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 [...]
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 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 [...]
Any 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 [...]
Live 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 MoreArchitectura Navalis Mercatoria – The Classic of Eighteen Century Naval Architecture
July 7, 2009
Some insist that eighteenth century shipwrights would carve ship half models to help visualize the shape of a ship. Patterns would then be taken off the small model to be used for the full sized ship. The more modern use of lines plans and calculations would not arrive until the nineteenth century. Well maybe not.
One glance [...]
Captains Contentious – The Dysfunctional Sons of the Brine by Louis Arthur Norton – A Review
June 23, 2009
Louis Arthur Norton’s book Captains Contentious – The Dysfunctional Sons of the Brine is an entertaining reminder that history is finally about individuals, dedicated to the causes in which they believe, as well as serving their own needs and obsessions.
Norton looks at five ship’s captains who fought for the infant American Navy in the Revolutionary [...]
Alaric Bond’s “His Majesty’s Ship” – A Review
June 9, 2009
Whereas most nautical adventure fiction follows the same general format – tracking the exploits of a young ship’s officer, Alaric Bond takes a refreshingly different tack. His latest novel, His Majesty’s Ship does not focus on a single hero but follows multiple officers and crew of the 64 gun HMS Vigilant. His range of characters and his use of [...]
Read MoreThe Fifty Gun Ship, A Complete History by Rif Winfield – A Review
May 18, 2009
We recently reviewed The Frigate Surprise: The Complete Story of the Ship Made Famous in the Novels of Patrick O’Brian by Brian Lavery and Geoff Hunt, which follows HMS Surprise of both history and fiction. HMS Surprise was not the only ship that O’Brian lifted straight from history. HMS Leopard, of 50 guns launched in 1790, [...]
Read MoreThe Frigate Surprise: The Complete Story of the Ship Made Famous in the Novels of Patrick O’Brian – A Review
May 8, 2009
In his Aubrey/Maturin series, Patrick O’Brian wrote of HMS Surprise, a small British frigate, originally captured from the French. Over several books, the Surprise became almost as beloved a character, in her own way, as Jack Aubrey and Doctor Maturin themselves.
Independent of her qualities in fiction, HMS Surprise was indeed a real ship upon which [...]
Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History by Alan Huffman – a Review
May 4, 2009
In his book, Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Maritime Disaster in American History, Alan Huffman follows a handful of Union soldiers from their enlistment in the Army during the American Civil War, through the confusion and terror of battle, and then on to the often far greater horror of Confederate prison [...]
Read MoreCongratulations to Thomas Truxes,
Author of “Defying Empire”
April 21, 2009
Thomas Truxes’ recent book, Defying Empire, Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York, that we previously reviewed, is a finalist for the Society of American Historians’ Francis Parkman Prize, which is awarded annually for the best nonfiction book on an American theme published in the previous year. (Correction from previous post – Defying Empire is one of two finalists [...]
Read MoreHis Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik – A Review
March 20, 2009
At the edges of the old charts in waters not yet explored, the cartographers wrote “here be dragons”. In her book, His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik moves the dragons to the center of the chart. “When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes its precious cargo, an unhatched dragon’s egg, fate sweeps Capt. Will [...]
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