next twenty-five years , until her loss on 29 September 1963 in the Long Island Sound. Her iron keel had dropped off. She would be sailing sti ll if she'd relied on the trad itional Gloucester mode of stiffening with all inside ballast! The Log of Christopher Columbus, trans. Robert H. Fuson (International Marine Publishing Co., Camden ME, 1987 , 252pp, illus, $29.95) A handsome ly produced and authoritatively annotated edition of Columbus's own account, made eminently readable and comprehens ibl e through numerous maps , drawings and well informed commentary- including an appendix on the landfall theories (Fuson 's idea of where Co lumbus made land in the New World is shared by the National Geographic Soc iety), and much supp lementary material on the living conditions of the voyagers , and the life of the great nav igator. The Eagle; An American Brig on Lake Champlain during the War of 1812, by Kevin Crisman (Naval Institute Press , Annapolis MD, 1987, 276pp, illus , $22.95) Launched by New York's Adam Brown into Lake Champlain on ly 19 days after her keel was laid, the brig Eagle brought Commodore Macdonough 's squadron up to rough parity with the British, making possible his decisive victory at Plattsburgh in the War of 1812. Crisman 's lucid study sheds li ght not only on the emergency effort that produced the Eagle in time to turn the tides of war against British invasion, but on Commodore Macdonough's whole direction of the effort that produced American victory. Crisman, a nautical archaeolog ist, discovered the Eagle' s remains in 1981 and led the subsequent excavation and stud y of this "tangible relic of Adam Brown's shipbuilding ski 11 and Macdonough's military genius ," as he rightly call s it. Memoirs ofa Gloucester Fisherman, R. Salve Testaverde (Rockport Publishers, Rockport MA, 1987 , 158pp, illu s, $10.00) This account of a man's life fishing out of Gloucester begi ns in the fall of 193 1, when fresh out of grammar school, he spotted a shipmate blown downwind in a dory, and guided his skipper to save him. Sheltering from gales behind Maine islands , getting caught out badly fishing the "gu ll y" off New York, the captain 's yarn is rich in seagoing incident and the developments of fam il y life ashore in the Italian fishing comm unity. SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1989
At the Harbour Mouth, by Archibald MacMechan, ed. John Bell (Pottersfield Press, Porters Lake NS , Canada, 1988 , 142pp, $9.95) Shipwreck, fire at sea, and other perils of the deep are dealt with by brave Bluenose sai lors in these short accou nts of actual incidents written by MacMechan ( 1862-1933), a revered scholar and story-teller of Halifax, Nova Scotia. John A. Noble: the Rowboat Drawings , by Erin Urban (John A. Noble Collection and South Street Seaport Museum, New York, 1988, 96pp, illus, $40.00hb, $20.00pb) When John Noble slipped his cable and quit this earth six years ago come spring, he left New York Harbor a poorer place. As the artist of the harbor he was not just an observer of the scene but an actor in it, a protagonist of its trades and its traditions, its way of doing things. When we had to organize John's funeral parade for the National Society, a parade of harbor working craft, only one call to each boat was needed-and they all turned out. They were turning out for one of their owna man who represented their lives in the harbor as Odysseus represented the Greekness of the Greeks. We said in Sea History then that we weren 'tgoingto say goodbye. We would be coming back to John , one way or another, again and again. And to come by rowboat-that's the best! And that ' s what one can do in this book of his pencil sketches of old ships and activities in odd comers of the grand imperium of New York Harbor. Here is the famous yaw lboat of the schooner Annie C. Ross, both in John ' s pensive drawing of her, and in a photograph. Here are notes of his harbor excursions, and further afield , even through the locks to Lake Champlain, with his "green-eyed Susan." Susan died a few months before John, and your reviewer remembers sitting by her bed with John toward the end , while they talked of those rowboat trips. One fe lt that the bed became the rowboat, setting out on a long trip this time. One didn ' t want to move too quickly, to rock that boat, nor wi ll you, reader, want to quit this book too abruptly. PETER STANFORD Steamships of Europe, by Alistair Deayton (Conway Maritime Press, London , 1988, l 92pp, illus, £ 15.95) This handsome work-some of the photographs are haunting ly lovely-records and discusses the hundred-odd steamsh ips active in European waters. There is a further listing of 200 ex-steamers '1converted to diesel.
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