Cruising is women's business

Changing Course: A Woman's Guide to Choosing the Cruising Life
by  Debra Ann Cantrell
$20.95, 192 pp.

ISBN:0071427899

This slim volume, which came recommended to me and has continued to get mention since its 2004 publication, might be one of the most important reads the husband portion of a cruising couple could purchase. The cruising women I’ve read about, like Ellen MacArthur, Beryl Smeeton and Tania Aebi, have tended toward the brusquely efficient, stiff-upper-lip types. Which is all well and good, I suppose, but that’s not most sailing husbands, is it, never mind their perhaps less-enthusiastic wives.

Now, given that’s it aimed squarely at women, that comment might seem counter-intuitive. Well, so are most male sailors, in my experience. Men like systems, fixing things, getting places. So do a lot of women, but they tend to want to discuss the ramifications first. Men, generally, can have a little trouble in this department.

That ‘little trouble’ is the subject of this interesting book, and if you like it, there's an interesting website as well. Many men of a certain age and a nautical cast of mind decide to go cruising, and many a Caribbean bar features these now-divorced skippers who didn’t quite take into account what selling up and sailing would mean to their spouses. Although Debra Cantrell’s study, and this is a study, assumes that it’s men who propose and women who dispose with the cruising life, much of this book is applicable to any pair, gay, straight or otherwise undefined shipmates, where one seeks a life-altering adventure and the other doesn’t…at least at first. In that sense, it's kin to the unfortunately obscure Two in a Boat, which I favourably reviewed below.

Despite the anecdotal approach, this is essentially a social survey of how women cope with their husband’s determination to cruise. When a woman who has spent years building a career, making a home, raising kids and forming strong local relationship hears that her beloved Skipper wants to bugger off to Margaritaville…well, it can create stresses. Cantrell charts her own course from, roughly, total opposition, fear and loathing to acceptance and finally, well-seasoned enjoyment. This course allowed for speaking with other women in the cruising life, many of whom were not (at first) remotely gung ho about the idea. and others who found it was the first step in an eventual marital breakdown. The briefest of chats with boat club bar staff will confirm this, alas. Boats and marriages founder when the crew is not in accord.

This isn’t a “downer” book at all, however. Few men are Captain Blighs of the under-40 foot class, but few seem to understand on an emotional level what it means to trade a Leaside three-bedroom for a dimly lit V-berth and the joys of ill-secured holding tanks. Such men should read this book avidly if they have any plans to sail off with the spouse. 

Among the common sense suggestions are the one to keep the house and rent it out, except for one room, as a paid-off house will provide both storage space, cruising income and a place to sack out on occasional trips back. I like this so much I've set that process in motion with tenants already in the upper two floors.

Another suggestion was that wives and husbands should maintain a “boat” account, and separate accounts for themselves, so that neither has veto power over perceived “luxuries” (or the least concessions to a civilized life, take your pick). This means in practical terms that either skipper can bail in a hurry, as there’s nothing more nasty than being trapped on a boat with no means of leaving it at the next port. As Cantrell points out, if you aren’t on the same page regarding what constitute reasonable expenditures, why go sailing? Camping is cheaper and frequently less damp and you can stretch your legs until you get to a nice pooping tree.

Women are strongly encouraged in this book to take sailing lessons, diesel repair lessons, navigation courses and the like. That’s because it’s better and safer to have two sailors aboard, but also because knowing this salty arcana means women (and non-sailing husbands of female skippers) can gain confidence and enjoyment out of doing things, and can perceive why their husbands wanted to go in the first place with "the skipper eye".. Cantrell admits that while a few women who went sailing hated it even after gaining the experience, there are a roughly equal number who overcame initial fears and concern and are now keenest on keeping cruising.

Cantrell’s writing style, while relying a little heavily on “therapeutic” language for my taste, is clear and informative, and is a good place to start when you have a spouse that doesn’t want to go, but doesn’t want to stop you, cruising. While I have in the past read the books I review for free, I haven't always gotten to keep them (it’s not that good a gig). This one, I bought. No higher recommendation exists.

Tale of the Scale a touch on the gusty side

 

Defining the Wind: the Beaufort Scale, and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned ScienceInto Poetry

by Scott Huler, Crown Publishers

ISBN: 1400048842, 2004

 Even before I took up sailing, I was more than vaguely aware of the time-tested and oft refined Beaufort Scale and its handy ability to summarize the real-life effects of wind on sea and (later) land. What I didn’t know was much about Beaufort, other than he was of Napoleonic Wars vintage and was one of those polymath captains who turned to science after many years of fighting for the British Navy.

Oh, and the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic? That’s named for him, as well.

After reading Scott Huler’s somewhat obsessive 2004-penned tale of how his own poetic, rather than his scientific, interest in the Beaufort Scale drew him into a 200-year odyssey of research, sidetracking, pilgrimages and mystery solving, I know more about a lot of things, one of which is Scott Huler’s mental processes.

Huler was a copy editor when he stumbled across Beaufort’s famous scale of wind effects in the early 1980s. There it was, in a dictionary of all places, and he found the compact rhythm of “Force 5, Fresh Breeze, small trees in leaf begin to sway; crested wavelets form on inland waters” a sort of nature-focused haiku, and he determined to learn more about this Beaufort fellow and his windy prose. The result defines the wind, but perhaps not as he intended.

What he learned is that the story of man’s measurement of the natural world around him has been a fairly slow and torturous progression from “damn, it’s somewhat blowy out there, what?” to today, when satellites can track rogue waves in the middle of empty oceans, down to the closest ten centimetres, and no trip around the bay is complete with checking out Windguru. Beaufort himself (and while we learn a great deal about him, he is only one of many characters in this story) was an exceptionally good, Cook- and Vancouver-level hydrographer and surveyor, as well as a good observer of the natural world when he wasn’t being shot in the face or the groin by the enemies of His Britannic Majesty.

