Eriksson and other lesser known but equally strong-minded types like Eyjolf the Foul and Gudrun Thorbjornsdottir were a wild and wooly lot. Well, after Tom Cunliffe has related their history you ' II know that not only were the Vikings even wilder than you thought but that the Viking spirit lives on. You ' ll meet latter-day Vikings like the state ly He idi whose mere presence could stupefy the male portion of H irta ' s crew-at least until she started to talk . So my advice is thi s: Forget (for the time being anyway) yo ur dreams of lazy tropic cruising and go west-viking with Tom Cunliffe and crew. Never mind the fog, the gales and the leak right over your bunk . The vi stas are spectacular, the locals are wonderfully warm and the sense of accompli shment in the sailing is unmatched. Full-color photograph s throughout, maps and charts , line drawings . SPENCER SMITH Spencer Smith is a NMHS Trustee. This review is slightly condensed from D olphin Book Club News . Crime and Punishment in the Royal Navy; Discipline on the Leeward Islands Station, 1784-1812, by John D. Byrne, Jr. (ScolarPress, Aldershot, Hants UK , Brookfield VT, 1989, 251 pp, illu s, $54.95) Historians of the modern school , pa rticu larly of the Marxist persuasion , tend to go overboard in depicting sea life in the days of wooden ships and iron men as one of unre lieved hell. N.A.M. Roger's recent The Wooden World, concerned with conditi ons of life and justice in the e ighteenth century British navy, did much to correct thi s di storted perspective (see rev iew in SH 35 , p. 44) and now in this book on naval di scipline¡ 200 years ago, John Byrne makes furthe r inroads on the too commonly accepted notion of "senseless brutality" as the prevailing mode of social discipline in the confined and demanding conditions of life aboard a British man-of-war. Hi s investigation covers peacetime and wartime conditions on the Leeward Islands station in the Caribbean, 3500 miles from London and so beyond the range of immediate Admiralty control. "As on land ," he concludes, "a draconi an penal code was admini stered moderately-at times even humanely .... " But no mere summary does justice to the wealth of human detail to be found in thi s humane study. For example, would you expect a captain who marooned a man for petty thievery to getaway with it? He didn ' t he was dismissed from the navy . And the man he marooned, picked up by a SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1989
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