REVIEWS ANTIQUE & MODERN
MARINE CHRONOMETERS Bought, Sold and Serviced
J.P. Connor & Co. "The Chronometer Specialists" P.O. Box 305, Devon PA 19333 (Near Philadelphia) Tel: 215-644-1474
J. Tuttle Maritime Books 1806 Laurel Crest Madison, WI 53705
Catalog upon request of out-of-print books on the sea, ship and the saUor.
40
"Recognizing Their Talent and Worth"
to get home to Germany. Instead, he was back to sea with an aili ng ship, overYarns ofa Cyprus Pilot, by George V. worked pumps, a hard-bitten and parsiClark (Pentland Press, Ltd., Pentland Dis- monious master, and no hope of seeing tribution, 3 Regal Lane, Soham, Cambs, his homeland again for the near future. CB7 SBA UK, 1991, l 92pp, illus, photos The months that followed were a strange & author's sketches, no index, ÂŁ14.50) mixture of most of the hardships found When the reader of maritime history on any ocean-going tramp, not the least thinks that he has just about read all there of which were invalid articles of engageis available on the long-vanished subject ment and hostility on the part of port of sailing ships and old seafaring, along officials in South America. Strassburger comes a surprise which rousts all beliefs eventually made it home nearly nine out of line. Such a book is Capt. George years after leaving, but returned to sailV. Clark' s recent book on sail and steam ing ships when the conditions of postpowered working-class freighters. From war Germany and its worthless money the distinctive and advantageous posi- drove him away again. Fully a quarter of the book is devoted tion of harbor pilot in the port of Famagusta, Cyprus, Captain Clark came to the extraordinary odyssey and career of into daily contact with many shipmasters Captain Strassburger, who survived World whose long traditions in sail and old War II and had resumed a career in steamsteamers is only lightly documented. ers trading in the Eastern Mediterranean Clark met and talked with Greeks, Ger- when he encountered Captain Clark. mans, Italians and Danes whose lives in Subsequent biographical sketches and the hard-bitten sailing ships of the Medi- narratives are centered in the Indian Ocean, terranean, Indian Ocean and Cape Horn with geographic descriptions of the istrades are all woven into this very cos- lands, archipelagoes and seamen of that mopolitan fabric of the seaman's life. region. The author, himself a seaman of The flag hanging on the stem of any given some fifty years experience, is more than ship is clearly a symbol only of ownership a little familiar with the Middle East and and registry. The mixture of men in the Indian Ocean waters, and he picks his forecastle, engine room and on the bridge captains and biographies with skill and deck is truly Captain Clark's world. sympathetic understanding of what those As he piloted their ships, he got around waters and those obscure ships were like. A rusty wreck with no name was seen to asking about the personal histories of the captains. For example, there is Cap- and visited by Clark during his wartime tain Theodore Strassburger, born in the call in 1942 to a remote East African Kaiser' s Germany in the late 1890s and harbor called Manza Bay. There, amongst descended from the Strassburger Circus the mangroves and isolation of the coast, families. At the age of sixteen, Strass- lay an old steamship hulk with no reburger went to sea in the big four-masted maining identification. The ship had bark Edmund, a ship which was mostly apparently been deteriorating there for confined to the bulk tramping trades in many years , shoved up on the beach and those years just before World War I. Be- nearly overgrown by the forest. After fore he was eighteen, Strassburger had crawling through the remains, his curirounded the Hom at least twice. But this osity was not satisfied, so Clark pursued voyaging came to an abrupt end in lquique, her history when the war ended. He when the sudden outbreak of the war learned the old steamer was the forced the Edmund into idleness. Adven- Kronberg , a supply ship for the German tures in the Andes finally brought the cruiser Koenigsberg which had been German sailor to Callao after the armi- harassing British shipping along the Afstice and into a leaky old wooden Ameri- rican coast for the first few weeks of can-built barkentine, the Stella, which was World War I. To keep the cruiser supsent around Cape Horn, pumping and plied and going, the German Admiralty creaking the whole way, to the Plate river had outfitted the Kronberg and sent her with a cargo of sugar. From there, the to join the Koenigsberg. Though the Stella sailed to Britain, offering young Kronberg had reached the environs of Strassburger the chance to get home to the cruiser's operations, she was lost by grounding and enemy cannon fire. The Germany after nearly five years. A stone wall of hatred, left over from shell-wracked ship remained in this rethe bitter war just ended, did not allow mote mangrove-covered harbor. Caphim and other Germans in the crew from tain Clark's incessant search for her hislanding and crossing the island kingdom tory brought him into contact with the SEA HISTORY 60, WINTER 1991-92