, then a second table listing each ship byname provides the builder, dates laid down,launched and completed, and the "fate." Thisbook fills a niche. Like a Jane's, it brings to2gether all the countries that had Dreadnought2 typeships. But it expands on Jane's with the inclusionof proposed designs. This adds an importantdimension to discussion of naval arms races andnational security concerns. A brief description ofthe life and/or fate of each class offers an histori-cal component missing from the annuals.

The book also provides a basis for commen2tary. The tabular entries under "fate" emphasizeshow transitory these behemoths were. A briefsixteen years spanned the commissioning of HMSDreadnought to the Washington limitation treaty.The German fleet did not su rvive, and many ofthe other ships were "BU." The increased vulnera-bility to submarine and air attack of those thatsurvived made them expensive assets to use inWorld War II. The photographs also suggestideas. The World War I photographs of theBritish and German ships show a noticeablylower standard of ship's husbandry in the Germanfleet. As most of the photographs are dated, andthis observation is based on pictures of 1917 and1918, can they be used as evidence of deteriorat-ing conditions? The fate of all these ships, easilyavailable in a single volume, may also be a start2ing point for reflection on the Washington treatyand arms limitation.

This is a useful reference book for thoseinterested in the specialty. It should be a ttractivefor many reasons, not the least of which is itscomparatively modest price.

William GloverManotick, Ontario

Book Reviews 131

Tristan Jones. Heart of Oak. St. Martin's Press,1984; Dobbs Ferry , NY: Sheridan Press, 1997.283 pp., glossary. Cdn $19.95, paper; ISBN 1-57409-019-4. Distributed in Canada by NimbusPublishing, Halifax.

Heart of Oak is an uninhibited description of oneman's experiences of life in the lower deck of theRoyal Navy during World War II. Conversationsare recorded as faithfully as possible as are songsas they were sung. There is a glossary of navalterms, many of which were used but have notbeen recorded elsewhere. To avoid embarrass-ment of persons still alive some names of peopleand ships have been altered.

Tristan Jones went to sea at the age of four-teen as a deck boy in a coastal sailing ketch out ofWales. In 1940, aged sixteen, he joined the RoyalNavy as a Boy Seaman and went off for tenmonths' basic training at HMS Ganges, a Boys'Training Establishment at Shotley near Harwich.The training was intense and those who survivedwere likely to become splendid young seamen.

Jones' first ship was an Armed MerchantCruiser fitting out in Southampton. Soon com-pleted, she was mid-Atlantic escorting a convoybound for Canada when a boiler room fire brokeout. The fire spread and the ship began to sink. Inhigh seas the crew had to jump on to the plungingdeck of the rescuing destroyer. After survivor'sleave Jones was drafted to an older destroyer builtin 1917 — another interesting experience. Shewas a screening destroyer with the forces seekingBismarck and Prinz Eugen as the German war-ships broke out into the Atlantic. Jones relatedwitnessing the destruction of HMS Hood and, afew days later, of Bismarck under the guns of theHome Fleet. Later in that summer of 1941, he hadthe more pleasant experience of seeing PrimeMinister Churchill in HMS Prince of Walesbound for his historic meeting with PresidentRoosevelt. In late 1941 Britain began sendingsupplies to Russia via convoys through theBarents Sea. On a bloody passage to Murmanskeleven merchantmen were sunk and on the returntrip Jones' destroyer was torpedoed and sank.Survivors were picked up quickly by anotherdestroyer, transferred to a merchantman, almostimmediately sunk by a bomb down the funnel,and rescued again by the same destroyer.

Jones' next ship, an 0-class destroyer,

formed part of the escort for Convoy PQ 17. Forfear of destruction by Tirpitz, Admiralty orderedthe convoy to scatter. Twenty-four out of thirty-seven merchantmen were sunk while the escortwithdrew to safer waters. Late in 1942, whenscreening JW51B, the escorts drove off theAdmiral Hipper, Lutzow and six destroyers beforethe convoy arrived safely in Murmansk. The lastoperation in which Jones was present was thedestruction of Scharnhorst in 1943. When hisship was on her way to the invasion of NormandyJones was drafted to service in the Far East. Hecompleted his twelve2year-engagement in 1952.