Beaufort either devised independently or modified an existing wind scale to sea conditions, and amended his original scale in terms an average sailor would understand: thus, ‘Force 5, bring in topsails, whitecaps form’, and so on. The scale didn’t achieve wide acceptance or the Beaufort moniker until close to the end of Beaufort’s long and detail-oriented existence; since then, it has seen derivatives such as the Petersen Sea State Scale, and various land-based methods of clocking the wind by its effects on one’s surroundings, not by its effects on those little hand-held windspeed doohickeys increasing common in the Wednesday night club races.

Huler’s own prose I found a little wide-eyed and repetitive in spots, but you can’t bring in Captain Cook, William Bligh, Charles Darwin and other big names of the 18^th and 19^th century and be considered boring. Beaufort and his scale, the way Huler tells it, tells us a great deal of not only what people thought worth measuring two hundred years ago, but what they thought worth thinking about in a world being transformed by technology and improving science. This book’s sole fault is that this former copy editing author could have used a bit of trimming: I found him a wee bit long-winded.

If sailing's a religion, here's the Book of Common Care

Nigel Calder’s Cruising Handbook,
By Nigel Calder,
International Marine/McGraw Hill,
$78.55, 588 pp.
ISBN: 0-07-135099-3


There’s been dozens of “how-to-sail/race/cruise” books over the years, although some of the best, by authors such as Slocum, Chichester and Moitessier, have been more memoir than handbook. Still, few sailors haven’t read the tales from the seasoned sailors who’ve circumnavigated.

Most of us have more modest goals centered around docking and anchoring properly, and maintaining our boats to a standard that will allow us to enjoy them safely and reliably. Many of us may never sail beyond Lake Ontario—which can be quite an efficient teacher in its own right—but that doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from the knowledge of those who sail in saltier waters. Perhaps even having that knowledge at hand will make going offshore, or South, or wherever, more plausible.

That’s where heavy-duty compendiums like Nigel Calder’s Cruising Handbook come in. The very prolific and thankfully competent Calder, besides being an accomplished cruiser around North America (although interestingly, not so muchoffshore) is well known for his cruising guides, sailing articles, and his clearly written manuals on recreational boating systems, particularly his very popular and complementary Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual. Calder’s style is clear, concise and knowledgeable, which makes this heavily illustrated latest work a pleasure to read. Even nearing the decade mark since publication, a quick review confirms that it remains an excellent cruising guide.

Still, it’s a crowded field. I recently picked up a second-hand copy of Donald Street’s The Ocean Sailing Yacht, and despite the fact that it’s as old as my boat (1973), there’s a wealth of solid sailing lore in there applicable to the modern sailor. The same can be said even for the late Eric Hiscock’s cruising manuals, even though they are now about 50 years old. Lots of salty wisdom in the older guides, along with tips and tricks you won’t find elsewhere. Of course, there’s very little on radios, electric bilge pumps, autopilots and cockpit-activated windlasses. There’s a great deal on sextants, knots and the new if slightly suspicious wonder fabric, Dacron. I would have to say the only better book I've read that attempted to touch all the cruising bases was Beth A. Leonard's hulking The Voyager's Handbook, which I reviewed below some time ago.

So, Calder has currency still in his favour. He also has a good handle on the tyranny of convenience: Today’s boats, or older boats being renovated to today’s standards, paradoxically require more of the sailor technically than any recreational boat of even 20 years ago. Today’s boats have powerful diesels, computers, electric heads, pumps and windlasses, radar, radios and GPS. At night, they glow like Christmas trees with cabin, navigation and anchor lights, not all sensible low-amp LEDs.. If they get too hot from the propane ovens, they can fetch a beer from the built-in fridge and flick on the air conditioning. It’s a far reach from throwing a cooler into a Tanzer 22 and heading for Kingston in 1978, but it’s the reality for many of today’s cruisers, and Calder’s “systems” approach shows how best to design, install and service the extensive wires, cables and hoses the modern cruiser requires.

It’s this focus on the cruising crew and their needs that distinguishes Calder’s book from equally good, if more generalist, manuals such as John Rousmaniere’s now venerable Annapolis Book of Seamanship. That worthy volume, now in its third or maybe fourth edition, makes, I think, a better primer for the novice sailor than Calder’s book, which takes as one of its starting points that one has actually taken a few trips in a boat and is ready to consider a longer-term commitment to the lifestyle.

Much of Calder’s commentary, for example, consists of his observations on what makes a good coastal and offshore cruiser (hint: he doesn’t think it’s the same boat). In this respect, he’s the opposite of, say, a new yacht salesman. Calder likes simple, robust, and redundant, and he’s partial to fullish keels, skegs, and cutter rigs with hank-on staysails. From a systems point of view, he’s willing to advise on how to wire a boat for all mod cons, but he’s not a fan of wide boats with a lot of beam aft. In this sense, he’s advising for the true cruiser who needs a safe boat for passagemaking, and not the sailor looking for a boat-shaped drinks patio.

Despite its pure utility as a checklist for cruisers, therefore, I found Calder’s book a compelling argument for the attributes to seek in my next boat, the one I’d like to take offshore, South, or wherever. At nearly eighty dollars Canadian, it’s a pricey manual, but there’s enough common sense and current thinking here to make it a solid addition to those heading out, or just thinking about it.

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.

Lessons from the sea for a voyaging family

The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey

By Diane Stuemer,

McClelland & Stewart Ltd.,

$37.99, 369 pp.

ISBN: 0-7710-8260-6

Available through www.nauticalmind.com and selected bookstores

If family-oriented sailing stories strike you as good Christmas reading, the late Ottawa circumnavigator Diane Stuemer’s tale of a four-year voyage around the planet in a 40-year-old steel ketch makes for solid Yuletide fare. I recently re-read a bit of this book, which I had bought when it first came out, and it's still a hell of a tale.

Herbert and Diane Stuemer, self-described as a typical suburban family with three sub-teen boys, found that the onset of middle age and Diane's brush with cancer were all the motivation they needed to uproot themselves and to follow a windborne dream.

