writing style is inconsistent and could have used a good copy editor, while the publisher could have provided a better index. Nevertheless, the book does contain a helpful “Gazetteer of East River Obstructions” and provides clear reproductions of illustrations and maps from contemporary journals and newspapers. I recommend this book for those interested in the history of underwater engineering, as well as the commercial and maritime history of New York City. William S. Dudley Easton, Maryland Into the Deep: A Memoir from the Man Who Found Titanic by Robert D. Ballard and Christopher Drew (National Geographic, Washington, DC, 2021, 335pp, illus, source notes, index, isbn 978-14262–2099-9; $30hc) Famed ocean explorer Bob Ballard rightfully states from the beginning of his latest book, his memoir, that he is more than the “guy who found Titanic”…despite the fact that the subtitle of his book identifies him as just that. Nevertheless, Into the Deep sets out to prove that fact. Taken in totality, Ballard’s career is perhaps the most remarkable of all the deep-sea explorers. The processes of the search for Titanic, and for all the ships and boats that came after it, are fascinating, but even more impressive are his discoveries that do not get the hype that the shipwrecks do. The chemistry, geography, and biology of the deep ocean are simply not as alluring to mainstream publications, but from a scientific standpoint they’re much more important than finding a given wreck. Locating the wreck sites of Titanic or PT 109 closed a chapter in history. Discoveries that further our understanding of how life can exist in the darkness in the depths of the ocean wrote new chapters in textbooks around the world. This memoir, however, is a personal story that goes beyond the narratives of scientific excursions at sea. Ballard tells of his struggles with colleagues, the highs and lows of family life, and more. We get to know a lot more about what drives him, what has propelled him forward, and what has set him back. And we learn how he made his own dreams come true. 60
We also see how he has spent a career seeking to open doors for kids to dream as well. Exploration comes from a deep curiosity within oneself, but not every kid knows how to mine it, or has the tools to do something with it once it’s found. Ballard has done his best to provide those tools and set those dreamers free. John Galluzzo Hanover, Massachusetts To Rule the Waves: How Control of the World’s Oceans Shapes the Fate of the Superpowers by Bruce D. Jones (Scribner, New York, 2021, 387pp, notes, biblio; isbn 978-1-9821-2725-1; $28hc) To Rule the Waves will scare the hell out of you. Bruce Jones, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, makes no bones about it—we are in a maritime arms race with the Chinese (call it Cold War II). The Pacific is the prize. On the day I first sat down to consider this review (Sunday, 24 October 2021) the news reported that a joint Chinese/ Russian task group had transited the Tsugaru Strait between Honshu and Hokkaido, and the Sea of Japan and the Pacific—a provocative action indeed. On one level, an examination of global geopolitics, Jones’s book follows such recent titles as Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography (2012); Richard Haass, The World, A Brief Introduction (2020); and H. R. McMaster, Battlegrounds (2020). But because Jones focuses on the geopolitics of ocean power, his book more readily calls to mind the predictive chapters in the late John Keegan’s The Price of Admiralty (1990). As such, it will be of considerable interest to readers of Sea History magazine. Jones begins his study with a section called “News from the Future,” a future that includes the reactivation of a Cold War submarine base deep in the mountainous fjords of northern Norway. He proceeds to describe the US policy of “pushing the American border out” by comprehensive surveillance of trade bound for the United States at its point of origination. Welcome to the world of 2022. From there, Jones explores the history and state of oceanic trade in the 2020s, from the rise of the great Scandinavian shipping companies; bulk shipping and
the wealth of the West in the second half of the 20th century; the containerization and the ascension of China’s maritime pursuits starting in the 1980s (centered on Hong Kong); and finally, China’s rise after 2012 exemplified by the vast container port at Yangshan near Shanghai. Jones moves on to discuss his notion that “flag follows trade.” He offers an informative synthesis of US/Chinese naval and maritime competition, commencing with Chinese participation in anti-piracy operations (2005–2009) in the Straits of Malacca and the Red Sea. Far from benign international law enforcement, for the Chinese the suppression of piracy offered the opportunity for an extended training exercise in blue-water deployment and sustainment operations. With practice deployments completed, in 2009 the Chinese moved to establish dominance in the “near seas,” especially the South China Sea, with artificial islands and aggressive patrolling. The goal, as Robert Kaplan observed, was to make the South China Sea a “Chinese lake,” as the Caribbean was once an “American lake.” The next phase involved Chinese naval presence in the wider Western Pacific, 2015–2017. Finally, the contemporary US Navy must confront an aspirational and growing Chinese navy. According to the Naval Institute, in the first twenty years of the 21st century, China commissioned 300-plus naval ships, making it the world’s largest navy, and the threat to Taiwan is unmistakable. It has been further estimated, as John Keegan predicted, that 200 submarines were operating in the South and East China Seas in 2019. There is a strong element of journalism in the book. Jones visits and reports on much of what he writes, from the maritime container found a thousand miles from the ocean in the rainforest of Brazil, to a voyage in the enormous container ship Madrid Maersk. Along the way, the author pauses to describe the technology of stacking containers onboard ships, and the view he obtained from the bridge of the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones. Jones concludes this important book with reflections on climate change, or more specifically global warming. He visits Scripps Institute for Oceanography, SEA HISTORY 178, SPRING 2022