Beach Haven

​Bibliography
O'Brian, Patrick. 1973. H.M.S. Surprise. New York & London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Review by Michael Beach 

This book is the third in the series written by Patrick O’Brian centered on the British naval officer Jack Aubrey and his friend and ship’s doctor, Stephen Maturin. The series is set during the Napoleonic Wars when British and French warships often battled. My first introduction to this series was through the moving Master and Commander starring Russell Crowe. A work friend of mine gifted me the first two novels and I decided to continue the series.

As one might expect, this story is a continuation from the other two which I have already written reviews on here https://bhaven.org/reviews/master-commander
and here https://bhaven.org/reviews/post-captain.

This point of the longer story begins with Aubrey temporarily in command of HMS Lively. He is assigned to escort duty. The crew is less practiced than he would have hoped, but he manages to use them to sneak ashore to a Spanish fort on the island of Minorca and rescue Stephen who is imprisoned there. They go on to engage French ships with victorious effect. The permanent commander returns, and Aubrey’s career is left adrift.

The middle of the book returns focus to his romance with Sophie Williams to whom he proposes marriage. She accepts, but her widowed mother is not supportive since he has a fair amount of debt and an uncertain naval future. Jack has his own internal conflicts on this problem and is always finding ways to dodge creditors. Jack’s accomplice Stephen has his own love entanglement in an on-again off-again affair with a widow Diana Villiers who is also friends with Sophie.

Eventually the book puts Jack back in charge of a ship HMS Surprise. It turns out to be the ship he had served on many years before as a young midshipman. He fixes it up and sails for India on assignment. There are a number of close calls with ocean storms, doldrums, sickness, and times of low provisions for the crew. The result is a battered ship and crew when they get to India. Jack not only fixes the ship and provisions it, but in the process makes many improvements to the hull and masts. While in India, Stephen meets up with his love interest, Diana Villiers. They have some intrigue and adventures in several parts of India. They agree to meet in Madeira on their way home after the ship’s tour there. Diana also agrees to encourage Sophie to join Jack there. Before heading home to England, there is a substantial battle between the Surprise along with some less experienced warships manned by sailors from India. They are escorting a large convoy of merchant ships and come under attack by a number of French navy ships. A battle ensues and the British are victorious. Jack is the main hero and as a result receives a sizeable reward, enough to pay off his creditors and marry Sophie.

After another batch of repairs to the Surprise resulting from the battle, they sail home stopping at Madeira as planned. Unfortunately for Stephen, his relationship with Diana is off-again. She left word that she has married a wealthy merchant and they have gone to America. Jack initially has no word from Sophie, but at last they come together and resume their romance. Sophie is sure her mother will accept Jack after his turn of fortune.

As with the other O’Brian books, the writing is very engaging and he clearly knows his nautical and naval language. The details can be a bit hard to follow during the heated battles, even for someone like me with some experience sailing, but the reader is not lost. This book had less emphasis on the romance than the second book had and more on battles and expeditions into India jungles. From that perspective the balance was better from my point of view. 

​Bibliography
Fairhead, James. 2015. The Captain and "The Cannibal": An Epic Story of Exploration, Kidnapping, and the Broadway Stage. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

Review by Michael Beach

This is a true story. It is one of self-interested exploitation and failure. Captain Benjamin Morrell was contracted by a number of financial backers to conduct profitable sea travels to the South Pacific. He failed at each, and where he did manage to bring back cargo of any value, he absconded with it for himself. The only ‘prize’ he seemed to have any success with were two natives who were captured from separate islands in skirmishes with local people. Though neither were actually cannibals. They both spoke different languages from each other. He eventually brought them back to the United States and took them on tour in costumes that had nothing to do with their native apparel. They played as dangerous headhunters.

One named Dako learned English and became more like extended family, though never free to leave on his own. Morrell eventually returned him to his own people on a later voyage which also didn’t yield profit. The other native died while on the stage tour, and he never showed any ability with English and little is documented about him. On the other hand, Fairhead is able to share a great deal about the life and thoughts of Dako. The stories floated by Captain Morrell at the time drew a lot of attention, including that of the author Herman Melville. Dako become Melville’s inspiration for Queequeg in his novel Moby Dick.

James Fairhead captures interlacing narratives of sea adventure, scoundrel character, and the clash of western colonialism with indigenous people. Settings of a professional sailing vessel, the South Pacific, London, New York and New England offer varied cultures and social norms that clash in every way possible. The work is well documented and makes for a read that pulls one in. This is one of those case where truth is stranger than fiction.
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Bibliography
​Sperry, Armstrong. 1947. Danger to Windward. New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Reviewed by Michael Beach

This was a fun tale of intrigue and seafaring adventure. A girl from Nantucket married someone who was not from there. This resulted in estrangement from her family, in particular her father who was a whaling captain. Years pass. The couple have a son, but never return to Nantucket. Toward the end of his life, her father has a change of heart and leaves all he has to his daughter, but a corrupt half brother has a lawyer draw up a fake years earlier leaving all to him. Before finding any of this out, the father, daughter, and son in law all pass away under differing circumstances, leaving their son as sole. The son is our protagonist, Hugh Dewar. There are two antagonists, his uncle Samwel Macy assisted by a crooked lawyer, and Hugh's cousin Davy Macy who took over as captain of the ship once owned by Hugh’s grandfather.

