A slightly morbid treasury for reluctant sailors

After the Storm: True Stories of Disaster and Recovery at Sea

By John Rousmaniere

McGraw-Hill Ryerson

$39.95, 338 pp.

ISBN: 0-07-1377795-6

Available through www.nauticalmind.com and selected bookstores

As a writer, John Rousmaniere will be familiar to many as the author of The Annapolis Book of Seamanship, a useful and often updated (the fourth edition is due January, 2014) sailor’s Bible that illustrates not only Rousmaniere’s extensive sailing experience, but also his easy way with a word, or even a string of them in series. Others will know of his columns at Sailnet.com or his frequent articles for the sailing magazines. I mention him below as the author of the seminal post-race analysis, Fastnet: Force 10, a book that, despite its age, still sets the bar for "what went wrong while sailing"detective work. 

As handy with a word processor as with a winch handle, Rousmaniere is a genial spinner of sea tales, and that makes the often harrowing content of his latest effort both compelling and nerve-wracking. I've also met the guy at a "Safety at Sea" seminar I attended in 2010 and he's even a decent public speaker. But I don't wish to fawn overmuch: let's look at the work.

Not many Lake Ontario recreational boaters bother to leave the dock on the rare summer’s day when a good blow is building, but for those who do, the experience can be thrilling, and can test the skills and the canvas of even a veteran sailor, particularly when a squall hits. Exponentially more challenging is the open ocean, where long fetches, giant and wobbly storm systems and inadequate or insufficient talent at the helm or vessel strength can make the merely nasty into the truly destructive.

Rousmaniere has been this way before: in his excellent Fastnet, Force 10, he charts the fate of his fellow competitors in the 1979 Fastnet Race south of Ireland, one of the most deadly sporting events in history. Rousmaniere’s habitually has been in the sort of storms he describes, and has lived to tell the tale, presumably with keyboard fingers intact. Were he not a good writer, this first-hand experience alone would recommend him as a compiler of the memorable series of disasters-at-sea that comprise After the Storm.

Rousmaniere also holds post-grad degrees in history and divinity, both of which serve him well here. The divinity degree expresses itself in subtle ways. Rousmaniere relates how in the case of many survivors of shipwrecks and/or storms, sometimes dramatic religious impulses were born. This is effectively the case with the Biblical figure of Jonah, for whom a deity-delivered storm (delivered somewhat spitefully, as is often the case in the Old Testament) leads to spiritual reform. Rousmaniere also cites the story of the Apostle Paul, for whom a Mediterranean tempest proves to be a opportunity for converting the pagan sailors who are reportedly mightily impressed by Paul’s calm mien and sturdy faith as the seas build.

More contemporary, and perhaps most impressive in its way, is the story of John Newton, a long-time ne’er-do-well brutalized (and made brutal in turn) as a functionary on a slave ship of the 18^th century. Against all odds, Newton helms a crippled, half-flooded ship through a vicious Atlantic gale and back to dry land. This experience has a transformative effect on Newton. He renounces his former life, becomes a popular preacher, and eventually pens Amazing Grace, perhaps the most popular hymn ever written. Few people know that tune as being the work of a one-time slaver, and fewer know of its origins in a protracted storm.

God isn’t behind every tale of salty woe, however: Rousmaniere’s too much the seaman to ascribe every shipwreck to celestial judgment. Sometimes poor human judgment, or perhaps hubris, will suffice. The case of Percy Bysshe Shelley kicks off the book, and it’s a cautionary tale for performance racers and poets alike. Shelley, a bit of a rock star of his day in the versifying line, was like most young men have always been: when he wasn’t attending to the ladies, he enjoyed the best toys he could afford. Prime among them was Ariel, an overcanvassed, narrow, insufficiently decked racing yacht that Shelley enjoyed but evidently couldn’t be bothered to learn how to sail. Rousmaniere lays the inevitable tragedy at the poet’s door: God may send the tempest, but there is no excuse for unseamanlike behaviour. Even though this book doesn't feature stories in which the latest gear like SPOT Messangers or PLBs plays a role, there is still a lot of excellent and specific safety knowledge for those considering more trying passages.

Rousmaniere tells other tales familiar (the abandoned Mary Celeste and another, less well-known “ghost ship”) and new-to-me (the appalling demise of proto-feminist Margaret Fuller in the wreck of the Elizabeth) all of which make this an appealing treasury not only of heartbreak, but of survival and reassessment after grim episodes. Prophetically (and perhaps not unexpectedly in a religiously attuned writer such as Rousmaniere), he closes the book with a chapter on the latest generation of world ocean racers, most of whom have felt close to death in storms, despite all the latest in gear and knowledge, and some of whom, like their seafaring ancestors, have vanished beneath the waves, and not been seen again.

So if you've ever wondered why sailors are a fatalistic lot, this occasionally morbid if engaging treasury will suggest some pretty persuasive reasons why that state of mind prevails.