REVIEWS Rare and Out-of-Print Books
MARINE CATALOGUES $6 (Overseas, $8) All Nautical Subjects
JULIAN BURNETI BOOKS P 0 Box 229, A ti ant a, GA 30301
J. Tuttle Maritime Books 1806 Laurel Crest Madison, Wisconsin 55705
Catalog upon request oi out-of-print books on the sea, ship and the sailor. Books bought and sold on all maritime subjects.
Winner BEST ADVENTURE FEATURE American Film Festival Six years in the making . "COASTER" is the true story of the wooden cargo schooner the John F. Leavitt . It is the story of the sea. a rich human drama set against the backdrop of the harsh North Atlantic and the rugged coast of Maine. "A THRILLING STORY...a beautifully crafted fifm . So finely constructed that it comes as a re velation.'" - Alan Stern.Boston Phoenix ¡¡ rhe pho tograph y 1s excellen t... The filmmaker has captured the beauty and fury o f the sea " - Li nda Gross . Los Angeles Tlmes
A must to own ... or the perfect gilt!
VIDEOCASSETTE 91 min. , color, specify VHS or BETA. $89 .95 Original Sound Track album or cassette. original music and sounds of a ship and the sea- $9.95 Add $3.00 shipping & handling each item. Maine residents add sales ta x. Call Toll Free 1-800-262-7734, op. G
v1s:i 1 ~~t~~i~~~:dpt~~riAlM .O. to : 102 Harbor Road Kittery Point. ME 03905 207- 439-3739
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photos , to statements so questionable that one wonders how they ever crept into a book by an historian of Mr. Greenhill's stature. Perhaps it would be kindest to say that this book was rather quickly cobbled together at the request of the publisher. If Mr. Greenhill plans to continue to write in this manner, he had better learn to spell Mickey Mouse , which he managed to misspell in his introduction to this SIADHAL SWEENEY book. Mr. Sweeney lives in Ireland where he cultivates his life-long interest in maritime history .
Around Cape Horn, Irving Johnson (Mystic Seaport Museum , 1980, 37min , b&w , VHS or Beta, $34.95) . Mystic' s "Seafaring Series" of video cassettes makes available for home viewing some of the best footage from Mystic' s film archives. The classic Around Cape Horn was made by Irving Johnson in 1929 on the Peking' s ninety-three-day passage from Hamburg to Talcahuano , Chile. There are unforgettable sequences: the hurricane in the North Sea, where the three-ton anchor breaks loose; Captain Jurs giving haircuts to the crew; views of the ship and the sea from aloft taken on a serene day ; and, as climax, the fierce rounding of the Hom, where immense seas wash over the Peking' s main deck , obscuring everything, as if the vessel were not there . Viewers will have to stay alert to keep up with Captain Johnson ' s rapid fire, nononsense narrative , but the rewards make the effort well worth while. Captain Johnson speaks simply but eloquently of both the hardships and the spirit of the seamen. Watching a young man kick back his legs to empty his tall sea boots, we hear that he does this not to be dryer, but to reduce the weight of water. '' There is no way to dry anything ," says Johnson, adding that it is possible to dry some clothes by sleeping in them. This condition for these men in their first heavy weather of the passage lasted for seventeen days! Captain Johnson ' s telling of the story is straightforward. There is no handwringing about the harsh conditions, none of the misplaced pity for our forebears that has become so widespread today . Rather, we see and hear about a tough , able group of men and boys , scornful of discomforts and proud of their accomplishments. For those who are unfamiliar with this story , Around Cape Horn is an excellent introduction both to the world of the last deepwater square-riggers and to the life ,
work and adventures of a great man and sailor. And for anyone who has read Irving Johnson's account of this voyage, The Peking Battles Cape Horn (Sea History Press), this film will bring the reader's imagined scenes vividly and memorably to life . NORMA STANFORD The Golden Pastime: A New History of Yachting, John Rousmaniere (Nautical Quarterly/W.W . Norton , New York &London, 1986, 238pp, illus , $65hb). The interplay of ideas and personalities and events , and the esoterica of design theory and technology that goes into winning--or losing-an America's Cup Race have found their ideal interpreter and explicator in John Rousmaniere. And he minces no words in getting down to cases on this subject in this gloriously illustrated, authoritative history of the yachting game. In nine essays spanning three hundred years of the yachting experience, he looks at some of the remarkable personalities that have shaped the game, from England's Merry Monarch, Charles II, who had almost as many yachts as mistresses, to the American George Crowninshield, whose luxuriously outfitted Cleopatra's Barge astounded Americans and titillated Europeans in her transatlantic voyage soon after the War of 1812, to the Vanderbilts and Morgans who impressed their forceful characters on the Gilded Age, through to more modest , dedicated practitioners like Rod and Olin Stephens, whose achievements in designing and sailing the most notable yachts of the mid-twentieth century are justly described by Rousmaniere as an achievement of a kind of golden mean . Rousmaniere writes with authority on these subjects not just out of book learning (of which, be it noted, he has plenty), but out of having been there. He has crossed many leagues of salt water under sail. And he knows the leading yachtsmen of our day, and writes with sympathy and not uncritical analysis of their ways afloat and ashore. Glorious paintings accompany the narrative-probably the best , and surely most splendidly reproduced collection of yachting scenes ever put between covers. And of the latter days, there are photographs-magnificent ones of boats stretched to their limits in blowing weather, intimate ones of skippers and crews . The work is full of pageantry and outsize deeds, but Rousmaniere also pays attention to the quieter side of the experience, quoting one Roger North reflecting on a day on a river three hundred years ago: ''There was little remarkable in this SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1987