Essentially an impulse buy for the Stuemer family, their aged 42-foot Dutch ketch , which would be renamed Northern Magic, would prove to be a sturdy, if not luxurious, home for the five-member family on their west-about passage. Before leaving, Diane Stuemer cleverly contracted with an Ottawa daily paper to provide updates on the voyage; not only did this spur enormous local interest in—and assistance for—their voyage, but it provided Stuemer with a basis for her book, the slick web site dedicated to their trip at www.northernmagic.com, and what appeared to be a burgeoning career for herself as a motivational speaker.

That career was unfortunately cut short in 2003 when Stuemer's melanoma flared up again into cancer. I saw her speak a few weeks before she died, and she was a very positive person. Her story was inspiring, but also a cautionary tale: my wife and I have, unlike herself, striven to prepare ourselves to equal and complementary skill sets and to gather diverse yacht-handling experiences. A handyman skipper like Herbert Stuemer, no matter how high his own level of skill, with kids aboard and an initially new-to-sailing wife yielded no foundation in safety for running their boat: there are hair-raising early trials that underlined this for my wife and I in big, red-ink strokes.

Diane Stuemer possessed a degree in journalism and, before becoming 'first mate' on Northern Magic, a career in advertising. Both skill sets facilitate her telling of a tale of adventure that fairly crackles off the page. Stuemer and her husband decided to world cruise essentially on impulse, and both had to muster up a great deal of enthusiasm and positive thinking to overcome some of the hurdles the seas, the vessel and the inhabitants of various ports threw at them. My heart went out in particular to Herbert Stuemer, the father and 'captain' of Northern Magic. As as a former renovator and technical teacher and all-around Mr. Fixit, he by default performed the seemingly constant repairs and adjustments needed on the old boat. I lost count of the number of times he seemed to be installing yet another rebuilt alternator upside down in the bilge during a nausea-making gale. Commendably, Stuemer isn’t shy about saying what equipment worked like a charm…and which failed miserably. As for the boat itself, old steel Dutch ketches seem a bullet-proof choice for the inexperienced sailor. As can be seen on this blog's boat rebuilding sister, The World Encompassed, I took some of those ideas of "pilothouse" and "steel" to heart when we bought Alchemy, our steel pilothhouse cutter, in 2006. All credit to Northern Magic on that score.

Speaking of equipment issues, it’s interesting to compare the Stuemers’ story with a similar one from 15 years further in the past: the voyage of Paul Howard and Fiona McCall’s Lorcha. As told in two popular books from the ‘80s, the circumnavigation of Lorcha seemed by contrast to the Stuemers to be more relaxed, possibly because of the greater experience of the sailing couple, and probably because the earlier boat’s most complex gear was a SatNav. Northern Magic, due to Diane Stuemer’s journalistic needs and the requirements to keep the kids occupied with electrons, featured laptops and e-mail, radar and GPS and a lot of gear not available to or generally desired by the smaller boat and crew of Lorcha a mere 15 years earlier.

Another difference between the '80s and our new century is that it’s a nastier world for cruisers these days and wasn't that different at the turn of the millennium. Stuemer relates problems with bureaucracy-mad officials, pirates in the Red Sea, and even an unwanted, ring-side seat to Al Qaeda terrorism. On the plus side, however, Stuemer found her family becoming gradually involved in the often impoverished lives of the folk they met. This has led to the long-term support of orangutan habitat preservation in Borneo, and paying for the education of some young people in Kenya. This is the best part of Stuemer’s narrative, in my opinion: how cruising eventually took her away from her own concerns and gave her a broader view of the world, one in which even a limited effort could make a great difference. That alone takes this tale well beyond tourism.

One from the history books

Time's a funny thing. In August of 1979, I was a week past my 18th birthday, and while I had an ex-sailor as a father, I harboured no ambitions I can recall (pun intended) to set off to sea and, if not to challenge the elements, to accommodate them without killing myself or the family I had yet to acquire.

Last year, I met John Rousmaniere, an American sailor with a French name known for sailing in the notorious 1979 Fastnet race that killed 15 yachtsmen, and for writing the widely consulted Annapolis Book of Seamanship, now in its 3rd edition.

I met Rousmaniere at a 2010 Safety at Sea seminar I wanted to take to consolidate my safety knowledge after having a testing, if educational, heavy weather delivery in 2009 in the Atlantic. I found him a pretty sober and down-to-earth speaker, who freely admitted that after a lifetime of sailing, he didn't have all the answers, but the answers he did have might prove broadly useful.

I found myself thinking that while reading his now-"classic" work, Fastnet, Force 10. Rousmaniere sailed in that race, but on a relatively large boat and in somewhat less fierce conditions than who was faced by the IOR-design rule 35 footers. His was a challenging race, but neither a fatal one, nor one from which he required rescue in appalling, washing-machine conditions of a full gale (50-60 knots or more) coming in hard and fast over shoaling waters inbetween Ireland and Britain, an area known as the Western Approaches.

For those not familar with the Fastnet race, it is a biannual, roughly 600 mile beat (usually) from the more southerly parts of England to a designed rock off the southwest coast of Ireland and back. While not particularly long in terms of ocean racing, it has been noted as challenging and very competitive, and has a certain prestige that has attracted sailors from the pro ranks down to the weekender. Several qualifying races are required, but in 1979, the level of aptitude could charitably be described as variable, as were the presence of two-way radios and other safety gear aboard. As Rousmaniere notes, a certain gung-ho attitude prevailed, and valour sometimes trumped discretion once the story of the explosive and tight low-pressure system that dealt so much death in the Celtic Sea became known.

