detection devices) and especially ears mounted on a wide variety of vessels, ears that allowed them to discover and pinpoint U-boats for destruction. Academic scientists left the campus to serve at the sites where ideas turned into detection devices that could be used to track the test submarines provided by the US Navy. Theories were drawn on to refine practical equipment, and industrial scientists took the most promising devices and prepared them for large-scale manufacturing. British, French, and Italian scientists and naval officers participated in the marathon effort to win the U-boat war. They brought their devices and expertise and experience to the United States, and American naval officers and scientists visited abroad where they were given access to whatever might contribute to the search for antisubmarine detection apparatuses. What might be termed Battle of the Atlantic I (WWI) was not won in the same clear-cut fashion as the Battle of the Atlantic II (WWII), but the tide appears to have turned from the Central Powers to the Allies. Detection devices in conjunction with mine fields and depth charges were creating havoc for the U-boats that kept them from their best hunting grounds, leading even to mutiny among some crews who refused to sail into near-certain destruction. The Listeners is well written and researched and a pleasure to read. Manstan maintains an air of anticipation despite his writing about events a century ago. His narrative is spiced with block quotations from contemporaries that give the work a feeling for the times and events under study. General readers will enjoy this book; those interested in problem solving, naval warfare and especially submarines and antisubmarine history will find it essential reading. David O. Whitten, PhD Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina Sea Otters: A History by Richard Ravalli (University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2018, 189pp, illus, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-0-803284-401-1) At some point in your school years, a history teacher might have shared with you that an American sea captain opened up contact with China after learning that sea
otter pelts, in all their densely soft luxuriousness, were a commodity of interest to the traders of exotic goods in those ports. Or as a teenager you might have read Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960), in which sea otters are “the most playful animals of the sea”—yet maybe you paused to wonder what Russian and Aleutian hunters were doing off the coast of San Diego. Perhaps your travels have taken you to Fort Ross, less than two hours’ drive north of San
by Kurt D. Voss All proceeds from this pictorial history benefit the ELISSA preservation fund.
Published by Arcadia Publishing and Galveston Historical Foundation $21.99. 128 pages, 200 photographs Autographed copies available at (409) 763-1877, or online at:
w w w. t s m - e l i s s a . o r g Anne T. Converse Photography
Francisco, the southernmost Russian settlement in North America that was first established to grow food and chop wood for their sea mammal hunters to the north. So what was really going on here? And how has our human perception of the sea otter, Enhydra lutris, a mammal indigenous to most of coastal North Pacific, shifted over time? The sea otter is partly a success story, as it has come back from the brink of regional extinctions, but the cuddly conservation symbol is still very much an endangered species on the decline—and there’s a “trouble with cuteness.” Richard Ravalli, associate professor of history at William Jessup University in California, examines these questions with a focus on international networks of trade, exploration, and imperial and indigenous conflicts driven by Asian demand for sea otter fur. He emerges with some exciting stories that alter, expand, and complicate the way we think about Pacific history, environmental history, and our relationship
Neith, 1996, Cover photograph
Wood, Wind and Water
A Story of the Opera House Cup Race of Nantucket Photographs by Anne T. Converse Text by Carolyn M. Ford Live vicariously through the pictures and tales of classic wooden yacht owners who lovingly restore and race these gems of the sea. “An outstanding presentation deserves ongoing recommendation for both art and nautical collections.” 10”x12” Hardbound book; 132 pages, 85 full page color photographs; Price $45.00 For more information contact: Anne T. Converse Phone: 508-728-6210 anne@annetconverse.com www.annetconverse.com
SEA HISTORY 167, SUMMER 2019 59