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"Low Bridges-& High Water" By Charles T. O'Malley
A Lively History of the New York State Barge Canal • Over 100 Photographs • 30 in Full Color To Order Your First Run Edition Send $19.95 to: Diamond Mohawk Pub. Dept. A P.O. Box 526, Ellenton, FL 34222
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dotal and oral) is presented like a canal journey.itself with colorful people and happenings around every bend. He imparts a real feel for the history of the place. His narrative reminds me of those many "sea stories" I have listened to in tug galleys over endless cups of coffee. O ' Malley recounts his own brief stint as a junior fireman aboard the steamer Matton JO in 1941 and his more recent and reflective canal journeys on the tug Erinkehoe. Other chapters relate the rise and fall of the great tugboat dynasties like the Busheys, Mattons, Feeneys and Coynes who built and operated canal vessels. Throughout this book are rich vigoottes-Oepicting .a way -0f Life that is no more. O'Malley has written a highly entertaining chronicle of this obscure yet important era in the history of American inland navigation. TOM PRI NDLE
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Great Maritime Museums of the World , ed. Peter Neill & Barbara Ehrenwald Krohn (Balsam Press, New York NY, 1991 , 304pp, illus, index, $60hb) Fitzhugh Lane 's ideal-world but somehow very real view of fishing craft lolling about Gloucester harbor on a calm summer evening a century and a half ago is succeeded by buxom figureheads gazing out from the walls of the Smithsonian's Hall of American Enterprise, followed in tum by dandified French officers and aristocrats strolling through the somber surroundings of the artillery park at Toulon 200-odd years ago--these scenes open Peter Neill's s umptuous and occasionally thought-provoking exploration of the maritime heritage as it is preserved in the paintings, models, artifacts and rich archives of the world 's great maritime museums. Ably abetted by Barbara Ehrenwald Krohn , Neill gathers up the treasures of these great museums in a sweeping grasp, the visual impact of which is, in a word, stunning. In all the collections of 26 museums in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands and in Norway, Portugal , Spain" and Sweden, are here presented in lavish illustration and well informed text, with three great museums in Britain and six in the United States coming in at the end. The editors have labored wisely to assure diversity in this collection, searching out museums of working craft in
such fishing ports as Douamenez and Lunenburg, as well as revelling in the grandeur of the unsurpassed royal naval collections of England 's National Maritime Museum in London , The Musee de Ia Marine in Paris, and Portugal 's Museu de Marinha. And it is interesting to learn , in the words of museum directors and curators (for each museum collection is presented by a staff leader), of the search for contemporary relevance and involvement by such monumental and patriotic institutions as Spain 's Barcelona Maritime Museum, or s uch innovativ e, community-involved outfits as Peter Neill's South Street Seaport Museum in New York, of which he has been staff president since the spring of 1985. It is hi s declared and proper purpose to get us out there seei ng these treasure houses of the seafaring experience for ourselves, and this book, a splendidly presented tour in itself, provides comPS pelling reasons to do just that. Shipwreck! , by Ian Dear (Portman Books, London , 1990; David & Charles, North Pomfret VT, 1991, 127p, illus, $34.95hb) To the perennially fascinating subject of ship losses at sea, Ian Dear brings something more than the usual romantic storytelling; he starts out in a practical vein, informing us that about 150 ships are lost every year-roughly one every other day. These are big ships, and many lives are lost in them. He reports that 1987 brought the highest toll in human life at sea since records have been kept. The purpose of hi s book, he tells us, is to "focus attention on why such losses occur." The microchip age, Dear maintains, has "dangerously isolated seamen from the hazards of the sea," his first and probably most important lesson . Plain stupidity and human carelessness take their toll , in wrecks ranging from the lovely bark Herzogin Cecilie in calm weather in the English Channel in 1936, to the horrible capsize of the ro-ro ferry Herald ofFree Enterprise off Zeebrugge in Belgium, with the loss of 193 livesjust four years ago. These events are shown in stark photographs, as is the 3 2~8 I 8 DWT Marina di Equa, in herdeath throes in a gale in the Bay of Biscay in 1981. The helicopter that took the picture was low in fuel; when it returned to the scene the giant ship had vanished-no survivors. Earlier photographs document the SEA HISTORY 59, AUTUMN 1991