Landlubbers Take Note!

Review: The Bird of Dawning by John Masefield

What a gem, this is, presented at our last meeting by Brendan¹. One of my favourite genres, sea yarns. The author takes us aboard a racing tea-clipper which sinks; the survivors pass some days at sea and find a sinking abandoned tea-clipper which they save; rejoining the race, we finish with a sprint up the English Channel.

All the above is just an excuse to save some sea-lore with us.  The vocabulary is fabulous covering both sailing terms and all the amazing tools and implements to be found aboard a boat before the information age. A [incomplete] glossary is provided. Written in 1933, it deals with a period when steam was just about to replace sail. Many interesting characters are on board, showing how a life of labour and hard-grind could be an escape from a chequered past.

This one joins my pantheon of top sea-faring books and I’ll be looking out for more by Masefield.

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^{1 … though how, I’m not sure, since we were discussing books by women and neither the author nor any of the characters are female!}

Meeting of the Waters

Review: Below the Convergence: Voyages Toward Antartica 1699-1839 by Alan Gurney

Rating: 8/10

The convergence is where the warm Atlantic & Pacific oceans meet the cold Antarctic waters.  Both sea and air cool noticeably as this line is crossed.

The subtitle doesn’t do the book justice. It’s more than a set of voyages.  It’s about the strangest place on the planet, the sea below the Convergence as it was during the 18th century: huge, hostile, fecund, and teeming with life, surrounding an empty, cold, and sterile continent, the ultimate barrier at the uttermost part of the world uncrossed by man since homo sapiens began its extraordinary exodus from Africa 60,000 years before.

Resolution & Adventure         taking on ice at 60°S

It’s about explorers like Cook (who crossed the Antarctic Circle for the first time in recorded history on 17th January 1773 with two ships and over 200 men), but it’s also about a host of sealers and whalers trying to make a living (and incidentally carrying out a slaughter akin to the virtual extermination of the buffalo in North America around the same time). It’s striking how many of them died young (in their 40’s or 50’s) and penniless and often violently, their only legacy being a rocky peak emerging from a frigid sea.

It’s also about the creatures who found a niche in this unwelcoming place including seals, penguins and the graceful albatross.

Gurney writes elegantly in a rather charming style which sometimes might be called pompous.  I reached for my dictionary a number of times.  The style worked for me.  At the end I looked forward to lending it to several of the Asynchronists until I realised I left my just-finished copy on my flight from Brindisi.  Sorry guys!!

Sailing, Sea and Heroics

This is a very well written account of a most extraordinary race and the very diverse men who took part in it.

In 1968,  nobody had sailed single-handed non-stop around the world but suddenly it gripped the imagination as a thing worth doing.  Nine men set out that year onto an odyssey that would involve a traverse of the vast Southern Ocean and a rounding of Cape Horn.  Few of them were even remotely prepared – one of them had never sailed before!  Their boats were a motley collection including family cruisers and a live-aboard catamaran.

Peter Nichols gives a great account of the men themselves, the sailing and the last great “amateur” epic.  Well worth a read even if you’ve never sailed – even better if you have.