# A gem in books



## grootondermarszeil

Hey. There are probably a thousand or more books about the Square-rigged sea-going ships. Many of you have 1 to 5 books. Others may have 100 or more. Which book has impressed you the most. [no photo albums]


----------



## Duncan112

Eric Newby's "The Last Grain Race"


----------



## vic pitcher

*Books about square sail*



grootondermarszeil said:


> Hey. There are probably a thousand or more books about the Square-rigged sea-going ships. Many of you have 1 to 5 books. Others may have 100 or more. Which book has impressed you the most. [no photo albums]


My two all-time favourites: "MASTER in SAIL by Captain James Learmont
"The War with Cape Horn" Alan Villiers


----------



## Stephen J. Card

Probably one of my most useful books: SEAMANSHIP IN THE AGE OF SAIL - Harland. Without this it is hard to get a handle on all of the others!

Log of the Cutty Sark - Lubbock
Ships & Memories - Adams
Pacific Square Riggers -Adams
Square Rig Seamanship - Willowby
Deep Water Sail - Underhill
Sail Training & Cadet Ships - Underhill
The Tall Ships Pass -Derby
The Search for Speed Under Sail 1700 - 1850 Chapelle.

Square Rig and move into topsail rigs, schooners, naval vessels etc and it becomes real fun! I have not seen many what I would call 'new' books... apart from photo type books. 

Stephen


----------



## Barrie Youde

I'm with Duncan at #2 .

Eric Newby's "The Last Grain Race".

It provides an excellent insight into life before the mast in commercial square-rig sail in its dying days; and well within the lifetime of many who are still alive today. There is a general public misconception that all commercial square-rig sail came to an end with the death of Queen Victoria, if not before. Newby kills that misconception completely - and writes as a man of our own times.

Another gem is "Practical Seamanship for use in the Merchant Service, by Todd and Whall - 1898 edition."


----------



## Stephen J. Card

Barrie Youde said:


> Another gem is "Practical Seamanship for use in the Merchant Service, by Todd and Whall - 1898 edition."




Like my Manual of Seamanship by Authority of the Lords Commissioner of the Admiralty - 1923.

I do have the updated... 3 Vols but they are already 50 years old!

All of these great books are disappearing. You will find information on these books like you have mentioned only in the books, not on the www.

Stephen


----------



## Michael Taylor

Stephen....Harland's book is an excellent guide and go to it to answer the number of questions am asked on sailship matters whilst at our Museum. Last one was how to drop the Royals and Topmast.....strange what the kid on the street comes in and asks.


----------



## Dartskipper

1) The Tall Ships Pass.
2) The Last Grain Race.
3) Pacific Square Riggers.


----------



## Bill Morrison

Where do you start with one's fascination of sailing vessels. I my case it started with Basil Lubbock's Colonial Clippers which I found in the reference section of my local library followed by his novel Round The Horn Before The Mast.
I have a small collection of books that caught my attention this is two of them.


----------



## Barrie Youde

In The Heart Of The Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick is another gem.

A factual account of the sinking of the Nantucket whaleship Essex and the events which gave Herman Melville cause to write Moby Dick.


----------



## rich9591

Another fine account of whaling is 'Two Years Before The Mast' by Richard Henry Dana. Here's a link to download it. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2055


----------



## Robert Hilton

rich9591 said:


> Another fine account of whaling is 'Two Years Before The Mast' by Richard Henry Dana. Here's a link to download it. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2055


Agreed. However I remember reading a what appeared to be an autobiographical work that was on board a ship I sailed as apprentice in the 50's. I found it enthralling as it described all sorts of experiences punctuated by, "You know how it is..." and you did know. It took you through the man's whole career in sail from boy to master. The character in the book was the son of one "Driver" Lassan. I don't remember if that was also the name of the author. Another apprentice spotted that it was an autographed copy and made off with it. If anyone can identify the book from these scanty details I'd like to know.