Earlier, I referred to Fastnet, Force 10 as a "classic". I use quotes not only because John Rousmaniere himself is neither dead nor, to my knowledge, has ceased to sail, but rather because so many other important works of sailing in the last 30 years refer to or quote from, this book. It is important and relevant because it relates a specific story (the tragedy falling on a crowded race of yachts small and large from random and indifferent Nature) to a general human tendency to sometime choose to persist in an action in the face of increasing danger. While Rousmaniere relates some tales of pure bad luck, in which experienced sailors were killed largely not via their sensible and prudent actions, but through hard chance, he also points out situations in which staying with a half-sunken boat may have been the wiser course than was launching a life raft (some of which proved inadequate or faulty) into a very confused sea. Given the attrition rates of certain boat designs (the IOR rule was prevalent at the time, with its flat bottoms and pinched ends and skegless rudders), the rules were altered to beef up certain classes, although it remains unclear if any boat could have continued in one piece in some of the extreme conditions this Fastnet race encountered.

Nonetheless, and unlike some at the time who didn't sail the race, Rousmaniere does not judge, because he did not face the very stark choices before some of the crews that found themselves half-awash, dismasted and with injured crew, watching breaking seas approach from several directions. (Sincerely, this book, like many of its similar "boat race goes bad" progeny, made me quite tense at times, but I hope to learn from the experience!).

Speaking of progeny, Fastnet, Force 10 is the granddaddy of some similar works, such as A Voyage for Madmen, the story of the 1968 solo round-the-world boat race, and Fatal Storm, about the 1998 Sydney-Hobart race, another legendarily rough passage about the same distance as the Fastnet. I have also read, and alternated enjoyment with shuddering, the very good Rescue in the Pacific, about the 1994 "Queen's Birthday Storm", a well-described if poorly predicted "weather bomb" that fatally smacked participants in a New Zealand to Fiji ocean race.

Rousmaniere was arguably the start of the modern post-race "bad storm" narrative, and his book still holds up. I am just surprised it took me this long to read it. And lest you think me a touch morbid in having read so many tragedy-at-sea stories, I must convey that I learn a great deal about everyday sailing from these books, and how much of survival at sea is less to do with the boat and the gear (although both in failure mode can be very challenging indeed), but with experience, mental attitude and flexibility. Yacht racing is a wonderful sport that few have the drive, skill and sometimes deep pockets to pursue. It attracts a "type", frequently a very driven, self-actualized personality that enjoys a bit of conquering now and then, particularly if it's the elements that need to be shown who's boss.

It goes without saying that "the elements" will provide an unshriven burial at sea at unpredictable intervals to even the most confident Master of the Universe and that turning back or heaving to or even running back to England might have been the prudent choice. Many did, and unfortunately, we barely hear from them, the "retirees", some of whom might have provided insight as to at what point you decide to let the sea have this round. Still, an exciting and relevant story I was glad to read.

A tale to tug at the heartstrings

Most Canadians are familiar with the work of Farley Mowat, a populist historian and tale-spinner whose fictional, historical and reportage work featured in my school days, and likely many others. Americans and other foreigners may know of him from the films Never Cry Wolf and Lost in the Barrens.


I thought I was pretty familiar with his books, but I recently stumbled upon an early (1958) non-fiction entry of fairly specific nautical interest called The Grey Seas Under: The Perilous Rescue Missions of a North Atlantic Salvage Tug. "Perilous" is somewhat of an undersell; the ice-crusted, gale-lashed, and eventually U-Boat infested voyages of Foundation Franklin, an ocean-going salvage tug powered by steam and the near-infinite capacity for hardship of her various crew make for exciting page-turning. Part of this is because Mowat vividly brings to life the desperate poverty of the Great Depression in maritime Canada. The purchase of Foundation Franklin, originally built in 1918 as a Royal Navy tug intended to tow damaged destroyers to safe harbours, but superannuated by peace, gave the Foundation Company of Canada a new trade as ocean salvors, a dangerous but potentially lucrative sideline to dredging and running harbour tugs.

Once refurbished, Franklin had a less than stellar early career, as there was no real tradition of ocean salvage in Canada, and her skippers and crew had to learn on the job after many failures, some harrowing. Soon enough, however, it was Franklin that would venture out in the most appalling conditions to expertly lay messenger lines over the bows of disabled and sometimes actively sinking ships, and would, under threat of fuel exhaustion and with no hope of others rescuing them, get the ships back to Halifax or St. John's.

The salvage business is legalistic and highly competitive. Salvors have specific rights and duties, but the actual process was, in the days before easy radio communications and navigational beacons, also highly speculative. A disabled ship could issue an SOS, but might refuse to take a tow if the salvage tug could even locate them. Locating a drifting ship was a black art of the salvage skippers, who might have a rough bearing to go by thanks to primitive radio direction finding...but only if the ships afflicted could themselves continue to transmit. Some American ships wanted American tugs to take them to American ports, even when this course layered on extra hazards. Others would decline to take a tow because of the contractual obligation. Some ships were able to fix their problems and did not need assistance, leading to a wasted trip and tons of coal burnt for nothing. Others would simply disappear beneath the waves before the tug could arrive.

The Second World War brought added drama. The German subs were everywhere in the first years, and defence against them was weak at first. The tug itself was a legitimate target, but Franklin, despite some very close calls, still managed to bring dozens of ships with vital fuels, foods and war materials back to port. The job was so rough, it became hard to attract crews: overtime and regular meals in a nice, warm war factory must have seemed better than sidling up to out-of-control freighters in 25-foot seas and 80 knot storms.

The fact that I knew very little of this story is particularly poignant to me as my late father was a teenager in the British Merchant Marine during this time and it is quite likely that some of the ships damaged by enemy action or disabled by terrible storms were taken in tow by this little if powerful and hardy vessel. The role of the Merchant Marines of Britain, Canada, the U.S. and Norway is not nearly as venerated as is the role of the fighting forces, and yet to my mind, it takes greater nerve to crew on a single-hulled tanker filled with aviation fuel through the U-Boat "wolfpacks" than it did for large proportions of the armed forces, who, after all, may have served proudly without ever getting near the front.

