McKinley's Bulldog: The Battleship Oregon, by Sanford Sternlicht, PhD (Chicago, Nelson-Hall , l'J77, 139pp, illus, $11. 95 hb, $5. 95 pb. Built in the dawning of America's role as world power, in 1896, the "seagoing coastal battleship" Oregon proved a very efficient ship, of sound and powerful design. Her mixed turret batteries of 4-13in and 8-8in guns carried on a displacement of 10,000 tons at 16 knots placed her in the front rank of major power battlefleets. Her immortal 14,500-mile dash around Cape Horn to lead the destruction of Cervers's squadron at Havana in 1898 opened the world's-and America's- eyes to the strategic mobility of heavy units in a world where most ships, including many warships, still carried sail. The Oregon lived in a world of aweinspiring changes. She was laid up just ten years after her commissioning, completely outclassed by the advent of Britain's dreadnoughts and our Connecticuts . Subsequently recommissioned to serve in ceremonial and auxiliary roles, she was condemned for scrap in World War II over the protests of her many admirers; ironically other uses were found for her stout hull and scrapping was interrupted-she went into service as an ammunition barge in Guam , and finally went to a Japanese knacker's yard in 1956. Here her career is well remembered, from the exuberance of her launch at San Francisco's Union Iron Works through the tension of her Cape Horn dash and the varied occasions of her later service. The slim volume does not pretend to present in depth the world situation the vessel sailed in . But the ship and her people live in this work, illustrated with first-rate and fascinating photographs, and one is reminded anew that while Dewey's flagship Olympia lives on at Philadelphia, the Oregon will be forever missed from her berth at Portland , where only her mast remains in a park uhore. PS Clean Sweet Wind: Sailing Craft of the Lesser Antilles, by Douglas C. Pyle (East Reach Press, Preston MD, 1983, 302pp, illus, $16.50pb, $25hb; available through International Marine Publishing, Camden ME). Mr. Pyle spent ten years gathering data and photographs to compile this " marine anthropological" work. Much of thi s time he cruised the Eastern Caribbean in his yacht Eider, which gave him an entree with the Caribbean seaman and schooner captains whom he interviewed , tracking down the varied craft and their trades . Aboard a Bequian whaleboat pursuing a whale under sail he heard the helmsman exclaim: ''Ah , clean, sweet wind , Mon! " SEA HISmRY, SPRING 1984
The West Indian will put an engine in his boat, if he can afford it , but he is still very much tuned to the purity of wooden boats , the Trade Wind and the non-hurried life of moving cargo under sail. Pyle's research turned up some interesting facts. Schooner design and building in the Caribbean was essentially a matter of outside influences. American whaling captains and their vessels and English shipwrights located on various islands created a trend of designing and building that the natives picked up and adapted to local materials and methods . Most of this lore is passed on by oral tradition-and that is how Mr. Pyle acquired it. His encounters with West Indian shipwrights, schooner captains and his assistance in the building of the Bequian sloop Skywave gave him a unique and personal perspective. He related to his subjects as a sailor and this is conveyed to his readers in this book , with considerable charm and real authority. PHILIP THORNEYCROFT TEUSCHER
Mr. Teuscher has sailed his own boat through the Caribbees,filming native era.ft and folkways-with results illustrated in "Sailing Craft. of the Caribbees ," in this . issue. Steam and the Sea, by Paul Forsythe Johnston (Peabody Museum of Salem MA, 1983, 90pp, illus, $15pbd, $25hdbd). A lively and brilliantly illustrated sweep through the American experience in steamers, based on the Peabody exhibition oflast fall. The museum and its curator of marine transportation , Mr. Johnston , are to be congratulated, and readers wi ll find a rewarding evening or two following a colorful and variegated story. Frederic Cozzens, Marine Painter, by Anita Jacobsen (Alpine Fine Arts Collection , New York & London , 1982 , 252pp, illus, color, $75) . This finely produced book pays just tribute to a noted yacht portraitist, who also did spirited renditions of harbor work boats, Long Island sharpies, dories in wet and blowing Grand Banks weather, and toward the end of his career, surprisingly, western Indian themes. His patrons, we learn, ranged fromJ. P Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt to Donald McKay, son of the builder of the Flying Cloud and Arthur H . Clark, author of the classic Clipper Era. PS THOMAS J. BROWN & SONS, Inc. Established 1929
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