On Hugh’s side was a good lawyer who helped him learn all the circumstances, and owners of the local Nantucket pub and inn. Hugh approaches his uncle to come to terms. He is beaten and taken aboard the whaler by his cousin, there to serve under him. He was kept alive because the ship was shorthanded, but understood that once the holds were full, his life would be under threat. Much of the book is of the sailing adventures that happen after his kidnapping. He is befriended by the ship’s ‘doctor’. The two of them at some point even wreck one of the harpooning boats and a few chapters are dedicated to their experiences among islanders, some friendly and some dangerous. They are eventually ‘rescued’ by their own ship and return to work on the ship while they search for the final will written by Hugh’s grandfather.

In the end, they find the will, Davy loses his life, Hugh wins the court battles and takes ownership of the lands and ship which are now completely his. The uncle and his lawyer flee in disgrace. The story line is similar to Robert Louis Stevenson's book Kidnapped with some variations. Wherever I look online, this book is described as a young person’s novel. I enjoyed it. I guess that goes to show where my mentality lays. 
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Bibliography
Dowling, D. O. (2016). Surviving the Essex: The Afterlife of America's Most Storied Shipwreck. Lebanon NH: University Press of New England.

​Review by Michael Beach

The version of Surviving the Essex I happen to have is an uncorrected proof. I have access to some books in this condition due to where I work. The actual shipwreck of the Essex was inspiration to at least two works of literature. The ship was a whaler out of Nantucket and was sunk after colliding with, or being rammed by, a large sperm whale. The accounts of survivors varies so it’s not all that clear exactly what happened. As you no doubt guessed, the work Moby Dick by Herman Melville was a take on the real-life story. The other work examined here by David Dowling was by Edgar Allan Poe titled The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. I read both of those works many years ago, so I found the connections Dowling makes to them informative. While Melville wrote in the man-versus-nature vain, Poe’s version focused on the dark themes of death and cannibalism.

After the Essex sank, the surviving crew split into two groups. There was disagreement which direction they should take their boats to find rescue. Captain George Pollard led one group, and his first made, Owen Chase, the other. Both suffered and cannibalism was involved. The first mate blamed the captain for leaving the ship during the whale hunt. He had joined one of the harpooning boats and left the mate in charge. Others blamed the poor ship handling of the mate during the whale encounter. The captain’s version was never published. The mate published a version that put himself in a heroic light. Decades later another crew member published an account as well.

There are many books published about the events of the wreck and its immediate aftermath. This book by Dowling is not one of those. Instead he turns his attention to sociological issues. For example, there is a question about the process one boat went through to select the victim on which the others would feed. The decision was to draw straws for both the victim and who would have to do the killing. There is disputation that in Pollard’s boat, he was the shooter and the victim was his nephew. Dowling explores the numerous conflicting accounts of survivors and especially Chase’s version. He also shows some parallels in Pollard’s second ship which also sank after striking a shoal. He explores how Pollard continued to live in Nantucket and became a solid community member despite the two ship-losses. He wraps up the work examining the anthropomorphism resulting from many authors ascribing human motives to the whale involved. Not unlike ‘Bruce’ in the movie Jaws, most depict a vindictive whale bent on revenge.

​The human-element for me was in the shaping of the story by survivors to cast themselves in the best light, the selling of the story in the form of profit making books, and imposing of human motives on the whale. Case eventually also captained a number of whaling ships later, but ultimately failed in economic endeavors. Pollard became a respected citizen of Nantucket. 

O'Brian, Patrick. 1970. Master and Commander. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.
 
A friend of mine gave me this book a few Christmas seasons ago. When I saw the title, I assumed this was the book that inspired the movie starring Russell Crowe. As it turns out there is an entire series of these books by Patrick O’Brian. The movie was an adaptation of the sixth book in the series. The book I read this time is the first book in the series. The volumes are all called Master and Commander, except after this first in the series (this one I read) the rest have a subtitle. For example, the sixth book the movie was made from is Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

In this first book, Jack Aubrey is made captain of a small English naval ship called the Sophie. He meets Stephen Maturin on shore. Maturin is a medical doctor. They become friends and Aubrey talks Maturin into joining him as the ship’s doctor. Most of the book depicts a series of military exploits around the Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar, generally against French shipping. On a few occasions they go up against man-o-war vessels and conquer. They manage to rescue British and ally prisoners on some of these ships. They also attack a shore-based enemy fort.