So the story of the salvage tugs that saved these ships and their crews is perhaps doubly unknown, and at the time of this writing, May 8, 2011, the 66th anniversary of the allied victory in Europe, it seems fitting that Farley Mowat wrote such a fabulous and inspiring account of men who worked through the entire war as more or less sitting ducks, and yet did not hesitate to venture out in service to others. This review also notes that Mr. Mowat is still with us and still writing, and this week will celebrate his 90th birthday. My wife's grandmother died last year at age 93, would occasionally mention Mr. Mowat as she was his babysitter around the year that Foundation Franklin came to Canada for a long and eventful career. Small world, but I'd hate to take it under tow.

Highly recommended if you can find it.

Beyond the Coral Sea: Blink and you'll miss the past

Perhaps the biggest gap in our plans to circumnavigate in the next few years is located in the south-west Pacific, the quite bloody large area between the teeming hordes of Indonesia and the "same but different" country/continent of Australia. Traveller and author Michael Moran's Beyond the Coral Sea: Travels in the Old Empires of the Southwest Pacific remedies this somewhat, or rather gives me a taste for going to the islands around and to the east of Papua New Guinea that I didn't know I had.

Think "tropical island paradise" and most Westerners think of Polynesia. Movies, TV and tales of HMS Bounty have inculcated a sense of flowers, bare-breasted young women free with their favours, and a life of leisure in which one might be roused to husk a coconut or spear a fish. Less prevalent is the idea of cannibalism, obscure magical rites and "the blackest people on Earth".

Welcome to the Solomon Islands, friend.

Moran describes Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the various Solomon, Bismarck and Trobriand Islands as the last frontier of European exploration and, inevitably, exploitation, and he's not wrong. The Melanesian cultures, almost immeasurably variable and yet seemingly linked in ways designed to appal the most imperialistic Eurocrat, proved an obdurate nut to crack for the cadres of missionaries sent to civilise and/or Christianize the locals, but this didn't deter the Germans, the Dutch, the British and finally the Australians for trying. The Japanese had a brief, destructive run during the '40s, but they didn't treat the Melanesians any better, and in some ways, considerably worse. The history of the constantly volcanic island of Rabaul encapsulates a place that not only saw outsiders in residence, but at war. The lava ate most of their works, anyway. Only crazy Aussies remain.

Just the history of "first contact" of PNG's vast coastline could make a book of itself alone: Being a "final frontier" attracted a passel of eccentric characters probably unsuitable for polite company in 19th century Europe and yet made a home (unless they dropped dead of fever or were eaten) in the very wild wilds of PNG's coast and interior...an interior, as Moran points out, still not entirely explored even today.

As the author relates with frequent ironic or funny asides, the cannibalism and pro-sex attitudes of Melanesia's array of tribes and linguistic groups were charted for a prurient Western audience by pioneering anthrologists like Bronisław Malinowski, who didn't necessarily get it right, but by bothering to live there at all with an eye not blinded by Western religion and mores, perhaps eased the transition of Melanesia into the world community simply by writing non-judgementally about it. Moran's relation of PNG's speech is most fascinating to a language buff like myself. The use of "pidgin" is everywhere: a creole language elevated to a lingua franca due to PNG's incredible diversity of native tongues, none of which have more than regional influence, it seems.

PNG and its islands are a new (1975) and sometimes uncertain country and Moran wonders if Western notions of democracy and governance can work there. So do many of the citizens, some of which question the existence of a Western form of governance in an arguably artificial nation made from bits that only colonialism has put in common. Nonetheless, PNG needs some collective voice, if only to regulate its continuing exploitation of its myriad natural resources by the nominally "civilized" world.

Moran observes that the slow dissolving of tribal ties cannot be said to be entirely positive, and the durable heathenism of old just doesn't have the juice of missionary worldviews, even as it persists in some places in a sort of synthetic fashion. Still, Moran finds hope on distant, coral-sand shores, along with beautiful, friendly people seldom visited not only by "outsiders", but by other PNGers in such a rugged, widely scattered landscape. Visitors will get there, but don't expect either Western adherence to timetables or safety standards in the (likely protracted) process.

A great introduction to a rich and imperfectly appreciated part of the world, Beyond the Coral Sea gets my strong recommendation.

Half Moon not half bad

Before becoming the world's most famous historical castaway after William Bligh, English explorer Henry Hudson was known as a bit of a bad boy. He would work for the highest bidder, but then would use their ships, gear and men to sail wherever he felt, presumably utilizing his orders for the 17th century version of toilet paper or perhaps as firestarter.

Like his rough contemporaries Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, Hudson was "results-oriented", naturally cagey about his plans, loath to commit much to writing and usually had three or four contrasting agendas in play. Plan B for this fellow was to keep mum about the rest of the alphabet, each letter of which signified yet another exit strategy.

As we learn in Ontario sailor Douglas Hunter's Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage that Redrew the Map of the World, Hudson was a rogue, but not particularly lovable. He was, however, very good at picking up the fragments of information that circulated among the small cadre of skipper/explorers/freebooters who regularly visited the imperfectly known shores of North America, where overlapping claims and failed colonies did not dissuade those merchants eager to exploit its unestimated riches (and perhaps find a good source of slaves). Better yet, the various inland rivers from Virginia to Greenland might be the fabled Northwest Passage to China, of which considerably more was known and lusted after.

Unfortunately, Hudson's voyage to the river that today bears his name, and to the complicated harbour of today's New York City, is not well documented, and the author's original research, culled from second-hand accounts, Dutch mercantile writings and painstaking research of long-outdated sailor's charts, gives a sketchy if probable outline of where Hudson's small ship, Half Moon, and largely Dutch (and rebellious) crew touched and, after a fashion, explored.

The history is therefore naturally couched in "likelies", "perhapses" and "probablies", but this is not to be faulted. Hudson seemed a cagey, secretive sort, and as his stock-in-trade was less native trade goods and more raw information no one European knew, it is inevitable that four centuries have obscured his accomplishments. More well known, however, is the clashes his crew had with native North Americans, and how their presence led to large-scale disruptions of the social order, as well as the better-known effects of European diseases.