The main value of Heart of Oak lies in thedescriptive detail. Daily life in Britain between1940 and 1944, air raids, railway travel, rationing,sex, the Yanks, profiteering, class distinction andso on, are all starkly portrayed. Life in the Boys'Training Establishment is related in painful detail,including the view from the masthead. Somemight blush to recall the style of amusing andfoul language and ribald song. Some might bereminded of the picturesque blasts delivered byChief and Petty Officers. The word pictures of thefittings and conditions of old and new destroyers,to the last rivet and messtraps, would be difficultto improve. With regard to the battle experiences,it can be said that many officers and men in theRoyal Navy could have been present for all suchevents. Based on my own experiences, Heart ofOak is a valuable record for posterity.

L.B. JensonQueensland, Nova Scotia

Alfred E. Deeble. Three Tiffies and a Sweeper.Bishop Auckland, Durham: Pentland Press, 1997.xv + 145 pp., photographs. £15, cloth; ISBN 1-85821-520-X.

The first factual histories to appear after WorldWar II tended to be written by captains and gen-erals. Then came the "official" histories andassessments, followed in turn by the exposées ofclay feet and errors by so-called armchair quarter-backs. It is mostly in recent years that the lowerechelons of the combatants, now retired fromtime-consuming employment, are producing theirpersonal memoirs. This slim book is one of thisgenre, written by a wartime engine room artificeror "tiffie." Such books can usefully fill in minor


gaps in the pictures of naval warfare and history.Despite its title, there is very little about

mine-sweepers or engine room operations inDeeble's tale, in his case that of a Canadian-builtAlgerine-class fleet sweeper. He takes us throughhis joining routine and, sketchily, his time in atraining cruiser. Then there is an extended des-cription of his June 1943 trip with three mates toToronto to pick up HMS Clinton. (There are nodates in this tale, so it is a bit difficult to deter-mine when events occur.) We get rather longdescriptions of his leaves, a visit to Detroit tovisit an aunt, and even side employment in theshipyard to augment his meagre ERA's RN pay.

Not until page 106, when his ship puts to seaon operational training, do we have the opportu-nity to follow his duties in the ship's engineeringdepartment. As it is, Clinton only lasts until mid-October 1944 before being heavily damaged by amine when sweeping at Piraeus, Greece. Aftertemporary repairs she steamed to Malta, whereDeeble left her, the last of the three `tiffies whohad joined in Toronto.

There is some useful stuff here for anyonewith an interest in the lives of those "around theengine," as Churchill termed them. The authoradopts the unusual style of writing in the thirdperson — he is "Ted" throughout, so one gets asomewhat detached view of his reactions ashore,and of his relationships, not always harmonious,afloat with his mates. I found this a bit ingenuous,as though we were sharing a minor, unnecessarysecret. There are a few very small errors — Storm-cock' s theoretical crew from Kipling's poem ofthe sweepers of World War I would be hurt attheir omission from his quotation! Yet the errorsare fewer in number than in that other and similarERA's story, Tubal Cain (Lewes, 1986). In short,this is a slim but useful addition.

Fraser McKeeMarkdale, Ontario

Ian Hay. Singapore Repulsed: The Battle CruiserRepulse. Bishop Auckland, Durham: PentlandPress, 1997. 230 pp., photographs, appendices.£13.50, paper; ISBN 1-85821-542-0.

The loss of Force Z, battleship Prince of Walesand battlecruiser Repulse, was one of the greattragedies of World War II. Ordinary Seaman Ian

Hay, of HMS Repulse, has written a first-personaccount of the sinking, and it was with greatanticipation that I opened the book. Although thedisaster is narrated as advertised, overall thisvolume proved to be disappointing.

It begins simply enough, touching on Hay'searly life in Glasgow and his training as a boyseaman in HMS Ganges. This part of the bookprovides lots of colour, with numerous littlevignettes that open a window on a way of lifenow gone by — stories of boat and sail drill,climbing the mast, swimming lessons, and (notsurprisingly!) food. It makes for interesting andentertaining reading. Thrown in, almost ran-domly, is a peculiar account of a murder onboardHMS Dorsetshire, supposedly recounted in latteryears by a retired admiral.

