REVIEWS Hulls and Hulks in the Tide of Time; the Life and Work of John A. Noble,
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by Erin Urban (Noble Coll ecti on , I 000 Ri c hmo nd Terrace, Staten Is land NY 1030 1, 1993 , 269pp, illus, biblio, index; $75 + $8s&h) Opening thi s book opens a world yo u won ' t soon forget. John Noble ' s picture of the world of New York Harbor, of which he was a denizen- a li o n among its fauna , in fact-is here presented w ith ve rve and the autho ri ty of nine years ' skill ed and devoted researc h by Erin Urban. Ms. Urban met John Noble just days before he d ied , but that o ne meeting opened a new world to he r. The product of that e ncounter is thi s powerfu l and beguiling work, published just ten years afte r Noble ' s ex it from the scenes he knew so we ll. Hulls and Hulks is the definiti ve catalogue ra isonee of Noble ' s work ; it includes fine reproductions of every one of hi s 79 lithogra ph s, e nric hed by ske tches and photos of the scenes over which Noble brooded and doodled , tho ught, c ursed , and d iscoursed on with g usto, for yea rs, even decades, before committing them to stone. And here we get also a su bstantial, deeply researched biography , whi c h e m braces as wel1the Ii fe of Sus an Ames Noble, some years hi s senior, whom he metand pursued as a student in Grenoble, France. Ultimately, he won her through a message he pressed into her hand once whe n she had told him to go away. The one-word message was " beauty, " a nd , as Susan later remarked, they had a shared noti on of what it meant and why it matte red more than a nything in the wo rld . It takes some people time to see beauty in Noble ' s work, inci de ntally-it did me, for example, and I knew and loved the ma n. When o ne beg ins to see it, it is, as I said , a thing that cha nges one ' s own vision of the world-you begin to see
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sunlight s triking the grain of things, of wood, of wate r, even of be nt iron in huge propelle rs and salt-stained plating, and even, I s ubmit, in people 's lives, in ways that evoke a new music of the spheres, new meanings in a n indifferent universe. In a recent lette r the author refl ected on hernine years with John Nobl e, working in hi s and Susan ' s Richmond Terrace hou se in Staten Is land overlooking that grand industri a l waterway, the Kill van Kull- and on how those yea rs had changed he r life. I feel the resulting work ought to come w ith a warning labe l: The book may change yo ur life. Among its hidden gifts a re a new appreciation of the nobility of honest work done unde r the open sky, a nd of the people of America ' s g reat seaport, working on the muddy foreshores of a gleaming city ig norant of the ir lives and labors. As No ble ' s testame nt, he re so well de li vered by Urban, affirms, the loss is the c ity ' s-and thi s book is a sovereig n re med y to make up tha t loss. PS
The Golden Thirteen; Recollections of the First Black Naval Officers, edited by Paul Stillwell (Naval Institute Press, A nnapo lis MD, 1993, 256pp, photos, appe n , index ; $2 1.95) In 1944 sixteen African-Americans were se lected and trained to be America's first nava l line officers. All in all , thirteen we re commi ss io ned . The ir story is an e nli g hte ning journey back in time-a luc id and compe lling oral record of those eight that intim ate ly shares with us their black ex perience in civili an, as well as military, life. The re me mbrances of s imple c hildhood joys, responsibilities and e motional pain resonate in the c hosen wo rds of those who lived through it. W e are drawn into their stories through suc h ex pe rie nces as that of James Hair, who, as a yo ung man , witnessed the lync hing of a brothe r-in-law he idolized. This was a time when the grip of Jim Crow was tight and ubiquitous; subtle race-related bias, if not violence, was the unfortuna te c limate in which these men matured and survived. The men who were summoned to Great Lakes Naval Training Cente r were tempered and equipped by the ex pe riences of the ir youth to take o n the c ha I lenge of a crash-course in officer training and the social climate of an all white corps of Naval offi cers . In hi s interv iew w ith Graham Martin , the ed itor captures the di sappointment felt by the men when they reali zed that they were not to serve in active duty, but SEA HISTORY 66, SUMMER 1993