Within a couple of decades after Hudson's death at the hands of his own crew in the frosty bay named after him (which happened a mere two years after his probing of the Hudson River at Manhattan and beyond), the area now known as New York City would be established as a Dutch outpost, and later as an English city. Hudson had, very likely, no concept of how his attempt to find the right Northwest Passage would play out, but thanks to this book, we do.

Making a list, checking it twice

Sailing folk are notorious for making lists. Spares, provisions, waypoints, litres used, litres not used (see "liquor consumption"): It's all grist for the methodical sort of mind associated with sailing. It's also emblematic of the aging mind most typical of the cruising set: There comes a point in life, well before one is truly senile, when in order to remember something new, like the code for the critical filter you have to acquire for that...thing...that needs the critical filter, you have to forget some older, arguably less important factoid.

You just hope it's the name of your Grade Two teacher and not how to tie a rolling hitch to snub off a flaying rode.

Someone who appears to have remembered more than me is Beth A. Leonard, who with her life partner Evans Starzinger, has sailed capably around 100,000 NM in what must be approaching 20 years of ocean sailing. She's done it in two boats, a Shannon 37 called Silk, and an aluminum Van de Stadt 47 called Hawk. Both can be considered "nice boats", but are rather different just as our classic plastic sloop is rather different from our steel pilothouse cutter. The couple have an extensive web presence here, so I'll quit with the biography and make with the book review.

Leonard appears to have used the long passages to make notes about nearly every aspect of passagemaking in smaller (under 50 feet) yachts. She delves into the psychology of the successful cruiser, "successful" here implying an enjoyment of the sometimes frill-free lifestyle in a manner not endangering the self or others. Healthcare, watering and feeding of the crew is also covered in details that might not occur to the more casual sailor, such as "keep your own water bottle filled and drained twice in a day and don't share its germs". Medical issues are discussed (perhaps even some related to bottle-sharing), as is the reality of foreign bureaucracies, i.e. when to bribe, who and why it might be a good idea.

She has some great, rarely seen analyses of the true expense of acquiring, fitting out and cruising on yachts (in my ongoing experience, three different and not closely related cost centres) geared to different levels of equipment, luxury and convenience. This is the part (along with the seamanship tips, which I read like it's the wisdom of the boudoir) I really enjoyed: You can extrapolate the numbers in whatever edition you find (I have the 2nd edition) to whatever national currency and/or state of inflation you are trying to flee, but I found the examples of the "budget", "typical" and "high-end" cruisers' budgets to be close to what I read on the blogs, and close to what my current fitting-out expenses are.

If nothing else, those considering the cruising lifestyle could use Leonard's book to test-drive their economic assumptions, as well as their opinions on the level of seamanship required.

Speaking of which, Leonard and Starzinger are quite happy to avail themselves of the armoury of communications and navigational aids geared for cruisers. Seamanship to them appears to be a combination of prudence and familiarity with a variety of "inputs" in order to make the least hazardous decisions. The book is filled not only with their opinions on what works and what doesn't, but "case studies" and surveys from the wider cruising community on what device, technique or habit paid dividends...and which have not. Caveat sailor, I guess. Were I a windvane maker, for instance, I would hand Leonard a plaque, or maybe a free windvane.

The Voyager's Handbook is rightly praised as a "must-have" on the shelves of many a cruising boat and I have to concur: It's coming along not only as an aide-memoire, but as a compendium of nautical tips and ways to think about living aboard in safety and good humour. You can argue that Leonard and her man may not be the best sailors on the oceans, but you would be hard-pressed to find ones who seem to have thought about all aspects of the undertaking. And thus it makes this list.

Planning for the worst via a good read

A good boating buddy of mine, David George, gave me this book as a present a few years back, and coincidentally, I received another copy when I took a Safety at Sea course in 2010. I noticed that despite its 2003 publishing date, and the fact it's still pretty relevant, this book has been remaindered at my local nautically themed bookshop (see here), and so it's certainly cheap to acquire.

Written by Chris Beeson, a professional sailor and journalist, The Handbook of Survival at Sea combines clear illustrations and no-nonsense prose into a very good reference book most distance sailors should consider carrying. Frankly, most distance sailors should already know most of this stuff, or they risk themselves and others by their ignorance, but that is just the previous post soaking into this one.

Beeson assumes that your boat has gone and you've taken to dinghy or (more likely) a lift raft. His focus is less on getting somewhere than it is on maintaining health and attitude long enough be found. As was seen in the sinking of the S/V Concordia (which sank just over a year ago from this post), it was a triumph of training over sudden misadventure that everyone aboard got into the rafts, but even 40 hours on the ocean made for depression, salt sores, exhaustion and lethargy. Attitude, inventiveness and fitness are key, says Beeson in his book, and some of the tales of long survivals at sea were based on this inner fortitude. Today, of course, it's the rare sailor that doesn't carry an EPIRB or even a satphone into the raft, but that doesn't mean it will work, or, as has been known to happen, that the various search and rescue (SAR) services will be able to co-ordinate your recovery in a timely fashion.

In addition, there are still many places in the world beyond the ability of rescue helicopters or planes to reach, and seeing a raft from a ship (which may have to divert hundreds of miles to attempt to see what is in essence a speck on the ocean) may not go off well on the first tries. You may be adrift for some time in a very hostile environment, and so Beeson gives descriptions of supplies, tools and gear to consider bringing, such as medical kits, fishing gear and how to ration vital things like water, and how to collect fresh water via condensation at sea. He breaks down the book into "coastal" (where more accidents happen due to the number of sailor and, perhaps, their relative level of experience), and "offshore", where the better-prepared sailor may nonetheless spend a longer time prior to rescue.