The real meat begins when Hay joins Re-pulse immediately pre-war. The pages offer snap-shots of life as a sailor in a Royal Navy capitalship — the author's anecdotes are the best pa rt ofthe book. Particularly good is Chapter Eleven,"Arctic Patrol," which gives a real feeling forwhat it was like as part of the crew of a 15-inchgun turret. Unfortunately, this is marred by someof the many errors strewn throughout — the USSMissouri is a battleship, not a battlecruiser, it washer sister Iowa which suffered the explosion inher turret (`B,' not `A'), and it did not occur offthe coast of Lebanon. [77] There are numeroussuch errors, all of which should have been caught:Hurricane fighters were not "updated versions" ofSpitfires [89]; HMS Hood did not encounter theBismarck before the 18th Cruiser Squadron [100];Admiral Lütjens of the German Navy was notinvolved in the "Channel Dash" which, moreover,occurred after his death in the Bismarck [102];and he has confused the Battle of the Coral Sea(May 1942) with the Battle of the Java Sea inwhich the destroyer HMS Electra was sunk. [184]More subtle is the way in which Hay — perhapsthrough a too-liberal application of artistic license— makes it seem as though HMS Repulse wasactually in action against the Bismarck, and whileit makes a fine depiction of the patriotism of hercrew, it is highly doubtful that Repulse wouldhave been of much use in a one-on-one duelagainst the German battleship. [107] These mis2takes make it difficult to trust the accuracy of thebook. The narration itself tends to be disjointedand sometimes difficult to follow.

Book Reviews 133

Hay's account of the sinking of Repulse isadequate, albeit somewhat scattered, and doesbring home the bravery that occurred amidst theshambles. Although the book's cover hints atcontroversy, the author is in accord with otherswho blame the Admiralty and Churchill forsending Force Z out without the carrier Indomita-ble, and he does not censure the force com-mander, Admiral Philips, for proceeding withoutfighter cover. Also justified is his belief thatSingapore should not have fallen so rapidly, andthat the senior officers should not have fled.

Ian Hay is a man rightly proud of his timespent in a great serv ice, and his generation madegreat sacrifices in the cause of freedom. It istherefore unpleasant for this reviewer to be unableto recommend his book: there are simply toomany flaws for it to be a useful source on the lossof HM Ships Repulse and Prince of Wales.

William SchleihaufPierrefonds, Québec

Charles Furey. Going Back: A Navy Airman inthe Pacific War. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press,1997. ix + 230 pp., photographs. US $32.95, Cdn$45.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-278-1. Canadiandistributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines,ON.

The 1990s, with its numerous significant andtragic golden anniversaries, have brought forthmany new accounts of the greatest conflict hu-mankind has ever had to endure. Indeed, manyfind it quite ironic that the public interest inWorld War II seems unquenchable even as thegeneration that fought in and survived that stun-ning conflagration dies away daily. Fortunatelyfor those of us who were born after 1945 but whoremain fascinated by that ever distant war, manyof those who went to battle between 1939 and1945 have sought to keep their experiences alivein memoirs, some doing so more successfullythan others.

Among the successes must be includedCharles Furey's Going Back: A Navy Airman inthe Pacific War. The dustjacket asserts that theauthor began this book while attending a writingclass at the College of the Redwoods in 1995.Given the quality of Furey's writing s ty le and theemotional wallop of his engaging story, one could

only wish he had begun his writing career at amuch earlier date. Beginning with a highly evoca-tive chapter of his childhood days in a Catholicschool in Philadelphia in the 1930s, Furey suc-cessfully evokes a lost time of boyish innocence,an innocence he would soon lose when he wasinducted into the US Navy in August 1942 whilestill a teenager. Trained as an airman and radio-man, the young recruit found himself languishingin a series of posts state-side while the warseemed to pass him by. But by early 1944, Fureyand the rest of his bomber\ reconnaissance crewwere in the South Pacific, conducting long-rangepatrols over the not-always-so-tranquil waters ofthe vast Pacific Ocean.

