Peifer expounds at length on the limitations of knowledge of past incidents to predict the outcome or advise on how to manage similar current conflicts. But he also sets out the value of such understanding of the past and how it affects the present. The expositions on the three naval conflicts are well written and worth reading in this day of similar incidents and the centennial of the First World War. DAVID 0. WHITTEN. PHD Auburn, Alabama
Sailing into History: Great Lakes Bulk Carriers ofthe Twentieth Century and the Crews Who Sailed Them by Frank Boles (Michigan State University, East Lansing, 2017, 234pp, ISBN 978-1-611-86223-2; $40hc) In his new book, Sailing into History, Frank Boles, director of Central Michigan University's Clarke Historical Library, provides a general overview of the circumstances that fostered the twentieth-century boom in Great Lakes shipping, the economies that supported the system, and the people who ran the inland seas trade. In his own words, the twentieth-century history of the Lakes "is the story of brave crew serving on well-built boats; bur it is also the story of accountants ensuring the profitability of the ships, government aiding and regulating commerce, technology interacting with all aspects of the business, and labor-management relations." Boles's definition applies almost verbatim to all global cargo shipping, including the bulk carriers that Sailing into History treats as well as the many other cargo shipment types that run the world's economy.
54
As Boles perceives, Great Lakes shipping became an economic powerhouse thanks to considerable government intervention. The lakes' natural limits constrained ships from becoming ever larger with technological advances. Economies of scale favoring fewer, large-quantity shipments precluded keeping ships small. Instead, Great Lakes shipping interests lobbied the federal government to "improve" the lakes so longer ships with deeper drafts. could navigate with safety. Using mind-boggling statistics, Boles explains well just how vital Great Lakes shipping was to the twentieth-century American economy. The amount of iron, coal, and stone moved across the lakes during the century, for example, weighed the equivalent of 55,541 Chicago Willis Towers; 12,043 Mackinac Bridges; or 1,869 Hoover Dams. Yet while these statistics indicate the gargantuan amounts of cargo that crossed the lakes, thus sustaining the American economy, other passages call out for more judicious editing. Common throughout are notations such as "limestone falls between iron ore and coal in the space needed to transport it, requiring about 29 cubic feet per ton" (11); the service lineage of cement carriers, tugs, and barges (75); or the exact characteristics ofloading docks (107). This information, while useful, might better have been saved for the endnotes. As published, it interrupts Boles's otherwise lucid writing. To the reader's benefit, Boles illuminates the true significance and nature of Great Lakes shipping. Perhaps most significant is his realistic description of the lake mariner's life, often far removed from the weathered captains' romantic wanderings that many associate with the lake-borne economy and culture. The monotony of daily work, starkness of shipboard accommodations, and long periods of separation from loved ones all detracted from sailors' lives . Boles's observations that "idyllic evenings spent by content sailors ... could happen, but usually did not. The reality was quite different ... " applies equally well to blue-water seafarers. Elsewhere, Boles draws out the significance of geography: Great Lakes shipping is intrinsically transnational. He mentions also a nineteenth-century legislative situation that indicated how the United States would approach international shipping agreements well into the future . Passing Congressional legislation in 1864 that included significant rules for safe navigation, the country declined to sign a similar, earlier, international treaty set up by the British Board of Trade. The present-day American preference for homegrown rulemaking, then, is not an innovation: the United States long has participated in the international shipping economy without adopting multilateral agreements in toto. Given my position as director of programs of the North American Maritime Ministry Association, which focuses on seafarers serving in the international shipping economy, I found Boles's rich descriptions of sailors' lives particularly fascinating. Taking a broader view, Sailing into History's treatment of the Great Lakes represents, in many ways, modern shipping history everywhere. Anyone seeking an approachable narrative history of this historic powerhouse of the American economy as well as an example of the trends and issues affecting all shipping will profit by reading Sailing into History. MICHAEL SKAGGS, PHO South Bend, Indiana SEA HISTORY 159, SUMMER2017