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CARA VAN-MARITIME BOOKS 8706-168th Place, Jamaica, NY 11432
EDWARD J. LEFKOWICZ Rare Books & Mss. Relatina to the Sea & its Islands & to Nautical Science
P 0 Box 630 Fairhaven· Massachusetts 02 719 • USA
U.S.S. Monitor by LT. Edward M . Miller, USN
This book follows the famous ironclad from the early days of her designer through the recent search for and finding of her wreck-an excellent and wellrounded historical account. Over JOO illustrations. Bibliography. $14.95
Leeward Publications, P.O. Box 149, Annapolis, MD 21404
62
elude that little known (outside its own area) St. Lawrence skiff, a canoe-like craft handled without any sort of rudder, and with description and diagram explains the unique way she was sailed. This reviewer does not like the unbalanced page design, two columns of type off-center, and finds too many typographical errors-but he rejoices in the sailorly use of language, and in a short glossary explaining words and terms of text peculiar to these rather special rigs. ROBERT G. HERBERT, Jr. Mr. Herbert, a longtime seafarer, engineer and historian, is an Advisor of the N.M.H.S. Victorian and Edwardian Merchant Steamships, from Old Photographs, by Basil Greenhill & Ann Giffard (Annapolis MD, Naval Institute Press, 1979, 116 pp., illus., $10.95). The camera came of age about as the steamship did, and here in smoke and iron, the very feel of the steamship age is captured, sometimes in passing beauty. The authors chose to present the variety of the experience, from evolving luxury liners to small coastal vessels. Many quite special types are caught on their varied occasions. This reader would wish more depth in covering the basic drayhorse, the "dirty British freighter," as she plowed the world's economy in the later nineteenth century. And there is a lovely little photo of the hands on a small tug with the captain, "whose first command she was," posed behind them in the wheelhouse. How one would like to know more of these men, and follow the work of their tug, beyond this split-second glimpse! But these are matters of choice in a slim volume covering much ground. An informative introduction gives solid grounding in the technical history of the era, notably in the revolution of the 1880s which ultimately drove the long-voyage sailing ship from the ocean trades she had held till then against the onrush of steam. This is a thoughtful as well as pictorially engrossing book, one worthy of the series that has flowed from England's National Maritime Museum, of which Mr. Greenhill is director. PS Champlain to Chesapeake: A Canal Era Pictorial Cruise, by William J. McKelvey, Jr., (Exton, PA, Canal Press, Inc., 1978, 224 pp., ill., $25). Here's a canal cruise in which the reader can "glide on its placid surface through lovely glades of dense silent forests, with here and there a clearing;
further on you see well kept farms and picturesque villages; an ever changing panorama." So a 1914 promotion piece quoted in this fine new book from a leading cana\ authority describes the scene. Nearly 500 photographs and illustrations cover canal operations since the mule-drawn era. Few of the illustrations have been published before. And how they bring the canals to life, as you look past the snudding posts with their deep rope burns to the bearded locktender with his back hard-pressed against the balance beam! There are drivers as young as eight years old, mules working and feeding from nose bags, helmsmen, passengers, captains, skinny-dipping boys, and canal lighthouses, all adding to a sense of life in which you begin to hear the creak of harnesses attached to hundred-foot tow lines and the sound of canal horns. ,/
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Cana/boat New York, built at Wilmington, Delaware in 1861 for service on the Delaware and Raritan Canal, dries auxiliary mainsail at Aquia Creek Landing, Virginia, during the Civil War.
There is a brief chronology listing dates and events important in canal history. The illustrations have informative captions and the author has taken considerable pains to list not only vessel names but also registration numbers for those wishing to do further research. A detailed bibliography is also provided; one misses a table of contents listing the eight chapters and an index to canal names, boat names and other features portrayed, which would further assist those wishing to locate facts. The book is a worthy successor and companion to Mr. McKelvey's first book, The Delaware and Raritan Canal: A Pictorial History, and is a fine addition to anycanal buff's or industrial archaeologist's library shelf. Orders for either book can be sent to the author at 98 Waldo Ave., Bloomfield, NJ 07003. MEL VIN J. SCHNEIDERMEYER Mr. Schneidermeyer is co-founder of the Farmington Canal Corridor Association and Deputy Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Enviromental Protection. SEA HISTORY, FALL 1979