----------



## gwzm

Me too:
Eric Newby's "The last Grain Race".
gwzm


----------



## Michael Taylor

My obsession with whaling and related matter books is getting out of control!


----------



## Martyn Robinson

Just completed Alan Villiers _Falmouth for Orders_. 
Conveys the day to day reality from the perspective of a knowledgeable participant who had great powers of observation and a gift of story telling.


----------



## stein

I wonder how to choose, I have more than a few a few books on this theme. There are technical books written as first introduction and therefore very general, and there are specialist books on every aspect of square rigger sailing - use of the sextant, laws of storms, distances and trade winds, stowage, sail making, rigging, practical seamanship and the duties of watch officers. On the keeping of discipline, and of suitable sermons, of knots and splices, and on shipbuilding theoretical and practical, laying off, dimensions, materials and on shipbuilding nomenclature, books very old and quite new, books both thin and voluminous, tomes illustrated and not. I might mention a few that will cost you a bit of money to acquire, some because of content and some because of their rarity. Some that are easily obtained in English French and German, and some that can be of interst only for the few Norwegian language users here. And I might suggest one on shipbuilding in Latin as well – although I have not read that one. However, there is a compilation of supposed excellence in pictures, poetry and stories on the theme of square sail titled "In praise of Sailors" compiled and edited by one Herbert Warden the third and published in New York for the first time in 1978. And I do not think anyone will be wholly unimpressed by this book made intently to impress the impressionable. Writers include all the big names the editor could find, such as Conrad, Masefield, Marryat, Melville, Kipling, Swinburne, Whitman and Longfellow and even a few pure sea-writers like Riesenberg, Hubert Shaw and Dana. Among the artists you will find Spurling, Brangwyn, Briscoe, Dawson, Fischer, Grant, Leavitt, Wilkinson - and a even few famous painters of dubious connection with the sea, like like Toulouse Lautrec and Zorn. ...But seriously, Conrad is always damn good! :sweat:


----------



## Bobmac

grootondermarszeil said:


> Hey. There are probably a thousand or more books about the Square-rigged sea-going ships. Many of you have 1 to 5 books. Others may have 100 or more. Which book has impressed you the most. [no photo albums]


The Brassbounder, The log of the Cutty Sark, Pamir under the Nz Flag


----------



## stein

Admiral Paris, Collection Plans ou Dessins de Navires, 3 volumes, first published in Paris in 1884. A rather wide range of ships are here delineated, but particularly complete are the French clipper sisters France et Chili, Paulista, Carioca, Petropolis and Commerce de Paris. A little less detailed, but still useful, are the plans of the iron four masted Palgrave built by Hamilton at Port Glasgow in 1884, and the steam whaler Hope of Aberdeen built 1887.

Frederik Henrik af Chapman, Architectura Navalis Mercatoria, first published in Stockholm in 1768. (I came across an original in the shop of an antiquarian once, he wanted 125 000 Norwegian crowns for it (About GBP 2500). Sadly he later cut it to pieces and sold it sheet by sheet - a crime really... But a facsimile, although not in the size of the original - which was huge - is usually available.

Jens Friis Pedersen, Sejlskibe, Kronborg 1981, 3 volumes (of which I only possess two. I bought the volumes 2 and 3 in the maritime museum at Kronborg castle sometime in the late eighties, and volume 1 was then already sold out.


----------



## stein

Modelling the brig of war "IRENE" by E. W. Petrejus, Hengelo 1970. Primarily on a brig captured from the English, but still with a lot of information on sailing ships in general. Koenigin der See, "PREUSSEN" by Horst Hamecher, Hamburg 1969. The only five masted full rigged ship ever built, in detailed drawings and with meticulous description of every voyage. Sail, by Jack Spurling and Basil Lubbock, London 1929, three volumes. (The facsimile produced after the war was made from the printed work, as the original paintings had been destroyed, and the result is not good.)


