US Postal Service Honors Sailors with Stamps
February 4, 2010
U.S. Postal Service To Honor 4 Sailors With Stamps
The U.S. Postal Service will issue “Distinguished Sailors stamps” Feb. 4 to honor four Sailors who served with bravery and distinction during the 20th century.
William S. Sims, Arleigh A. Burke, John McCloy, and Doris Miller were selected for the honor. The stamps will be unveiled in a [...]
Skipjack: The Story of America’s Last Sailing Oystermen by Christopher White – A Review
February 1, 2010
A review by Steven Toby, written for the Maritime History Listserv, included here with his kind permission. Sounds like a fascinating book.
Skipjack: The Story of America’s Last Sailing Oystermen by Christopher White is an excellent book on the last commercial fishing craft operating under sail in the US. The author has a journalistic rather than a scholarly [...]
Under Sail by Felix Riesenberg – A Review
January 30, 2010
Under Sail is a remarkable account of sixteen year old Felix Riesenberg’s first voyage on a square rigger from South Street Seaport in New York, to Honolulu and back. He sailed on the A.J. Fuller, a Bath built, copper clad, wooden hulled, three skysail yard medium clipper in the waning days of the age of sail.
As [...]
Unlocking the bloody history of the ship made famous by Turner, the Fighting Temeraire
January 23, 2010
Sam Willis has written what appears to be a fascinating book – Fighting Temeraire.
J.M.W. Turner’s painting, The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up, hangs in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and was recently voted to be Britain’s favorite painting, by a landslide, in a BBC4 poll. Sam Willis, a naval historian [...]
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick – A Review
November 20, 2009
Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex was published not quite a decade ago, so we are a bit late in reviewing it. (Our excuse is that the blog is only about one year old.) Nevertheless, this seems like a good day to review the book, exactly 189 [...]
Read MoreGalveston’s the Elissa: The Tall Ship of Texas by Kurt Voss
November 13, 2009
Most of the over 4,000 books in Arcadia Publishing’s “Images of America” series focus on local histories with extensive photographs of what a town, city or region looked like way back when. (Not long after my family moved into our 1880s brownstone, Arcadia came out with a book titled “Jersey City”, and I probably spent [...]
Read MoreMy River Chronicles – Rediscovering the America on the Hudson by Jessica DuLong : A Review
November 3, 2009
My River Chronicles – Rediscovering the America on the Hudson, is a fascinating voyage in the life of a young woman, who finds herself oddly quite at home in a most unlikely new job. It is also a journey through the history of America itself as it moves from an industrial past into an uncertain future.
While [...]
The Making of a Sailor or Sea Life Aboard a Yankee Square-Rigger
October 30, 2009
In the 1875, Fred Harlow was a teenager eager to follow the example of his three brothers and go to sea. After one trip on a coasting schooner to appease his parents, he signed aboard the Yankee square-rigger, Akbar, bound for Australia and Java. He kept a journal of his trip which, fifty years [...]
Read MoreA Belated Happy Birthday to Douglass Reeman/Alexander Kent
October 27, 2009
Douglas Reeman, who also writes under the pen-name Alexander Kent, was born on October 15th, 1924 in Thames Ditton, Surrey, England, which makes us almost a fortnight late in wishing him a happy birthday. He has been acclaimed as “the master of the modern sea story,” and is without question the most popular living writer of nautical fiction. He [...]
Read MoreAny Approaching Enemy by Jay Worrall – a Review
October 26, 2009
Grundner’s latest book “The Temple” ends with the Battle of the Nile in 1798. (See our review here.) I just happened to pick up Jay Worrall’s An Approaching Enemy, whose climax also happens to be the Battle of the Nile. And why not? It is a great moment in naval history.
I really wanted to like Any [...]
J D Davies wins 2009 Samuel Pepys Award
October 23, 2009
This year’s Samuel Pepys Award has been awarded to novelist and historian J D Davies for his book, Pepys’s Navy:Ships, Men and Warfare 1649-89, which examines the English navy in the second half of the 17th century. Chair of the judges Ann Sweeney said she expected the book to become “an enduring work of reference. [...]
Read MoreLive Yankees, the Sewalls and their Ships, by W.H. Bunting – A Review
October 18, 2009
Live Yankees, the Sewalls and their Ships is a fascinating and sweeping history of one family from Bath, Maine, which built and operated over one hundred merchant ships, mostly square riggers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It offers a complex and intriguing portrait of the shipbuilders, ship owners, captains and crews who helped [...]
Read MoreThe Temple, a new Sir Sidney Smith novel by Tom Grundner – A Review
October 12, 2009
There have been hundreds of novels written about dashing Royal Navy ships’ captains who bear a striking resemblance to Lord Cochrane. The resemblance and family history are most obvious in Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower, but a dozen or so other worthy fictional officers share the same heritage. It is therefore pleasing to see that [...]
Read MoreJohn Stobart and the Ships of South Street
September 17, 2009
Last year the National Maritime Historical Society (NMHS) published a fascinating booklet, John Stobart and the Ships of South Street, which features the pre-eminent maritime artist’s paintings of ships arriving or departing from New York’s South Street docks.
At first the presentation struck me as odd. The NMHS describes it as a booklet rather than a book, which is apt, as it is soft [...]
Poem of the Week – The Old Ships by James Elroy Fletcher
August 27, 2009
I am impressed that the Guardian newspaper features a “poem of the week” and pleased that this week’s is The Old Ships by James Elroy Flecker – an intensely imagined vision with uneasy echoes in first world war history.
The Old Ships
I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep
Beyond the village which men still call Tyre,
With [...]