Eventually the tide of war shifts for the Sophie when she is attacked by a larger, faster, and better armed French Frigate. The crew is captured, ransomed back to the British navy, and stand before a court-martial on Gibraltar for losing their ship to the enemy. The captain and crew are eventually found not to be responsible, but Aubrey and Maturin are left without a ship. While on Gibraltar they witness a definitive battle in the strait between British and French ships. England wins, and not long after, Napoleon loses in his land campaign in the first Napoleonic War. Suddenly many navy officers are shore-bound with an unsure future. That’s where this first book in the Aubrey saga ends.

My friend who made this book a gift to me gave me the second as well. She jokingly called the series a ‘man’s romance novel’ since they are written in a similar style, but focus on wartime action. To be sure there is some romancing by Captain Aubrey, but this is minimized. Aubrey has a fling with an old love who it turns out is the wife of a member of the admiralty. This indiscretion comes back to haunt him. He is not penalized in the court-martial toward the end of the story, but finding a new ship to command becomes elusive in the post-war era. Despite all the enemy ships he captures as prizes, his loss of the Sophie in battle becomes enough reason for him to become a former master and commander.

​LIFE AT THE EXTREME
By Rob Mundle
Nomad Press, 2006, 152 pages
Reviewed by Michael Beach
 
The work is described by its subtitle, “The Volvo Ocean Race Round the World 2005-2006.” The Volvo race documented in the book involved teams racing on 70-foot-long sailboats through all sorts of weather and sea states.
 
Through text, pictures, graphics and maps, the reader accompanies the various racing teams and their experiences. Highs and lows happen on every boat. Equipment breaks, personalities clash, team mates come and go. Sadly, one team lost a man overboard in frigid turbulent waters. By the time they pulled him back onboard he was dead.
 
The work is a story of man-versus-man combined with man-versus-nature. Despite the competition, the humanity of man also comes out. On several occasions race teams detour in order to help competitors in trouble. Ingenuity reigns as another theme. The details in planning seem only eclipsed by the invention required when the best plans fail to predict actual experience.
 

​80° NORTH
By James Austrums, Alex Blue, Kiril Dobrev, Mia Karlsson, Andy Schell
59 North Sailing, 2019, 157 pages
 
I became aware of Andy Schell through his podcast On the Wind. He and his wife, Mia Karlsson, have built a business of running off-shore, long distance sailing charters. This book is a compilation of their experience sailing one of these charters from Sweden to Svalbard, above the Arctic Circle, then back south to Portugal. They took crew including members of SV Delos, a popular YouTube program about sailing adventure.
 
Along with the written accounts of their journey, many eye-popping photographs are included. The gorgeous views of mountainous landscapes and mountainous icebergs really help the reader to gain a better perspective of the wilds of the environment.
 
The writers and photographers also do a nice job at depicting some of the realities of off-shore sailing in a demanding environment. Anxiety, near misses, some tension among crew, and periods of letting off a little steam lead the reader along with the writers’ collective experience.
 
The book is enhanced with some online drone video footage from the voyage.

​JEAN-DU-SUD AND THE MAGICK-BYRD
By Yves Gelinas
Translated by Karen Caruana
59 North, Ltd., 2017, 180 pages


 
The subscript of the title reads A Solo Round the World Voyage Through the Southern Ocean. So it is. Gelinas made his attempt to go non-stop in his sailboat name Jean-du-Sud. The Magick Byrd is about a little bird made out of folded reeds. Along the way he recorded film (this happened before small-format video cameras were available in the early 1980s) that was made into a documentary for BBC. The original was written in the author's native French language.
 
Aside from relaying his progress along the journey, Gelinas shares many detailed logistical information. He also shares the opposite end of the spectrum, his philosophical musings he came to during the experience, and later as he penned the memoir. The events culminate when heavy weather and waves rolled the boat and broke down his mast. Despite the drama and danger, Gelinas limps to the nearest port.
 
For sailors, there are very helpful suggestions and perspectives as one contemplates any sort of off-shore sail. For the adventure-minded the balance of risk and reward are well discussed. The psychological insight to a person so inexperienced with sailing at all, yet alone taking on such a challenging attempt offers insight as well.

SAILING MADE EASY
Edited by Jo Weeks
American Sailing Association, 2010, 126 pages
Reviewed by Michael Beach
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This work is the manual used by the ASA for its basic sailing class and certification. It includes sections on boat and sail parts, the physics of sailing, basic seamanship skills, rules of the road at sea, how to rescue a "MOB" or man-overboard, and the like. There are lots of helpful pictures and graphics, as well as some memorization mnemonics. Occasionally the text stops and a short review quiz is offered.

I've been sailing on and off for decades, but have recently gotten back into it more heavily than in the past. A few years ago we bought a 28.5 feet long Hunter and have enjoyed sailing around the Chesapeake Bay with it. 

Reading the book alone will not help someone learn to sail. It is designed to work as a companion to actual small boat sailing experience. Since it is the text for a training course the instructor would be taking students out for some sailing along with the academic study. The book is pretty comprehensive for a beginner to get going and feel some confidence on the water.