REVIEWS 1
CAP T CARLOS SEAFOOD On Gloucester's Working Waterfront
Large selection of fresh fi llets and fu ll variety of shellfish available daily. Steamers, Mussels, Oysters, Littlenecks, Lobsters, Crabmeat and Seafood Salads FRIDAY SPECIAL
HADDOCK CHOWDER
STAR FISHERIES PROPERTY
HARBOR LOOP - GLOUCESTER CENTER e 508-283-6342 MON - SAT. 8 AM - 5:30 PM
Dine in relaxed elegance in the heart of the South Street Seaport. Yankee Clipper's Wavertree Room The Yankee Clipper, one of South Street Seaport's finest restaurants , recently dedicated an opulently refurbished room to honor the historic Wavertree , a tall ship now berthed just outside the restaurant's multipaned windows. The dedication of the Wavertree Room goes beyond its physical proximity to its namesake, however, for the room actually once served as the office of Baker, Carver & Morrell , general agents who represented the Wavertree in the 1800s. -VIA PORT OF NY-NJ, March 1986
>per Ne 38 Major credit't:ards aci:epfed.
170 John Street,'
CADDELL DRY DOCK AND REPAIR CO. SIX DRY DOC KS 1500-7000 T O NS CAPACITY
Complete marine repair facilities seroicing your needs since 1903. Foot of Broadway P.O . Box 327 Staten Island , NY !03 !0
718-442-211 2 44
• 212-344-5959
S hips a nd Shipwrecks of the Americas : A History Based on Underwa ter A rchaeology, ed. George F. Bass (Thames and Hudson, London and New York, 1988, 272pp , 376 illus, $40.00) "Those who want to understand America and the Americans cannot di stance themselves from the ships and boats descri bed in the fo llowing pages," says George Bass in the introduction to thi s admi rable volume. And here, indeed, the important wrecks are covered, fro m the brig Defiance lost in the Penobscot in the Revo lution, to the battleshi p Arizona sun k in Pearl Harbor. Bass, the acknowledged dea n of marine archaeolog ists, has assembled a stell ar cast to tell hi s story, in each case a leader in the fie ld , involved acti vely in the investigation of the ships di scussed. The chronological organi zation is welcome, placing these ships and recovery efforts in the stream of hi story and giving the reader a li ving contex t for the ships in which their contribution to the w ider story becomes clear. An abun dance of historic ill ustrati ons, ma ps, d iagrams and photographs convey a sense of the physical actuality of the underwater heritage. In a ll , thi s book is a worth y successor to Bass' History of Seafaring, first publi shed fifteen years ago, and a very apt compani on to Peter T hrockmorton's Th e Sea Remembers, centered upon ancient and medieva l Euro pean wrecks, reviewed in SH48 . Building the Blackfish, by Dana Story; photos , John Clayton (Ten Pound Island Book Co. , Gloucester MA, 1988 , I 73 pp, illus, $24.95) In the summer of 1938 , Mendum B. Li tt lefi e ld of Mamaroneck, New York, had the good sense to commi ss ion a new 52-foo t schooner, des igned to the G loucesterman mode l by Henry Scheel, to be built at the Story ya rd in Essex, Massachu setts. And John C layton, who had moved into town from A rizona, had the vis ion to make a complete photographic record of the whole process of bu ildi ng the schooner. The res ul t is a symphonic study of wood coming together to make the robust c urves and splendid shape of a G loucesterm an. Clayton caught the men unself-co nscious at work, putting the vessel together just as they had put fi shing schooners together for generations. The whol e intimate ly recorded process is narrated with ul timate authority by Dana Story (then an apprenti ce in the yard), complete with comments on the men, whom he knew personall y. Launched w ith the name Blackfish on I August I 938, the little ship sailed happily fo rthe SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1989