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((NICHO~
MO~ARI«f, is back, with an immense sea yarn ... and the entire tale is infused with a spirit that marks him as a master of the genre: · -The New Yorker
T~ER MARINER
Running Proud -E!l JroveL~
by the author of The Cruel Sea SELECTED BY TWO MAJOR BOOK CLUBS'
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CARA VAN-MARITIME BOOKS 8706-168th Place, Jamaica, NY 11432
MAJOR PHOTO HISTORY!
CHAMPLAIN TO CHESAPEAKE: A CANAL ERA
PICTORIAL CRUISE
by William J.
McKelv~ .
Jr.
Covers: Champlain Canal, Hudson River, New York Harbor, the Delaware and Raritan Canal, Delaware River and Bay, Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, Chesapeake Bay, and the Dismal Swamp Canal. Also canalboats, steamboats, tugs. sailing vessels, yachts and small pleasure boats. 224 pages, over 475 photographs, SY, x 11, map, chronology, bibliography, hardbound. Cost $25.00 Order from: William ). McKelvey, Jr. 98 Waldo Avenue, Bloomfield, N.J. 07003
Also available upon request a list of other publications and mementos on the American canal and maritime era.
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done just that. Moreover, he designed and built the full-scale frigate HMS Rose for this purpose, and founded Seaport '76, the Newport-based society that built the Revolutionary War topsail sloop Providence. Now he invites us to share his fascination with these ships of a vanished era in a stunning collection of drawings, profile plans and ship histories covering 150 vessels, introduced by an authoritative disussion of the ships we're going to encounter. John Millar does not do things by halfway measures. An extraordinary amount of research obviously went into this handsome book, turning up old drawings, out-of-the-way documents and much personal anecdote that breathes life into the ships and their people. The ships range from the Hudson River Sloop Experiment, a broad-beamed, shallow production which voyaged from her native river reaches to China in 1785, to the French armed brig L 'Outaouaise, built on the St. Lawrence and captured by the British when they took Quebec in 1759, and, of course, the early frigates of the Continental Navy. There's a Spanish felucca built in Havana, and sloops, schooners, ketches, brigs and full-rigged ships in profusion, illustrating the rich variety of craft that thronged our shores as a new nation was coming into being, born of seafaring. An evening spent with this book will probably reveal your own favorite among these vessels; mine is a little anonymous brig shown in the Burgis view of Manhattan done in 1717, new built and ready to sail away. Unlike John Millar I'll probably never get to build and sail her, but here is both the inspiration and the information needed to do it. Here, indeed, is a whole world of such ships, one that will invite modelmakers, artists, historians and just plain dreamers back for many another evening of delight, in the rattling good company of a man who's master of these kinds of ships in three dimensions as well as on paper. PS
Clearwater II, a record album (Poughkeepsie NY, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, 1977, $5). This second of the Clearwater albums of folksongs centering on ecology and the river heritage is an excellent, polished production by outstanding performers. This reviewer misses in it some of the easy quality of the first album. The songs are mostly concert pieces-fine for listening, but listeners are not very likely to learn to sing them to each other. ERIC P. RUSSELL
The Scrimshander, by William Gilkerson (San Francisco, Troubador Press, rev. ed. 1978 , 120 pp., ill., $8.95 paperback). A quotation from the journal of a man aboard a bark off Africa is used as epigraph for this enlarged, revised edition of a classic work on the art of carving whale's teeth. Here is the cultural settin g in which the art of the traditional scrimshander took root and flowered: "Scrim sha wing, making dippers and picture frames . Making jagging irons. Feel rather dish ea rtened. Home look s distanL My mind will still wander homewa rd s ... I ca n almost jump overboard_ Scrimshawing ... The encl of 187 1 is fa st approaching, also is eternit y ... Scrimshawin g. " In this engaging, superbly illustrated volume (how was it produced for this
low price?) Gilkerso n as a leading modern practitioner of the art gives vivid insights into the practice of the art in history, a review of the work of contemporary artists_, and goes on to a detailed illustrated discussion of his own interests and methods. A central th sis is that the art form lived varied forms in wooden whaling ships at sea and in seaport towns, and that it continues a vigorous life today . Karl Kortum sum s this up nicely in hi s perceptive introduction, relating his own encounter with a form of the art during World War II in the Pacific, and concludes: "The old scrimshaw was an escape from the sea- from too mu ch sea -back lowarcls the land . The new scrim shaw moves in th e opposit e direct ion ." May that movement flouri sh! One simply could rnot ask a better introduction to it than 'The Scrimshander. PS SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1979