The Way of a Ship : A Square-Rigger Voyage in the Last Days of Sail

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Summary: A compelling blend of maritime history and nautical fiction
Review: Derek Lundy's "The Way of a Ship: A Square-Rigger Voyage in the Last Days of Sail" is in large part a history of blue-water merchant shipping in the late Nineteenth Century with a particular focus on those ships rounding Cape Horn, along with literary meditations by the author upon the works of Melville and Dana and Conrad. But interleaved with the history is Lundy's account of an imagined 1885 voyage around the Horn by his great-great-uncle Benjamin aboard the fictional 4-masted barque Beara Head. It is a harrowing, but by no means atypical voyage aboard a giant iron-hulled square-rigger of the era, its crew kept small by the owners' economies necessary to compete with steamships. This novel-within-a-history is a useful device for conveying the harsh realities of life aboard such a vessel, and Lundy is well up to the challenge of portraying ships and the sea in convincing, highly vivid detail. This will come as no surprise to readers of his earlier book, "Godforsaken Sea: Racing the World's Most Dangerous Waters", about the 1996 Vendee Globe race.

The spark that drove Lundy to write this book is a simple (and perhaps unanswerable) question: how were his great-great-uncle and men like him able to challenge Cape Horn? Even with the strong iron hulls and wire rigging of the 1880's, Cape Horn killed men and ships with a regularity that would dismay the modern world. And if wind and wave were not enemies enough, then inadequate food, terrible living conditions, and hard-driving captains and mates would supply sufficient misery to seemingly make any rational man balk from voluntarily undertaking such a voyage. Of course, not all the seaman aboard were willing volunteers, dockside "crimps" if necessary supplied the required number of drugged and drunken men to fill the meager crew rosters permitted by penny-pinching owners. No records other than family stories and a few old letters survive to chronicle Benjamin Lundy's actual experiences or even to name the ships he sailed on, so his great-great-nephew to better understand the man and others of his ilk decided to reconstruct what his first ocean-crossing voyage might have been like, aboard a square-rigger carrying coal from England to Valpariso, Chile. Coal might seem at first thought an innocuous enough cargo, but in fact it was not. Coal, especially damp coal, often ignited by spontaneous combustion during these lengthy voyages and sometimes even exploded. Very probably quite a few of those big sailing merchantmen that mysteriously vanished at sea were victims of such slow, secret heating, deep in their black holds. Although the young Ulsterman Lundy is a veteran of the coastal trade, the challenges of working such a deep-sea merchantmen were beyond both his experience and his imagination. Derek Lundy crafted his story after intensive research that stretched to include sailing some of the same waters himself, although the author confesses a disappointed relief in not encountering a real gale off Cape Horn.

Between the fiction chapters, Lundy delves into the history of rounding Cape Horn going back to the days of Raleigh and Anson, and of the struggle against a foe even more deadly than the Cape itself: scurvy. He also explores that strange age of transition in the late Nineteenth Century when long distance bulk cargo sailing ships were still battling against the steamers that had already come to dominate shorter routes and the passenger business. Iron (and, later, steel) hulls made possible sailing vessels of a size previously unachievable, so large that even the traditional three masts of ships had to multiply in order to carry sufficient canvas. Merely increasing the size of individual masts and sails proved impractical. As masts grew taller and yards wider, the proportionately larger sails became too hard for the crews to handle. Topsails and topgallantsails were split horizontally into separate upper and lower halves with their own yards, creating the wide but shallow sails so characteristic of photographs of the big merchantmen of this time.

This combination of maritime history and nautical fiction makes for compelling, insightful reading. Lundy well conveys the misery, the fear, the fatigue, the excitement, and even the occasional exhilaration of an experience that would otherwise lie beyond the boundaries of our own lives.

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Summary: the way of a ship
Review: i didnt even get through the prologue when i found a poorly researched item,very jarring.then later on i find another .it kind of makes you wonder how well mr lundy does his research.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic writing
Review: Lundy wrote a book I've been looking long to find. He writes of the day to day life of sailors from the 19th century that is very knowledgable and page turning. I finally got to see what it would have been like. He created characters that I felt interested in and wanted to learn more about. If you've ever wondered what it was like on a sailing ship- Lundy will anwser all your questions, and entertain. Again, a fantastic book!

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic writing
Review: Lundy wrote a book I've been looking long to find. He writes of the day to day life of sailors from the 19th century that is very knowledgable and page turning. I finally got to see what it would have been like. He created characters that I felt interested in and wanted to learn more about. If you've ever wondered what it was like on a sailing ship- Lundy will anwser all your questions, and entertain. Again, a fantastic book!

Rating:
Summary: Fictional narrative with a focus on seamanship
Review: The Way Of A Ship: A Square-rigger Voyage In The Last Days Of Sail recreates a sea voyage on one of the last merchant sailing ships near the close of the 19th century, and provides a satisfying blend of historical reconstruction, fictional narrative, and focus on seamanship. It's hard to easily categorize this account: The Way Of A Ship reads like fiction but couples such with rich historical detail, resulting in a multi-faceted guide.