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"The Chronometer Specialists"
THEGLENCANNONPRESS MARITIME BOOKS
Books on ships and the sea. NEW! STEEL SHARK IN THE PACIFIC, a submarine in WWII. The complete Glencannon stories. FREE CATALOG. 800-711-8985
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P.O. Box 633, Benicia, CA 94510 www.glencannon.com
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Antique Modern Marine Chronometers
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J.P. Connor & Co.
•Nautical Books •Ship Models •Marine Art & Antiques
PO Box 305, Devon PA 19333 (near Philadelph ia)
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PC Patrol Craft of World War II A History of the Ships and Their Crews Wm . J. (Bill) Veigele, PhD, USNR, Ret. t---~~--~
Every PC is listed. Learn how they built PCs . See detail s of the ir design. Read about the ir ex plo its. Find out what happened lo them after WW II. --- Thi s 400-page c loth book has more th an 150 photos and draw ings and 33 tabl es about the ships' des ign, construction, ban les, losses, and other in format ion . Send $39.95 + $4 .75 shi pping. (Add $ 1.75 for each additi onal book mailed to the same address .) CA orders add $3. 10 tax. Astral Publishing Co. , Dept. H, PO Box 395 5, Santa Barbara CA 93 130-3955 www .a s tra lpubli s hin g .co m
NATIONAL MARITIME HlsTORICAL SOCIETY
Online Now you can buy NMHS gift memberships, renew yo ur own membership, or purchase our shirts, ties, hats, books, and other items o n-line. You can also engage in dialogue with other members and find links to a variety of other fascinating maritime sites .
www. seahis tory. org
"Meticulously resea rched and vividly written, Rough Medicin e breath es life into a series
of extraordina ry characters and their jaw-dropping exp loits. A great read." -Neil Hanson, author of The Custom of the Sea
"Vivid in its evocation of the rough business of medicine at sea, yet always with its feet planted.firmly in the facts, Druett's latest work lives up to her reputation as one of our foremo st chroniclers of maritime lore. " - Roy Porter, a uthor of The Greatest Benefit to Mankind
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The Custom of the Sea, by Neil H anso n Qohn Wiley & Sons, New York NY, 1999, 3 l 5pp, illus, biblio , ISBN 0-471-38389-9; $24.95 hc) The Custom ofthe Sea begins as another survival-at-sea tale. However, it is the story that unfolds after rescue that places it among the more interesting of this genre. Well told by English journalist and author Nei l H anso n, the drama moves from the question of whether the captain and crew will survive their open-boat ordeal to one of whether they can survive the British judicial system. The facts seem all too fami li ar: In 1884, when a rogue wave sinks the yacht Mignonette some thousand miles from the nearest sho re, the captain and three crew members take refuge in a leaky 13-foot dinghy; provisions and water are quickly exhausted; one refugee dies and his body is committed to the deep . Finally, the remaining crew resort to the "custom of the sea. " T he "custom, " of course, is cannibalism. As Hanson points out, cannibalism was an unspoken fact-of-life at sea. In extrem e cases, starvation was to be avoided or postponed by the drawing of lots: the short straw became subsistence. In Victo ri an England, the survivo rs' forthcoming and, perhaps in retrospect, naive narrati ves, and their failure to draw straws, coupled with the connivances of petty burea ucrats and ambitious jurists and politicians, led to charges of murder. It is the contin ued physical torment and mental anguish borne by the survivo rs under these circumstances that make this book compelling reading. Hanson points out that Regina v. Dudley and Stephens is believed to be the first instance in history of a civil court testing the appropriateness of an an cient custom of the mariner subculture. In fact, Hanson reports, since the Mign.onette case there have been only two further recorded cases of the custom of the sea being employed by starving crews set adrift, neither of which were reported in the 20th century. One of theMign.onette defendants probably had it right. When told that the co urt ruled against him in order to outlaw the custom of the sea, he reportedly said: "It has done no such thing. What it has done is outlaw the truth . Ships w ill sti ll wreck, and men will do what they always have done in order to survive. " P ETER SORENSEN
SEA HISTORY 95, WINTER 2000-01