For those who prefer the "drum and trumpet"school of military history, Furey's account offersrelatively little "real" excitement. His brief careerat the front amounted mostly to long and boringpatrols, enduring bad food and worse living con-ditions, and tedious military duties. He does,however, include numerous funny anecdotes,Particularly amusing, for instance, is his accountof how he, having never had a driver's license,had to learn to drive an army truck at night whilerelaying increasingly alarmed flight crews to theirwaiting aircraft; one easily assumes that thosecrewmen probably viewed their missions as farless dangerous than the ride provided by airmanFurey. His own crew, though, had two "high"moments. While based at New Guinea, the planebombed and strafed a submarine caught on thesurface, only to discover upon its return to basethat the craft, luckily undamaged, had beenAmerican. Then, just a few weeks later, thatmistake is forgotten when Furey and his matessurprise and shoot down a Betty, a small Japanesebomber near Los Negros.

The emotional core of the book, however,lies in its description of the aftermath of a sho rtplane ride in May 1944. That ride, ending tragi-cally at the end of an island runway, killed threeof Furey's crew mates and left him horriblyburned and battered. From then until his releasefrom the navy in September 1945, Furey's warconsisted of moves to various hospitals in Austra-lia and the United States, and numerous, andultimately successful, skin graft operations.

If one longs for descriptions of battle andblood, then Going Back: A Navy Airman in thePacific War likely is not for you. If, however,


your taste runs to an intensely humanistic accountof one man 's lonely war, then this very fine bookfits the bill. It was a great pleasure to read.

Galen Roger PerrasCalgary , Alberta

Eric Lacroix and Linton Well II. Japanese Cruis-ers of the Pacific War. Annapolis: Naval InstitutePress, 1997. xiii + 882 pp., figures, photographs,tables, glossary, bibliography, index. US $75,Cdn $105, cloth; ISBN 0-87021-3H23. Canadiandistributor, Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines,ON.

In the tradition of Siegfried Breyer, AntonyPreston, and Roger Friedman, Lacroix and Wellshave given us a noteworthy addition to the libraryof naval reference books. The volume is brim-ming with graphics and technical details about thedesign, construction, and service careers of theroughly five dozen cruisers built, converted, orplanned by the Imperial Japanese Navy in thetwentieth century. But to depict Japanese Cruis-ers of the Pacific War as simply one more compi-lation of research data, useful though that mightbe for many scholars and aficionados of thePacific war, is to understate its utility for allstudents of the Japanese naval effo rt in WorldWar II. What we have is a virtual history of theImperial Japanese Navy's surface forces fromtheir conceptualization of strategy in the earlyyears of the century through the inglorious dé-nouement of August 1945.

One example should suffice to illustrate thedepth of coverage offered by the authors. In theauthoritative Warships of the Imperial JapaneseNavy, 186921945, by Hansgeorg Jentschura,Dieter Jung, and Peter Mickel (Naval InstitutePress, 1970, 1982), the Mogami, a typical heavycruiser, draws less than a page of text, figures,and drawings, but Lacroix and Wells devote morethan fifteen pages to the vessel, plus dozens ofphotographs and drawings and numerous listingsin assorted statistical tables. And this is only thespace Lacroix and Wells set aside for the Mogamiherself; the entire story of the Mogami-classvessels covers fully sixty-eight pages. Admittedlycomparisons with Jentschura are of limited valuebecause the avowed scope of that work differsfrom the volume under consideration here, but

even so the incredible comprehensiveness of thelatter is striking. For every cruiser class, there arebackground narratives of each building program,construction and engineering notes, se rv icehistories, and indepth studies of hull characteris-tics, armor schemes, armament, fire-controlinstallations, propulsion and machinery, andhabitability.

So, whether you wish to know the propellershaft dimensions, torpedo fire control particulars,or stability data for your favorite Japanese cruiserof World War II, you will find it in this handsomevolume, published with the usual high productionvalues of the Naval Institute Press. Such exhaus-tive coverage might seem to limit the book'sappeal to the antiquarian, but in fact it se rves toprovide a comprehensive history of Japanesenaval engineering and strategic thinking for thebulk of the first half of the twentieth century.Indeed, by reading selectively, one can trace thehistory of boiler design, ordnance development,tactical theory, or any of a variety of other facetsof the Imperial Japanese Navy in the decadesbefore and during World War II. It is hard toimagine any research topic on the Japanese navyin this era that would not profit from a consulta-tion with this volume.

