tankers, and market adaptation), Yue-Kong Pao (shipbuilding, market-creation), C. Y. Tung (container innovation), and finally Maersk McKinney Moller (fleet and service aggregator). Each risked adapting to new technologies, introducing innovations in cargo handling, expanding economies of scale, or financing to meet a market which often didn’t even exist at the time. McCown argues that shipping is “the basic enabler of world trade…[and] is fundamentally an arbitrage. The extraordinarily efficient sea conveyance system that developed after World War II is the lubricant that moved world trade into high gear.” Oceans constitute 97% of all water on earth, and nearly 90% of the world’s commerce is carried across the oceans linking suppliers with global markets. As McCown points out, “big oceans, big ships, big numbers.” In 2018 there were 17,546 cargo ships more than 600 feet in length in service across the world’s oceans. Despite the advances in technology and our understanding of sea routes, currents, and weather systems, the ocean is as hostile and dangerous today as ever. In the nine years before the book’s release in 2020, at least 876 ships were lost at sea. No book can encompass every aspect of an industry that carries as much as 90% of world trade at some point in its life cycle. Nevertheless, this volume does admirably well to present a cogent presentation of where shipping has been going for the past century, and those who helped get it where it is today. The text is highly informed, buttressed by solid, innovative, and original research. Neither “sea stories” nor “data displays,” Giants of the Sea is a well-cogitated and surprisingly humanistic, descriptive, and readable account. Eric Wiberg Boston, Massachusetts Mutiny on the Rising Sun: A Tragic Tale of Slavery, Smuggling, and Chocolate by Jared Ross Hardesty (New York University Press, New York, 2021, 267pp, illus, notes, index, 978-1-4798-1248-6; $25hc) Is it possible to piece together with any form of accuracy the particulars of a mutinous event that took place off a remote area of South America nearly 300 years ago, when the mutineers threw the ship’s SEA HISTORY 179, SUMMER 2022
papers overboard to hide their tracks? In his latest book, Jared Hardesty proves that with extant primary and secondary source material and close study of the world of Atlantic commerce as it was at the time, we can, indeed, create a compelling narrative that explains why three sailors attempted to perpetrate such a heinous act on the schooner Rising Sun in 1743. Through legal testimony, letters reprinted in Boston newspapers, and other sources, survivors on both sides of the mutiny provided the baseline story. The conspirators, the two who survived long enough to provide testimony, each blamed the other, one refusing to answer about half of the questions posed by the Dutch officials in Suriname who oversaw the case. Hardesty had to decide what is credible and what is not, and then make deductions for motives and post-mutiny actions based on historical knowledge of international relations as they affected the Atlantic trade world. Why did they kill some members of the ship’s leadership, but spare others? Why did they want to sail for the
Orinoco, and what were their plans once they got there? The relevance of events that took place in the mid-18th century—and their related controversy—reaches into the 21st century. In 2013, Boston’s Old North Foundation decided to expand its mission by opening a chocolate shop to interpret the history of the city’s role in 18th-century Atlantic commerce. It named the shop after a parishioner chocolatier and sea captain, Newark Jackson. After Captain Jackson’s Historic Chocolate Shop was up and running, the namesake’s history as a smuggler of slaves came to light (as relayed in Hardesty’s 2016 book Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston), as well as his brutal death at the hands of Rising Sun mutineers. Mutiny on the Rising Sun is a compelling tale based on real events and Jared Hardesty is to be commended for his investigative work and success in pulling together a narrative that is both a good read and accurate in the telling. John Galluzzo Hanover, Massachusetts
This triple-expansion epic is set in 1913 Shanghai, where four cultures are about to collide: China, Korea, Japan, and the US. The point of collision is three tons of Japanese gold ingots meant to undermine an already collapsing China. “The Abalone Ukulele is a master class in historical fiction. With painstaking research and a gift for story spinning, Crossland brings to brilliant life a sprawling epic of greed, gold, and redemption.” —Joseph A. Williams, author of Seventeen Fathoms Deep and The Sunken Gold INDIVIDUAL ORDERS: www.dreadnaughts-bluejackets.com FOR BULK ORDERS: orders@newacademiapublishing.com
Tugboats and Shipyards: Tugboats and Shipyards: The Russells of New York Harbor, 1844–1962 Hilary Russell, Jr.
The Russells of New York Harbor, 1844–1962 by Hilary Russell Jr. “… a rare and intimate glimpse into a bygone New York maritime history” —Greg Rossel, WoodenBoat
Paperback: $27 Order your copy through AbeBooks, PayPal, or mail your check to: Berkshire Boat Building School, POB 578, Sheffield, MA, 01257 Questions? call 413 229-2549 or email at hemlockgrange@earthlink.net
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