BOOKS The Sea-Craft of Prehistory, by Paul Johnstone (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1980, 260 pp., illus., maps, $25 .00). The late Paul Johnstone, head of the unit of the BBC devoted to history and archaeology, had a particular interest in early craft and often wrote on the subject in Mariner's Mirror, Antiquity, and similar journals. For this book he put together a quantity of material gathered over the years, but he died in 1976 before completing a manuscript. Sean McGrail undertook to prepare it for publication, reducing its unwieldy bulk, giving it form and cohesion, selecting and identifying illustrations. Johnstone begins with 30,000 BC, when men, so far as we can tell, first turned to the sea. In an introductory section he surveys the various forms of conveyance they used in their early days-simple logs and then log rafts, reeds bundled to form first rafts and then boat-shaped craft, bark boats, skin boats, dugouts, and, finally, the dugout whose side is raised by planking, the initial stage in the development of the planked boat. He emphasizes the importance of the skin boat: it was the one form of primitive craft best suited for boisterous waters such as the northern seas; we can trace a line of big northern skin boats from the Scandinavian rockdrawings of the Stone Age to the present day Eskimo's umiak. Indeed, the Americans who carried on offshore whaling in Alaska at the end of the last century preferred umiaks to the new Bedford whaleboats. Skin boats of one kind or another are wellnigh ubiquitous, but James Hornell, almost half a century ago, argued that the point of origin was central Asia; the evidence that has accumulated since tends to confirm this conclusion. Johnstone's next large section deals with Europe, starting with the Mediterranean. The earliest evidence for overseas transport in the area is the obsidian trade; thanks to new methods for identifying and dating obsidian artifacts, we can state confidently that men were sailing across open water from Greece to the island of Melos to exploit the rich deposits there as early as the middle of the seventh millennium BC. In what kind of craft is anybody's guess; Johnstone's is some form of reed raft. This section takes up the Atlantic and Scandinavian waters as well as the Mediterranean, and it gets rather breathless as the author travels with giant strides from the Nile craft of most ancient Egypt right up to Portuguese saveiros and Venetian gondolas, reaching out along the way to include various types that belong to recorded Greek and Roman history and not to pre-
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history at all. He even sandwiches in a none too helpful paragraph on Atlantis. The third and last section treats all the rest of the world's craft, those that plied the waters from the Red Sea across the Indian and Pacific Oceans right to the shores of the Americas. Here we meeta farrago of types, from blunt-ended sampans to needle-like outrigger canoes, from East African mtepes to Brazilian jangadas. Johnstone's text occasionally moves into the wilder fringes of speculation but basically it is sound. Sixteen pages of notes cite the multifarious sources he has used, and there are plentiful illustrations of good quality. All in all, a most useful and up-todate handbook of the primitive craft of the LIONEL CASSON world from all ages.
Lionel Casson, recently appointed Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Classical Studies at the American Academy at Rome, is the author of many books on ancient seafaring including Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World (Princeton University Press). Dictionary of Sea Painters by E.H.H. Archibald (Antique Collectors' Club, Ltd., Suffolk, England, 1980, 455 pages, 700 illus. (28 color] $79.50). The author, Curator of Oil Paintings at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwick, England, is ideally situated for the compilation of such an ambitious list ng. For an American audience, greater exposure to continental marine painters is most useful. Much of the British information, while comprehensive, has also been overlapped in 19th Century British Marine Painting (Brook-Hart) and Marine Painting in England, 1700-1900 (Cordingly). The format of the Dictionary is interesting, beginning with a lengthy section of historic maritime flags, ship profile development, picture content and subject, and coastal craft (all with useful drawings) as a guide to dating paintings and to anomalies of research. The alphabetical list of painters numbers over 800 and is an indication of the mammoth undertaking Mr. Archibald has assumed. The entries themselves run from the biographically comprehensive to the virtually useless (a museum has a work so signed). When enough work is available, the author covers themes and technique, possible derivation of style, and his own opinion of the quality. The book is wort h owning if only for the 700 black-and-white plates. Such reproductions often fail to capture the tonal subtleties of oil paintings, but these are generall y quite fine. More to the point, a gallery tour of 700 marine paintings is a tremendously exciting experience.
Published offerings in the area of marine art are so insufficient that my inclination is to applaud whatever does occur, to commend Mr. Archibald for his erudition and obvious effort and to welcome all lights in the darkness. However, through the appearance of comprehensiveness, this volume may stand in the way of progress. In the acknowledgements pagi, after two paragraphs on colleagues at Greenwich, 80 percent of the remainder is devoted to Americans. But an inverse relationship exists in coverage of Americans in the book. The Dictionary is plainly an inadequate source for art on this side of the water. As president of an organization of 150 contemporary American marine painters, five of whom are listed, my superficial distress must be conceded, but this is insufficient linchpin for an argument. Nor can I quibble about the antiquarian overload: both the works and documentation of the past exceed those of the present-and the book is published by the Antique Collectors Club. If I fail to see the forest for the trees, it is because the missing trees take on the proportions of yet another forest. The omissions are glaring, and begin in England. Why is Jack Spurling not listed? Chris Mayger, a British illustrator, is not listed, but the noted American, Carl Evers, is. Edward Hopper (not listed) hardly confined himself to marine subjects, but neither did Frank Brangwyn or Thomas Eakins, both listed. Where are Dean Cornwell, Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth? If acclaim in the larger artistic community is required, why is Rockwell Kent not listed? Because he was better known for woodcuts and drawings than for paintings? Arthur Briscoe and Gordon Grant were also better known for blackand-white work, and both appear. In this vein, the omission of Philip Kappel, Samuel Ward Stanton, John Noble, John Taylor Arms, Luigi Kasimir, C.J.A. Wilson, Stow Wengenroth, and George Gale is striking, however varying the quality of their work. And John Noble's paintings are as engaging as his lithographs. American painters of the last two centuries not listed here include Wiliam Morris Hunt, Sanford Robinson Gifford, John S. Blunt, Aaron Draper Shattuck, Rembrandt Peale, and Alfred Thompson Britcher. More recent and also well known painters omitted are Harvey Garrett Smith, Robert G. Smith, James Sessions, Emile Gruppe, K.A. Griffin, Harry Ballinger, William C. Ehrig, Warren Sheppard , William Aylward, Earle Barlow and the eminent Canadians, Jack Gray and Loren Adams. SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1981