BOOKS gain in aesthetic appeal. This reflects in part the influence of oral circulation which often refines the wordi ng of songs whose weaker, less affecting aspects are the soonest forgotten . There are not many shanties in the book, though some good examples of those protean work songs are included . In attributing the great increase of shantying in the nineteenth century to the California and Australia gold rushes of the mid-century , Mr. Palmer overlooks the much more important influence of the southern cotton trade and the North Atlantic packet trade . In his introduction , Mr. Palmer argues that " the landsman 's and landswoman's songs of the sea and sailors must surely be admitted " as sea songs, even if it cannot be proved that they were ever sung at sea. It would seem that this can be true onl y in the limited sense that in a nation with a long and active sea-faring history, naval ballads and others with sa ilor protagonists were enjoyed by shore folk _independently of sailors. Only the very best of such songs , however, can approach in beauty and power the real , traditional shanties and focs le songs that convey the genuine fee lings of sai lors. This collection is rich in history and traditional songs of a seafaring nation that owes so much of its greatness to the loyalty, courage and self-sacrifice of its sailors . The book comes as a most welcome contribution to sea singing and sea history . WILLIAM MAIN DOERFLINGER
Mr. Doerflinger, an advisor to the NMHS , is author of Songs of the Sailor a nd Lumberman.
Passage, From Sail to Steam, Captain L. R . W. Beavis , ed . M. S. Kline (Documentary Book Pub!. , Bellevue, WA , 1986 , 2 10pp , illus , $32.95hb). To the readers and book collectors of that era between the two world wars , when Basil Lubbock was writing hi s numerous books on the last of the windjammers , the name of Capt. L. R. W. Beavis was a familiar one , as he supplied many of the pictures which illustrated numerous Lubbock books. Captain Beavis was a contemporary and an acquaintance of Capt. H . H . Morrison, another photographer in Puget Sound waters of the sailing ship era, and it is apparent that the two seafaring men exchanged photographs and thereby enhanced the collection of each. Captain Beav is fo llowed that hobby of photographing ships, to the enrichment of the history of the windjammer era at its passing, and he was one of the leading collectors of his day . 40
Were it not for the long-dormant autobiography which he wrote, and then salted away prior to hi s death in 1940 in Portland , Oregon , hi s life's story would have slipped into oblivion , and he would perforce be remembered only as a supplier of photos for others ' writings . Happily hi s granddaughter saw the value in both the photo collection , still intact, and the attendant autobiography still in her possession. In 1979 the autobiography was submitted to Mary Stiles Kline of Redmond , Washington , who saw its value as something rare , a sort of time capsule , the hi story of a man who commenced a seafaring career in the Victorian years, worked his way to command in sail and made a reluctant change, when he had to, to steam . Capt. Beavis began his apprenticeship in the Conway at the age of twelve in 1876 and in due course served as a seafaring apprentice in such vessels as the rakish iron clipper Star of France, the full ri ggers Micronesia and Eurasia and the clipper Titania, this latter vessel ri gged down to a bark. Besides service in other auxiliary sailing vessels, and a trip or two in steam , Beavis joined the Mylomene as mate in the 1890s. This was a time when German and French efforts to enlarge sailing ship fleets were dri ving British shipowners more quickl y to steam. Yet Beavis stayed in sai l, and within a short time returned as mate, then master, of the Micronesia, where he remained for a couple of years till she burned out, a total loss in 1897 . At the age of thirty-two , Capt . Beavis turned to steam , much to hi s dismay. Yet the ensuing years brought some professional enhancement to hi s career and he settled into the North Atlantic trade in a steamer named Montauk Point. ''The next few years were spent thrashing my way across the North Atlantic winter and summer. Some winters the De laware River would be badly fro zen, filled with ice. Other winters there was hardl y a teacup of ice. It was not a bad life , healthy anyway. My principal hobby was photography , and I had a nice dark room fitted up off my bathroom .'' By 1908 Capt. Beavis was out of a job , and moved to Canada. There followed a variety of jobs offshore, coastwise and ashore through the World War I years. The age of sail was given a reprieve wi th the war-time demands on shipping, and in 1917 he gained command of a wooden schooner named Janet Carruthers, built in Vancouver, BC. The endless troubles with a leaking vessel , constructed of green planking, insufficiently
caulked , and cursed with unpredictable and uncertain Bolinder diesels added a new chapter to the challenges a shipmaster had to face. At the age of fifty-three Captain Beavis left the Janet Carruthers in Australi a, her maiden voyage not yet completed, and returned to Vancouver as a passenger on a steamship . The uncertain decade of the 1920s led Capt. Beavis into more steamships , and a spell of seafaring in the Russian Arctic and finally into British Columbia ferries. Hi s retirement came about 1930 , not with a panoplied testimonial affair at the expe nse of a big steamship company , but rather in a quiet way as he retired to a lone ly , but colorful island about fifty miles from Vancouver. There in his last years he cut firewood and lived in solitude with cats and the remote beauty of British Columbia's inland waterway. Capt. Beavis laced his life 's story with anecdotes and the tough-crusted mixture of all that he saw around him in other ships and in the parts of the world. Mary Kline's editing preserved much of the original flavor of what must have been a plainly told story of a life in British sail and steam during the transition over the turn of the century. The ever lengthening shadows which embrace the long vanished era of deep-sea square ri ggers flyin g the Red Duster now enfold thi s once dormant , and heretofore obscure account of that by-gone age . Captain Beavis' story adds a new sw irl of flavor to the shelf of autobiographical books which have been publi shed since the e nd of World War 11. It is not likely that many more original , first person accounts will come into print. The quality of photographs is generally good, with many reproductions which are well known and have circulated around the g lobe for many years. The choice of which photos to use was one which the editor made herself, and the captions are , for the most part enhanc ing to the whole story . The use of the well worn and well known photo of the Kobenhavn, in both inside front and¡ back covers is puzzling, since the ship is nowhere mentioned in the text. There are some poor quality pictures which were added, the editor ex pl ains, only because they were in Beavis ' collection. These are only diversionary drawbacks. Photo captions are , sad to say, often tinctured with misspelled names , or the wrong names of ships altogether. Whether thi s is attributable to Beavis himself is not entirely clear, but such errorrs are perpetuated in this book , when they should have been , and could have beem , corrected once and for all. The SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1986-87