The authors have used sources that includeextant official Japanese documents, postwar USstudies, and numerous memoirs or other postwarpublications of the Japanese principals. This is,however, more reflective of the state of the sourcematerial than any weakness in the authors' re-search effort, which was an extensive journeythrough myriad primary and secondary materialsover the course of many years. Some recentlydeclassified cryptanalytic series, such as theJapanese Water Transport Messages, might havebeen explored, though it is unlikely that therelevant material in such collections would haveadded or altered much of the final product. An-other possible criticism is that the book neglectsthe Imperial Japanese Navy's numerous auxiliarycruisers, i.e., commandeered and convertedmerchantmen, but possibly the authors felt that, atnearly nine hundred pages, the book was alreadycrowding reasonable length and cost parameters.

The minor reservations notwithstanding,these "amateur" historians have spent yearsproducing a massive tome that meets the fineststandards of the profession. The great effo rts

Book Reviews 135

expended in the process reveal that this prodi-gious technical compendium is in fact a monu-mental labor of love.

Mark P. ParilloManhattan, Kansas

Roger Dingman. Ghost of War: The Sinking ofthe Awa Maru and Japanese-American Relations,1945-1995. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press,1997. xiii + 373 pp., photographs, map, notes,bibliography, index. US $35, Cdn $48.95, cloth;ISBN 1255750-159-9. Canadian distributor,Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, ON.

For over twenty years Professor Dingman hasexplored various aspects of East Asian historywith an undiminished enthusiasm and persistencethat has led to over fifty international a rticles andseveral seminal monographs. His Power in thePacific (Chicago, 1976) remains the standardwork on the Washington Conference. His latestbook, Ghost of War, is likely to be seen as anequivalent text for the tragic Awa maru episode.All the usual elements of Dingman's scholarlyendeavours — meticulous research, shrewd analy-sis and balanced and candid conclusions — arefound in this most absorbing study of the long-term consequences of what the author calls thegreatest submarine error of World War II,namely, the torpedoing and destruction of theJapanese passenger-cargo vessel (Awa Maru) bythe US submarine Queenfish (SS 393) in April1945. Sadly, the Awa Maru, which had beensailing under a guarantee of safe passage pro-vided by the Americans and was marked withlarge white crosses along her sides, sank sixtymetres to the bottom of the Taiwan Straits a fewmiles off the south east coast of China, takingmore than two thousand men, women and chil-dren with her. Only one man from this entirevessel, Shimoda Kantaro, was plucked from thesea to safety by the crew of the Queenfish.

Dingman sets about reconstructing the eventsof that most fateful and dramatic of occasionswith commendable zeal and authority. His lin-guistic fluency is matched by his writing stylewhich, although eschewing hyperbole, has atempo and vivacity about it that carries the readereagerly forward from one ill-starred coincidenceto the next. This is yet another example of the old

maxim that nothing is quite as simple as it may atfirst seem. Apart from learning why the captainand crew of the Queenfish were blissfully andnegligently unaware of the identity of the AwaMaru before she was torpedoed, the reader ismade aware of the disturbing fact that the Japa-nese High Command had to some extent compro-mised the humanitarian aspect of the voyage ofthe Awa Maru (she had been carrying food andmedicine to American and Allied prisoners ofwar) by loading contraband goods (rubber and tiningots amongst other items) aboard her. This didnot explain why the Queenfish sank her on thatdark and sinister night but it certainly providedammunition for those in American naval circleswho wished to provide retrospective justificationfor doing so. Whether two wrongs made a right,however, scarcely seemed to matter to those whowished to whitewash the guilt of the accused.

It would be extremely difficult to sustain thepace and drama that is so evident in the first fivechapters of Ghost of War for the rest of the bookand not surprisingly perhaps the two chaptersdevoted to the diplomatic exchanges between theAmericans and the Japanese in the post-warOccupation period are much less vivid than thosewhich preceded them. Nonetheless, they too havethe Dingman stamp of authority on them.

Two further chapters demonstrate very stark-ly how the two sides in this tragedy depicted thedestruction of the Awa Maru in books and filmsor remembered it in institutional activities and/ordevotional shrines. Interestingly, while extollingthe virtues and heroic qualities of their submarin-ers, the Americans have said relatively little aboutthe fate of the Awa Marti, preferring to dwell onthe "kills" that eliminated legitimate targets ratherthan exposing the sad truth that accidents orworse do happen in wartime. For their part therelatives of those that died on board the AwaMaru, and the Japanese writers and historianswho took up their case, had no doubt who werethe victims of human error or malicious intent andofficial connivance and disinterest in this case.

