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CLIPPER CLASSIC AMERICAN CLIPPER SHIPS 1833-58,
the Sands he and hi s Australian wife spent weeks aboard their 60ft motorsailer Sundowner (he had taken to yachting with soul -sati sfy ing pleasure) exploring the German East Fri sian Islands acting as innocent vacationers, but at the Admiralty 's request. Then came Dunkirk. Lights, now sixty-six , and dodging Stukas and everything the Germans could throw at them, brought back 130 men in one trip overloaded and on the brink of capsize. He died quietly in 1952, but in 1965 , the 24th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation , hi s beloved wife, Sylvia , and hi s be loved Sundowner joined in a sentimental re-crossing of the Channel to mark the occasion . Patrick Stenson has written an enthralling biography of a man who indeed might have stepped out of the pages of a heroic tragic Conrad story . One marvels that a man could in one lifetime enco mpass such adventure and success yet had to endure such unjust fru stration and di sappointment. Despite a litany of hardship and danger, of fru stratio n and disappointment , the man moves through hi s own life's story with calm , sing le ness of purpose and superb professionali sm. Personally, l would have been honored to serve Lightoller, who personifies all the facets of character that typified the finest of Briti sh ships' officers- a man who could not only rise to any occasion , but consistently rose above . This is a book you must not mi ss! THOMAS HALE Beyond Our Sensibilities Lone Survivor , by Ruthanne Lum McCunn (Design Enterprizes of San Francisco, San Francisco, 1985 , 235 pp , illus , $6 .95pb/$14 .95hb). On November 23, 1942 , the S.S. Benlomond, bound Capetown to Paramaribo , was torpedoed and sunk . On April 6, 1943 , Poon Lim, the only survivor of the ill-fated vessel, walked ashore in Belem . Naked and alone , unable even to read the English labe ls on the raft's provisions , he had survived 133 days in the South Atlantic . We cannot consider an ordeal of this magnitude; it is incomprehensible. Ms . McCunn has accepted this, and though Lone Survivor is rich in factual detailall attested to by Mr. Poon , who lives w ith his family in Brooklyn , and by documents prepared by navy survival experts who had' him recreate his experience in New York harbor-the book 's strength is in Poon's reveries of home, his conjuring of dispassionate gods, and of his reminiscences of the awful petty cruelties of childhood returned to haunt him . SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1985-86
by Howe and Matthews. 350 clipper histories. TWO VOLUME BOXED SET. 780 PAGES, 113 PLATES. $45 IMMEOIATE DELIVERY
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Poon Lim as he looked on his arrival at Belem , before seeing a doctor.
The details of Poon ' s daily battle for survival are told in sometimes gruesome detail : the ravages of his body; hi s evol ution from a ship's steward ignorant of the sea into a fisherman distinguishing the merely unpalatable from the poisonous (all caught on a nail gouged from the timbers of his fl oat and tied to a line fas hioned from strands of its canvas aw ning); and the cresting and falling of his spirits tortured by his imagination and by real indications of help or landfall . Poon ho lds the Guinness Record for endurance. McCunn 's biography is no less an honor , and both Poon and we should be thankful fo r her achievement in recreating an experience beyond our sensibilities. LINCOLN P. PAINE Building the Wooden Fighting Ship, James Dodds and James Moore (Facts On File Publications, New York , 1984, 128pp, illus., $ 19 .95pb). Those keen on the history of wooden ship construction and technology will find here an excellent entry into the field as well as a useful refere nce source . Based on a great deal of solid research the book narrates the hi storical precedents for, and the technical details of, construction of a typical 74-gun ship-ofthe-line, H .M.S . Thunderer of 1760. Set within the context of her age, the authors show the Thunderer as a product
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THE SEA HAWKS Here are today's fightutg sea brrds of the Navy and their daily encounters with our adversary, the Soviet Fleet. Military con· 8.ict is a constant threat. Here are Battle Group Commanders with a strike force second to none. Exciting NP VIOf.O or today's Air Navy. • The Cutting Edge: TheS3 Viking; a sea bird thatcan strap on missiles, bombs & homing torpedoes. With on-board com· putors, infra-red sensors, she locks onto Red subs and never lets go. • Orion-Guardian of tht Seas: Able to range out 14 hours and patrol thousands of miles, the P3C Otion scrambles fleet attack fighters to pin-point the enemy. Like the Viking she can haul a big bag of weapons plus 6 tons of mines. • The Marine Machine: AVl'OL brute, the AV-88 Hanier can hustle 5 tons of "stuff" including laser guided missiles, bombs and a 25mm High Velocity Gatling Gu n ... making this deadly bird a real ··macho" machine. just the thing to warm a Marine's heart. Running time: 73 minutes.
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