----------



## stein

Grands Voiliers Francais: 1880 - 1930, by Jean Randier, Grenoble 1964. A very fine collection of construction drawings of the French "bounty ships." 

The seventy-four Gun Ship, by Jean Boudriot, Paris 1977, four volumes. It will be hard to find something to add to the subject. The Boudriot books are expensive, but with the amount of work he puts into his monographies, he would still have to sell a lot of books to be considered well paid.

Die Grossen Segelschiffe by Walter Laas. Original edition Hamburg (?) 1907. Written when at least a few Germans still saw a future for the sailing cargo carrier. It contains, as shown in the photo, a complete rigging guide for a four poster with Jarvis winches. And that is not the only fold-out plan.


----------



## stein

I paid serious money for these.

While these facsimile editions printed in India I got for next to nothing.

A popular theme.


----------



## stein

A gem in books? These three books are rather too heavy to wear as jewellery, but they are still intended to shine, I guess. The German book is announced as a "Prachtwerk" by the publishers, and had the other two been German as well, that would be how they too would be presented. ("Pracht" does not translate well into English).

The three books are: (1) The great age of Sail, Lausanne 1967, chapters on the Victory, the USS Constitution and the Preussen. (2) In praise of Sailors, New York 1987, compilation of great authors' writings on sailors and the sea. (3) Zur See, Hildesheim 1982 (originally published in 1895), a sort of encyclopedia on ships and the seaman's life. The many xylographic ilustrations (wood engravings) have lent themselves to quite perfect reproduction. The three photos all show the same three books.


----------



## stein

Mate in Sail, written by James Gaby, illustrated with paintings by Dennis Adams, Artarmon, Australia 1974. Of which book Alan Villiers wrote: "This is that rarity, a fine looking piece of book production in every way which comes up to the same reading standards too. It is splendidly illustrated by real marine artists who obviously know their stuff as well as the author knows his, which is praise indeed..."


----------



## Michael Taylor

stein said:


> I paid serious money for these.
> 
> While these facsimile editions printed in India I got for next to nothing.
> 
> A popular theme.


Stein....I have limited myself to no more than $15 for my whale related books but once in a while splurge. How is this for $28 on Amazon Maury's Physical Geography of the Sea (A new found favourite person) but with an interesting stamp. Charles Nordhoff the author of Mutiny on the Bounty and Pitcairn. Fun to think he used my book.


----------



## stein

Yes, $ 28 is substantially less than I would expect to pay for something like that. Here is a comparison. (That book is a first edition, which would make it more expensive than yours if both were sold by the same seller. But I paid nearly as much for the first book in my #21 picture. I had then been looking for it for fifty years without coming across a single copy, so I gladly paid what was demanded. And I paid twice as much as that again for my three volumes of "Sail" by Lubbock and Spurling.)


----------



## Steve Hodges

I think I would have to go with Newby's"The Last Grain Race" as having made the most impression on me, but Villier's " By Way of Cape Horn" runs it a close second.

One day, when all of us are long, long gone, I think that humankind will have to relearn how to build and operate windships - let's hope that the knowledge will still be recorded.


----------



## dannic

grootondermarszeil said:


> Hey. There are probably a thousand or more books about the Square-rigged sea-going ships. Many of you have 1 to 5 books. Others may have 100 or more. Which book has impressed you the most. [no photo albums]


Not square riggers but other real sailing vessels and how it was done ….Patrick O,Brians series of Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin, Descriptive of everything from climbing to the cross trees to sailing into the wind.
Dannic


----------



## Barrie Youde

#26 

One reason why Newby (a first-tripper) is so good lies in the quality of his writing. He explains many things which other writers leave unexplained. At the same time, without saying so in express terms, he is a most shrewd observer, learning much and learning it quickly - and thus teaching his lessons amply and fully to the reader. I read The Last Grain Race on my own first-trip to sea and found it very helpful indeed - even in a modern steamship. 

As a general travel-writer in later life he remained most keenly observant.


----------