Fishing, obviously, is one way to keep occupied, particularly as the food brought into the raft is exhausted. Care is needed using hooks and improvised spears on a rubber liftraft, obviously, and Beeson spends a lot of time explaining how to manage this, how to handle larger catches and when and why a fish would not be good to eat. Attracting rescue is discussed (again, flares in a raft can be hazardous!), as it the possibility and the dangers of self-rescue, in which a liferaft is cast ashore, but far from habitation or aid. Something I knew, for instance, but hadn't integrated into my "mental survival kit" was that if you can spy a creek or river emerging from an otherwise coral reef-strewn shore, make for it, because corals won't grow in fresh water, i.e. no reef there to cut your raft to ribbons. Small stuff, to be sure, but a measure of how the book logically tackles possible real-life contigencies.

In many ways, this book reminded me strongly of one a fair bit older, Survive Anywhere Safely. Written by a British former commando, it's a compendium of survival techniques in nearly every environment that not only assumes that you won't be rescued right away, but that it would be a bit of a letdown if you hadn't built a condo out of twigs, skins and skulls by the time you were.

Survival At Sea, being a more recent book, is more focused and likely more relevant. I can't recall any situation in which advice on how to remove a pinned arm with a penknife was given, but nonetheless I endorse this book (particularly as it's now in overstock) as a way to sensibly prepare one's safety gear, survival supplies and oneself should you have to step up into your raft from a deck awash with the sea.

Black Wave: Leaving seamanship in the dark

Captain's library log, January 3, 2011: I am 3/4ths of the way through their book Black Wave (it's remaindered in paperback), and rarely have I cycled from anger to sympathy so quickly. I haven't sailed these waters (although we intend to), but even I know that they are incompletely charted, sometimes inaccurately charted, and that a watch and loads of offing should be maintained at all times. Not just for the reasons of reef avoidance, but because I imagine that storms regularly blow shallowly rooted palm trees into the ocean. Hitting one could ruin your whole day.

January 4, 2011: Ah, a variant on the old saying, "if you can't be a good example, you'll have to be a horrible warning". The gory, god-ridden saga of Black Wave continues, although I am not finding it restful.

There does seem to be a divide between the cruisers/voyagers who rarely have problems (and if they do, they are largely resolved by the skipper and crew without a lot of shouting) and those for whom sailing is lurching from one crisis to another, spewing money and unhappiness like ladled chum into hungry waters.

But a silver lining? Nobody comes to sailing with a lifetime of shoreside competence and rationality only to lose it upon weighing anchor. People lacking in the qualities ocean sailing demands merely transfer that lack from dry land to salt water. I'm not saying that is necessarily the case here; the skipper "grew up on boats" and seems to work the sails and helm properly. But there are many instances where he seems defeated by the boat's engines and balky gensets, electronics, etc. and has to pay others...heavily...to fix them...poorly.

This wouldn't be the first instance of a "1970s sailor", who is well able to work with consummate skill a Windex, the winches, the Whale Gusher and the compass on a 30-foot coastal sailboat, being defeated by the intimate and extensive technical knowledge required to understand, never mind maintain, a much larger, far more tricked-out modern cruiser. I myself am still making that transition, and am concluding that the Luddites were onto something, despite the fact that I am conversant with many technologies and generally don't require help to get past the welcome screen.

So it's possible that Black Wave's boat-show-bought radar wasn't on because it didn't occur to anyone aboard to turn it on...or how, once on, the guard function wasn't activated, or the XTE function on the GPS worked, or even how to run a simple plot that would have revealed a fatal drift into danger.

Maybe they'll be an answer in the last part of the book, but so far, it's comparing their wreck to that of a brigantine 150 years ago that stranded in practically the same spot, a comparison I find specious at best. If that known reef is so goddamned sneaky and barely visible, why run so close and at such a speed, at night? Is this the family version of Rule 62?

January 5, 2011: Still doesn't really explain why no radar, no deck watch, no generous offing.

I finished the book last night. The last section is somewhat better than the first, but it's still more drama than sense.

January 6, 2011: Getting into debates in online forums about this book, which some sailors find "inspirational" in a way I find inexplicable. I am coming to the conclusion that for every Luddite skipper who figures Morse code, signal flags and the ability to tie a sheepshank will see him through (and not all of these people are necessarily old; some are "purists" and/or hopelessly romantic), there are others who see sailing as a big video game with somewhat more sunshine and fresh air.

Tying in the autopilot to the GPS...while convenient...is certainly symptomatic of this, as we see more and more frequently bad accidents from either failing to notice something isn't working, exhibiting too much faith in charts either in error or outdated, and simply failing to look around the boat.

The result? Boats come to rest on the piers built last year that simply aren't noted on that bargain circa 2007 chart collection you traded for a bottle of rum at the last raft-up. Your course is west in the afternoon, and yet the absence of the sun in your face and the old magnetic compass you haven't bothered to swing and which is reporting "90 degrees" goes unnoticed, because the NavNet says "270 W" in large, daylight-visible screen font. And the NavNet cost four grand and is even in "3D", like Avatar, so it must be right...right?

So we are like chimps confronted with common hand-tools and delicious nuts to crack. The old chimps just keep biting, because that used to work when their teeth were better and more numerous. Other chimps waste time and cut themselves using screwdrivers and hacksaw blades. Only the chimps who have used the right-sized rocks are going to figure out that a hammer is a right-sized rock with a lever attached.

The trouble is, of course, that either the old salts or the electronics-addled new sailors might both need rescuing from their lifestyle choices by the competent sailor who understands his tools and the limitations of those tools. If I put an Autohelm and a GPS in your car, and a few actuators, would you leave the driver's seat and have a nap in the back? And yet this is perhaps one answer to what happened to Emerald Jane, the honking big cat destroyed in Black Wave (why does the title imply they were flipped in the ocean? They were crunched on a reef they hit near full speed. "Black wave" of nausea, perhaps, because all this was avoidable.).

