men were given to reflection on famil y, religion, soc iety, politics a111d philosophic and moral questions, all of which are commonplace in Cape's diary. One wishes, too, that more Americans had Ca pe's great gift for citizenship, a responsibility almost as involuntary with him as breathing, even while he professed, quite sincerely, to be unworth y. Cope for decades was active in the antislavery movement , although he believed so me of the more violent Abolitionists did the ca use more harm than good . He opposed war and America's " insatia ble gras pin g propensity for territory .'' Although th ese would be liberal issues nowadays, th en, for co nservatives like Cope, th ey were simple matters of humanity. H e was, howev er, against "ardent spirits" believing they fostered drunkeness and against novels, believing they were corrupting. But he had nothing against a glass of wine and enjoyed a good story, many of which he included. For all its rich es, however, readers of Sea History will be disa ppointed th a t Cope included rela tively litt le about his shipping interests, for his boats sailed not only to Britain, Europe and the Wes t Indies but to China a nd India. Nonetheless, there is some interes ting stuff a bout the War of 1812 (surely one of the more curious of the several futil e wars in which the U.S. had engaged) and it s effect on American shipping and thus on the nation' s economy and politics, a nd there are a number of interesti ng entries on the refloating of the packet Tuscarora owned by Cape's so ns. The diary could have used so me pruning which would have provided space for concise explanatory passages helpful in establishing a context for so me of th e entries. There is, however, a useful appendi x identifying the man y public fi gures who appear in the diary which gives a marvelously perso nal view of life in th e formative years of the nation as it went from knee breeches to teleg raph to steamship to railroad. RICHARD J . WALTON
Mr. Walton, author of a number of books of history, is a devoted armchair sailor. American Ships of the Colonial and Revoluntionary Periods, by John F. Millar (New York, W.W . Norton, 356 pp ., illus., $19.95). Imagine standing on the deck of your own stout frigate, firing broadsides at a slippery square-topsail sloop! John Millar, the distinguished architectural historian of Newport, Rhode Island , has SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1979
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