REVIEWS
8lo1J809'fl Kenwood IS
"THE STOBART STORE"
Clol809',, the Midwest's Premier Marine Art Gallery Call Ted Gardner (513) 891-5531 7866 Montgomery Rd. Cincinnati, OH 45236
MUSEUM QUALI1Y SHIP MODELS "The finest for less'
The worlds finest inventory of ship models at down to earth wholesale prices.
Lannan Ship Model Gallery 58 Thayer Street Boston, MA 02118 (617)451-2650
MARINE ART
by JEFF ELDREDGE-ASMA CALL OR WRITE PO BOX 8, NORTH CARVER , MA 02355 508-947-0557
44
passage from Australia. For those who remember the great windjammers of yesteryear, this is a grand book, a brief glimpse again of the days gone by, names of people and ships and ports, stories of fair weather and foul. For those who came too late, born after the ships were gone, the book gives a good picture of how it was . G1LES M. S. Too This review is abridged from the full review published in the American Neptune (Peabody Museum, Salem MA), Summer 1991 . The Eyes of the F leet: A Popular Histor y of Frigates and Frigate Captains 1793-1815, by Anthony Price (Hutchinson , London, 1990, 298pp, 17 B& W illus, index, $29.95) Anthony Price's sub-title, A Popular History of Frigates and Frigate Captains 1793-1815, with strong emphasis on "Popular" and "Frigate Captains," best defines his objective in writing this book. His method is somewhat unusual in that he has chosen five real-life frigatemen: Edward Pellew, Hugh Pi got, Thomas Lord Cochrane, William Hoste, Philip B. V. Broke, and a fictional one: Horatio Hornblower, to illustrate the thesis. The common threads to his story are the era, "The Age of Nelson," and the vessels, frigates. The questionable inclusion of Pigot and his Hermione, the "Black Ship" (with my nod of appreciation to Dudley Pope), allows this sentence to introduce the author's primary writing quirk-the parenthetical expression. By rough count Mr. Price averages four parenthetical phrases per page. Ignoring the digressions in the first three chapters, in which the author develops his topical background, throughout our "AgeofNelson" narrative we are treated to an eclectic array of his opinions on as diverse a group of subjects as offered in any single volume: the Graf Spee vs. Exeter, Achilles and Ajax in 1939 (p 54 ); the Battle of Jutland (pp 64-65); Malta 1943 (p 65); Sennacherib's Assyrian army of Biblical times (p 74); the sharpshooting Boers of South Africa (p 74); Admiral Anson in the Pacific (p 74); the pre-DDTeraofWWll (p 74); the Royal Navy as a defender of the Monroe Doctrine (p 82); German intelligence during the French army mutinies of 1917, followed by the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and Hitler and the Battle of Britain in 1940 (p 89); the Hindenburg
Line of 1918 (p 95); Orde Wingate in Burma, the Long Range Desert Group commander in Libya, or Guy Gibson and Leonard Cheshir of the RAF (p 96); Quebec 1759, Normandy 1944, the Munich Agreement of 1938 (p 107); Oran 1940 (p 123); all of which leave the reader's head spinning, with two-thirds of the book to go. And even when Mr. Price remains within his supposedly chosen time frame of 1793-1815, he is rambling and digressive. After turning the last page of Chapter 7, 'The Hermione Mutiny," one cannot help but wonder just what has been said. Being familiar with Dudley Pope's extensive work on the topic, plus my examination of some of the original documents for a few odd snippets I've written about that heinous mutiny, one cannot but ask-what has been added to the information available on the subject? The Eyes of the Fleet is a book without an ending. Yes, one does wander through nineteen chapters, an author' s note and an index before running out of pages, but one also hesitates to close the covers. Is this it? What have I learned? Mr. Price does offer one worthy distinction when he compares Cochrane, as the greatest frigate captain of them all to Nelson as the greatest fighting admiral. Other than that, The Eyes of the Fleet might best bedefined as an encyclopedic exposure of Price's opinions on warfare through the ages. The most penetrating sections come straight from the pages of Michael Lewis, Christopher Lloyd , Dudley Pope, Alfred Thayer Mahan, C. S. Forester, C. Northcote Parkinson, Donald Thomas, Douglas Reeman (AKA Alexander Kent), Richard Woodman, and a host of others. But to give credit where it is due, Anthony Price honestly and unabashedly sums up his own work with the statement, " this book owes everything to other books." DR. W. M. P. DUNNE Sea Education Association Woods Hole, Massachusetts South: the Story of Shackleton 's Last Expedition, 1914-17, ed. Peter King (Century, London UK, 1991 and Trafalgar Square, North Pomfret VT, 1992, 208pp, photos , $29.95hb) "For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give m.e Amundsen," said Sir Edmund Hiilaf)Y , first person to climb Everest, "but wlhen disaster strikes and all hope is gone, ~get down on your knees and pray SEA H-IISTORY 60, WINTER 1991-92