I just spent an hour devising a fuel polishing system with my diesel dealer this morning with exactly this in mind. He asked why I was installing a FilterBoss and separately filtered cross-transfer pump and Baja filters at the deck fills, and various other amenities, like running all tank vents to goosenecks high on the cabin, for offshore work. I said that a wise sailor once noted that contaminated fuel caused engine problems One, Two and Three in his experience, and the diesel dealer agreed that he found this all too often, as well. I said that with 50 feet of fuel hose, I could offer "Remedial Raft-ups", do fuel polishing for other cruisers, and thereby barter for the things we needed. He said that given the lack of knowledge with which some cruisers go to sea, ideas like that could pay for the trip!

Back to Black Wave: The book is also sloppily edited and the wife does most of the telling in ways that annoy the sailors in the audience, such as calling stays and shrouds "lines" and repeatedly describing the height of the mast as "eight stories", (should be, of course, "storeys") instead of in feet or metres.

I haven't finished it, but I don't expect to find the words "I should have kept a watch instead of dicking around with the gooseneck" or "I should have hove to/set a sea anchor/noted drift". There's a lot here that's reasonable about family tensions, but the skipper is described as a recovering alcoholic who dewagons on the first part of the trip, and who seems to have difficulty with focusing his concentration.

Perhaps he didn't think about how fast a cat could close with an atoll?

Didn't mean for this to be a book review (but now it is a book review, of the "stay away" variety), but this tragic tale got on my nerves. The story of the 1994 Queen's Birthday weather bomb, by contrast, provided a lot of good survival tips and frankly, a lot less "shallow waters".

January 23, 2011: It's been two weeks of quite cold winter weather. The Boat Show came and went, with lots of nautically themed tumblers for sale and not a lot of safety gear...par for the course. I find myself still pondering Black Wave. This book made me quite annoyed. Like howling in exasperation and chucking it across the room annoyed. I only recommend it to people who enjoy the sight of head-on crashes with drunken driving as the cause. It inspired me to always keep a deck watch...so I can avoid auto-piloted boats in the loosely charted South Pacific who pick sunset as a good time for everyone to go below and watch a movie.

These people lived IN SPITE of what happened to them. I finished this book two weeks ago, and my feelings have hardened even more, and I found the whole "drama" aspect to be written with an eye to securing a movie deal. Also, as an aside, prayer is no substitute for seamanship.

I hope the authors learned something. I did, but it wasn't really a good thing.

The line on the *first* "Great War"

Like many a social sailor, I've long had a fascination for the professionals, whether they be the fighting Jack Tars of the Napoleonic era, or even today's merchant navy personnel, who, like my late father in World War II, seem to once again in many places be facing violence to their ships and their livelihoods.

Having devoured a few shelves of Kent, O'Brien, Forester and that ilk, I feel a particular fondness for books that deal with the over two decades of worldwide struggle between France's revolutionary and subsequently Napoleonic rulership and Britain's tottering establishment in concert with a series of "subsidised" and often defeated allies in Continental Europe. South African-born Canadian journalist Noel Mostert has done a remarkable job with The Line Upon a Wind (sample pages here) in both contextualizing and deepening a story I thought I knew: how the Royal Navy flirted with the odds, mutiny and the incompetence of many senior officers to keep Napoleon from utterly dominating Europe. Mostert, who states that contemporaries referred to the 22-year struggle as "the Great War" (something I didn't know, having always heard that term reserved for World War I), finds much to admire with the British navy, and much to condemn in its brutal discipline, its stale tactics, its sanctioned jealousies and its almost institutional arrogance, particularly after the victory of Trafalgar essentially finished "big ship actions" and proved that the way forward was in smaller, more nimble frigates.

Mostert relates, not entirely without relish, how it took a fairly one-sided thumping from an enemy...the United States...considered not very seriously when considered at all to realize that a fighting spirit, easy access to the grog and the finest collection of sea shanties would not, in fact, beat sailors as good as the British fighting in newer, technically superior ships. Time and again Mostert reminds his readers how much the British success (which was by no means consistent or properly exploited) was bought with men's lives, men who spent literally years at sea without stepping ashore, men who, inevitably, mutinied or deserted, even to the French, to escape lives too miserable for the Admiralty to generally acknowledge, never mind remedy. The connection between the appalling conditions and capricious commands aboard and the high rate of desertion in the Royal Navy was not easily established until, it seems, near the end of the war, and even then, "tradition" held too many official attitudes in thrall to the legacy of the "Articles of War".

Mostert's doorstopper shines light into corners less known: the run-up to war, the rapidly changing economics that fattened merchant pockets as it bankrupted governments, and the chaotic inability of the Jacobins to use their better ships using new tactics...proving, as did Stalin, that killing a large part of your military officer class tends to strangle initiative. His Canadian background comes through with a focus on the "War of 1812" when the lakes I sail on were the scene of a forest-backed arms race to get ever larger warships built on stretches of water without today's locks to move them up or down the chain. "Fleet actions" on Lake Ontario were intense, but brief; neither side could dare alter the balance of power when one hundred soldier in front of the right isolated fort could secure Spain-sized chunks of wilderness, along with varying numbers of native allies or enemies.

Best of all, here, however, is not just the focus on battles and tactics, but the perceptive takes on the personalities that the Royal Navy nurtured, sometimes in spite of itself. Nelson and Napoleon are seen, even after Nelson's almost inevitable death in 1805, as brothers in spirit while enemies in arms, and receive a lot of attention. Less well-known names, however, like Codrington and Hoste, get a full discussion, and their inventiveness and daring became a hallmark of why the British prevailed in this conflict despite, as the author lists, a daunting number of reasons why they should have fallen before old Boney like millions did before them.

This is a great companion piece to Arthur Herman's 2004 brick To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, but simply isn't quite as well written and cannot, due to the far greater time span covered, drill down so exquisitely into the pulp of why Britain with its rotating cast of semi-competent politicians and mad/bad royalty, its dubious financing and alliances and its frequently compromised ships kept the French bottled up in their ports, like furious bottled wasps unable to wield their stingers. Very much recommended.