REVIEWS WANT GOOD BOOKS ABOUT BOATS? Send for Internati o nal Marin e Bo oks, a great , free catalog of 500 marine titles. I nternational Mari ne Publishing Company Box SH, Camden , Maine 04843
FOR SALE Old , Scarce, & Out of Print
MARITIME BOOKS at reasonab le prices Send for bi-monthly lists.
ten pound island book company 108 Main St. Gloucester. MA 01930 (617) 283-5299
J. Tuttle Maritime Books 1806 Laurel Crest Madison, WI 53705
Catalog upon request of out-of-print books on the sea, ship and the sailor.
MERCHANTMAN? OR SHIP OF WAR ISBN: 0-9608996-1-8
A Synopsis of Laws U.S. State Department Positions and Practices Which Alter the Peaceful Character of U. S. Merchant Vessels in Time of War
" Author Charles Dana Gibson has served the merchant mariner well by providing a history of sacrifices made by these sailors since the American Revolution." ... Dr. Robert L. Scheina , USCG Historian To order. send $18 .75 , * plus $1 .25 for shipping, to: ENSIGN PRESS P.O. Box 638 , Camden , ME 04843 (Maine residents add 5% tax.) ¡Library and dealer rates on request.
44
The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy , N.A.M . Rodger (Naval Institute Press, Annapo li s , MD, 1986 , 445pp ; illus, $2 1.95 hb) This exami nation of the conditions of li fe in Great Britain ' s Royal Navy in the middle years of the eighteenth century lets needed fresh air and sunlight into a world shut away and largely unknown to landsmen even at the time. The Navy's world , Rodger finds, was not unmitigated he ll , and its ships were not " floating concentration camps" as has been claimed so often. His research records a high proportion of married men aboard the ships (higher, evidentl y, than in the US merchant marine in the 1930s, for instance) , and a lesser proportion of men killed in action in the Seven Years' War than were lost in the US merchant marine in World War II. We need such carefully developed statistics to replace sensational generalizations about the actual conditions of shipboard life during oceanic wars that so shaped our world two hundred-odd years ago. But Rodger brings us more than mere numbers or a sense of the frequency or probability of things; he tells us often in the men 's own words how and even why things happened as they did . It is in the close-up scenes of li fe aboard ship that the book begins to reveal the largely unsuspected ways of a vanished world-a world , " ruled chiefl y by the vertical links of patronage and personal loyalty which bound a ship ' s company, officers and men, together." We find ourselves , as the author observes , in "a worl d in which a captai n in the face of the enemy could fo rmall y consult all his men on whether to fight or no , or in which a seaman in trouble might naturall y go and speak to the commander-inchief in a coffee-house." The way customs work in a world so different from our own is illustrated in Rodger' s fascinating examination of the system known as " preferment," in which officers were advanced on the recommendation of influential patrons. Rodger shows that the very pressure put on the concept made it work with surprising fairness-for an admiral or nobleman would not risk his reputation by recommending an inferior candidate , and would go to some lengths, on occasion , to reach out for a candidate who distinguished himself. And the better his batting average, the more weight his word carried . The rank of one's patron counted ; but it wasn't everything, as more than one lord 's son fo und to his chagri n. Certainly the system produced Briti sh officers of unparalleled fighting ability
and elan, as the record of worldwide sea warfare in this era attests . To complete the picture of thi s system , Rodger cites an interventio n by the fa mous Admiral Hawke, victor of Quiberon Bay. He asked for two carpenters to be allowed to exchange ships so that they could remain at the ports where the ir families li ved . " It is impossible," wrote the notoriously cantankerous ad mi ra l, " to deny the ask ing of small favo urs for officers that have served with one and behaved well. " Our world of maritime history is fo rtunate to have Mr. Rodger in it. Now in his mid-30s , he is trained in statistical records and serves as Hon . Secretary of the Navy Records Society. But he brings to his subject a rare common-sense feel for the ways of ships and men, and a sense of val ue that brings one to recogni ze the force of the concluding words of Hawke's recommendation- to have "served with one and behaved well. " Words of the highest praise in the wooden world , which is perhaps not so different from our world after all. P ETER STANFORD
The Left-Handed Monkey Wrench, Ri chard McKenna, ed . Robert Shenk (Naval Institute Press , Annapolis, MD , 1986 , 353pp , illus , $ 19.95ppd/hb) Ri chard McKenna gives the reader an inside look at our naval forces in the Far East during the 1930s. The author served as a machinist' s mate in the unarmed stationship USS Gold Star, which comes to li fe as the USS Stella Maris in his unfinished novel, The Sons of Martha , and in the Yangtze Ri ver gunboat USS Luzon, which plays herself in " K ing's Horseman ." After twenty-two years of naval service, McKenna retired , took a college degree and began a promising literary career which was cut short by hi s untimely death in 1964. This collection gathers together hi s best short stories and essays for the first time . The central character in most of these stories li ves in the disciplined world below decks, but is always struggli ng wi th the spiritual questions: " Why am I here? Where am I going?'' In hi s quest fo r answers, McKenna explores and interprets a wide variety of themes , from the need for our military presence abroad to naval di scipline and the intimate responsibility marine engineers feel for the machinery under the ir care. Readers who have slipped down the ladder into the engine room will immedi ately sense the descriptive power of McKenna ' s writing. There is the forlorn , abandoned feeling of a dead ship under SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1987