Dingman rounds off his study with twochapters on the salvage operations that variouspeople sought unsuccessfully to mount before theChinese government announced in March 1979that the wreck had been found. In due course theChinese would return what had been found ofthose who had perished that night in April 1945


to the Japanese authorities so that the hungryghosts of the Awa Maru might finally be interredin their homeland.

Ghost of War is an admirable book by asuperb historian. In this case the promotionalliterature is accurate — it is a compelling storyand powerfully told.

Malcolm H. MurfettKent Ridge, Singapore

Dennis J. Cummings. The Men Behind theTrident: SEAL Team One in Vietnam. Annapolis:Naval Institute Press, 1997. xvi + 270 pp., photo-graphs, glossary. US $29.95, Cdn $41.95, cloth;ISBN 1-55750-139-4. Canadian distributor,Vanwell Publishing, St. Catharines, ON.

For those interested in the day-to-day activitiesand training of a highly trained group of US Navycommandos active in Vietnam, 1963-1972, thisbook will be hard to put down. The verbatimreporting of interv iews with twenty of the formerSEALs should interest them very much. Mostreaders, however, will be disappointed.

Members of SEAL (US Navy Sea-Air-Landcommandos) units all underwent rigorous Under-water Demolition Team training (UDT) beforebeing selected for further extensive training inschools operated by the Army, Navy, Air Forceand Marine Corps. Whereas UDT activities wereconfined primarily to underwater sorties againstenemy ships "in the middle of the night and getaway undetected," SEAL missions included the"destroying of shipping, bridges, railway linesand other facilities in maritime and riverineelements." Their major task was the gathering ofintelligence and information about the enemy, theViet Cong, in the Rung Sat Special Zone and theMekong Delta and other areas. Operations wereclandestine and carried out in outmost secrecy.When in contact with the enemy they always triedto capture rather than kill so that prisoners couldbe interrogated by US Navy Intelligence. As onerespondent explained, they primarily followed"sneak and peek" tactics, a reflection of the SEALtraining which featured weapons handling, patrol-ling and insertion/extraction techniques. Anotherimportant SEAL task was the training of LDNN(Lien Doi Nguoi Nhai), Vietnamese SEALs aswell as working with the Hoi Chanhs, (Viet Cong

who had surrendered and were prepared to fightagainst their former comrades).

While all of this as told by individual SEALsis interesting, as a non-US Navy member or non-Vietnam participant it is easy to become boredreading about the various so rties. I recommendthat the book not be read "all in one gulp" butthree or four interviews at a time. The SEALs'description of the so rties, ambushes and otherskirmishes with the enemy in which they wereengaged would undoubtedly be of interest toHollywood film-makers; they contain all the in-gredients that make wartime adventure filmsinteresting. I would have preferred, however, hadCummings cast his first-class interview materialwithin some type of analytical framework so thatit would be more useful for training purposes orfor understanding "what went wrong" in Vietnamor for understanding guerrilla- type warfare better.

Those interested in the wartime uses andcapacity of small vessels to operate in deltas andrivers in confined jungle areas should find muchmaterial of interest here as the SEALs describetheir adventures using twelve- and fifteen-footBoston Whalers, PBRs (Patrol Boat, River), PCF(Patrol Craft, Fast), IBS (Inflatable Boat, Small),LCPL (Landing Craft, Personnel Light), "junks"and sampans. Likewise those interested in theuses and capacity in jungle warfare of varioustypes of firearms carried by the SEALs will findmuch of interest in this book.

Given recent problems among highly trainedmembers of the Canadian Armed Forces while"peacekeeping" in Somalia and Bacovici (formerYugoslavia) three aspects of this book whichwould be of considerable interest to social scien-tists are the role of individual attachment to thepeer group (team) which enabled SEAL membersto display considerable courage and to stand fastin the face of overwhelming odds, the role andfunction of individual identity with a specific unit(SEAL) rather than with the larger organization(US Navy), and the process of the acquisition ofthis binding identity.

All in all, while it is not entirely withoutmerit, this book is not in the same league as J.Valerio Borghese's Sea Devils: Italian NavyCommandos in World War II.

Bruce A. McFarlaneOttawa, Ontario

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