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Celebrate lOOth anniversary of the 1st solo circumnavigator, Captain Joshua Slocum! The Sloc um Soc ie ty prese n ts a Lim ited Editio n print seri es. A grea t holiday gift fo r every sailor. Free color brochu re. 1-800-461-6599
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REVIEWS The plans of the great Henry Ford, possibly his greatest design, are published for the first time here. Dunne 's energetic research apparently left no stone unturned and his naval architectural abilities permitted competent design analysis. He detail s his story with extensive anci ll ary text and annotated notes. His well-styled, highly documented prose absorbs readers in the professional and family lives of McManus and many other contemporary maritime luminaries. Hopefully thi s book wi ll inspire others to deliver us into the worlds of great naval architects: Dunne sets a Thomas F. McManus and the Ameri- rigorous example. ROB NAPIER, Editor can Fishing Schooners, An IrishNautical Research Journal American Success Story, by W. M. P. Dunne (Mystic Seaport Museum , Mystic CT, 1994, 416pp, illus, plans, appen , The Tancook Schooners: An Island and Its Boats, by Wayne M. O'Leary index; $39.95hc) In a long-awaited, broad, powerful (McGi ll -Queen 's University Press, Bufvolume, William Dunne engagingly falo NY, 1994, 290pp, illus, photos, weaves his three title subjects into a plan s, notes , appen , biblio, index ; deep, readable narrative. He introduces $44.95hc, $ l 7.95pb) In January of 1966 I bought (for$ l 75) us to prosperous McManus forebears in Ireland, follows their emigration to Bos- and restored Wind, a 16-foot, wineglass, ton, and establishes them along the wa- clipper-bow double-ender with long outterfront in the maritime businesses of side rudder, built in 1922 by Archibald sailmaking, fish brokering, vessel own- Fenton. Fenton was a Nova Scotia transplant from Mahone Bay to Gloucester ership and, finally, naval architecture. Feeling a gift for vessel design , Tho- who, in 1901 , built Howard Blackburn 's mas F. McManus (1856-1938) , Dunne 's immortal sloop Great Republic. For some nominal subject, shrewdly observed the mad reason , in October of 1966, I also successes and failures of the closely re- succumbed to the 35-foot "Bluenose" lated fishing schooners, yachts and pilot schooner Bandit that was attributed to a boats that surrounded him while he was Mr. Mason of Mahone Bay in 1938. I did not connect the two until I read a Boston fish broker. At an early age McManus proficiently carved half-hulls with total fascination Wayne O 'Leary's as design tool s and worked in Dennison smartly researched and written classic J. Lawlor's mold loft. McManus ad- on the Tancook schooners. I knew Wind dressed his lack of drafting sk ill s by was Fenton 's adaptation of that lovely , attending, in hi s thirties, America's first wonderfu l, seakindly fi sherman , the courses offered in ship design and build- Tancook whaler, and that my schooner ing. He then left the brokerage and began was a sort of miniaturized Bluenose of creating vessels. The first attributed com- Lunenburg and Fishermen 's Races fame. But that my schooner was the direct pletely to him was the 1891 James S. Steele. Over the next 45 years he was descendant of my little sloop, wh ich he responsible for roughly 450 more, a fig- calls "the preeminent small craft proure estimated to exceed the combined duced in the Maritimes during the first totals of all other contemporary design- half of the twentieth century?"-that was a bit of a mind-boggle. ers of comparable vessels. An historian at the University of In the quest for safer fishin g vessels, McManus labored with the eternal com- Maine, O ' Leary confirm s Chape lle ' s promises of speed, capacity, handiness, scholarship in tracing the Tancook whaler weatherliness, seakindliness, and aes- clear back to the small inshore sailing thetics to develop the knockabout, or " whale r" of Hampton, New Hampshire, bowsprit-less, schooner. Helen B. Tho- inspired by the New England whaleboat. mas was the first knockabout, and others He thlen reveals how the yachting cra:(':e followed. Like his father before him, that S>truck Mahone Bay in 1885 metaMcManus was involved in American morpihosed the " wha ler," clinker-built and international fishing schooner races. on Tam cook Island , into a shoaler, carve Ithe same ship as shown in a simplified drawing on page 45! And the definition of "pinnace" in the otherwise excellent glossary unaccountably overlooks the most common version of the type, a fairsized pulling boat towed behind a bigger ship, or sometimes carried in knockeddown form in the hold. Such lapses are rare, however. Overall the book is an admirably clear and cogent survey of the development of evolving ship types in the confused but intensely creative centuries in which the PS modem ship emerged.
SEA HISTORY 72, WINTER 1994-95