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BLUE ANGELS AND WHALES
A Record of Personal Experiences Below and Above Water.
Robert Gibbings.
First published in 1938 by Penguin Books; revised and
enlarged in 1946. Printed by The Travel book Club, London, 1947. Hardcover,
114 pages, nicely illustrated by the author.
This immediate post-war period must have been an exciting
time to travel and dive the world. The author visits Bermuda, the Red Sea,
Ghardaqa, Tahiti and other mysterious places as they would have been in
those days. His diving equipment looks like a letterbox with shoulder straps
and a hose attached and is described as " a helmet, alength of hosepipe
and an air pump". Had he bent over, he would have lost the helmet. The
noise of the pump was horrendous, and he had som difficulty keeping his
negative buoyancy until someobe suggsted he wear a leaded-belt!!! His observatioons
of mrine lif, and expereinces above and blow water, are worth reading. |
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PAMIR - A Voyage To Rio In A Four Masted Barque.
Hilary Tunstall –Behrens
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956.
Hilary Tunstall-Behrens had left Oxford and was teaching
at Salem in 1951, when his imagination was fired by the sight of the two
great four masted barques, Pamir and Passat, in the harbour at
Lubeck, fitting out for trading voyages to South America.
He enlisted as a member of the crew. It was an astonishing crew – English
and German cadets, refugee sailors from East Germany, and a U-boat commander
trying to rediscover the foundation of a way of life. The author of this
book helped in the training of the boys on Outward Bound principles at
a country estate in Germany, and sailed from Hamburg soon after Christmas
for Rio De Janeiro. The whole enterprise was not merely an exciting voyage
and a remarkable social adventure, but a rediscovery of the ways of sail.
The author writes with gay enthusiasm, an infectious mixture of schoolboy
and poet. The story of the voyage from the German winter, through a stormbound
spell in the channel while the Margate and Walmer life-boats stood by,
moves through the calm of tropical days at sea into a happy chapter on
a sailor's life ashore in Rio; and the long voyage home. In this book we
learn the songs, stories, irritations and dangers of such a journey and
such a crew. It is a valuable record of great fascination and integrity. |
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PERIL OF THE SEA. A Book of Shipwrecks and Escapes.
J.G.Lockhart.
Published 1924 by Philip Allan & Co., London.
Hardcover, 204 pages, mono photographs.
From 'The White Ships' of 1120, to the Titanic in 1912.
Includes the Royal George (1782), La Tribune (1797), Medusa (1816), Rothsay
Castle (1830), Birkenhead (1852). |
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PERILOUS DAYS The Tales of Adventure.
David Masters.
Published by John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd. Date not
known. |
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PIRACY WAS A BUSINESS.
Cyrus H. Karraker, author of The Hispaniola Treasure.
Richard R. Smith Publisher, Inc 1953
Hardcover, dustjacket, 244 pp, illustrated with old maps
and drawings.
For, indeed, there was a time when pirates swarmed all
over the world....This volume makes a noteworthy contribution by emphasizing
how consistently the merchant and politician were in league with
the pirate and how valiantly those who hated piracy fought to eliminate
it from the high seas and from the coastlines of every continent. The author
describes the pirate's various exploits ~ their terrorizing, plundering
and wrecking ~ and their fabulous kingdoms and societies such as those
on St. Mary's Island, Madagascar and in the Caribbean. Highly fortified
against unwanted intruders, these island strongholds were the storehouses
for enormous amounts of loot and treasure. Merchants traveled great distances
to obtain these stores in trade for rum, ammunition and provisions. In
these pages we learn of the true personalities of those "romantic" buccaneers
we have all known, in a vague sense, since childhood. Meet Blackbeard,
Bartholomew Roberts, King Adam Baldridge and the whole parcel of lesser
lights as they really were. A pirate book to be read with consuming interest
by both general reader and scholar. |
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SAIL HO!
My Early years at Sea.
Sir James Bisset.
Ex-Commondore of the Cunard Line.
Angus and Robertson Ltd, London, Sydney. 1958. Reprint
1959.
At fifteen the author went to sea as an apprentice in
the three-masted barque County of Pembroke, plying its way from England
to Australia, New Zealand and the west coast of Amrica. For six years he
served in ail making four voyages around Cape Horn. He ended up commanding
the great Cunard ships Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary. |
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S.O.S. A Book of Sea Adventures.
David Masters.
Published in 1933 by Eyre and Spottiswoode, London.
Hardcover, 340 pages, mono photographs.
Sixteen chapters covering a number of themes - Drifing
to Death, Ordeal by Fire, Perils of th Deep etc.
(My copy signed by the author, as a gift to a Sewell
Wells, Christmas 1933. |
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SEA-DOGS OF TODAY.
A.J.Villiers.
Published in 1932 by George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd,
London, Bombay and Sydney. 284 pages, mono photographs. Reprint July 1934.
Anything by Villiers is interesting and original. In
fact, he mentions that anyone can write a sea book - just 'buy copies of
the other sea books already written, and then ... compile a book that is
more or less your own'. Quite so. He was already an accomplished
author when he wrote this volume. |
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THE CASTAWAYS
A Narrative History of Some Survivors from th Dangers
of the Sea.
Robert Carse. Published by Robert Whiting & Wheaton,
London, 1966.
Chapters include those on Alexander Selkirk (the 'original'
Robinson Crusoe), William Dampier, Job Hortop, John Byron, Willen Barents,
Francis Sparry and Goodwin, Herman Melville, Mary Bryant and Alfred Russel
Wallace. Hardcover, dustjacket, 240 pages, index, bibliography. |
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THE CRUISE OF THE CACHALOT.
Round the World after Sperm Whales.
Frank T. Bullen. First Mate.
Illustrations by Mead Schaeffer.
Published in 1928 by Dodd, Mead & Company.
Hardcover, embossed cover, 301 pages,. The illustration
are several quite superb watercolours in the style of Norman Lindsay.
A well known book, one of the classic on whaling and
whaling voyages.
(Title page shown left). |
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THE CRUISE OF THE MARCHESA TO KAMSCHATKA AND NEW GUINEA
With Notices of Formosa, Liu-Kiu, and Various Islands of the Malay
Archipelago.
E.H.H.Guillemard.
Published in 1889 by John Murray, London.
Hardcover, wmbossed name on cover, 460 pages, 'with maps
and numerous woodcuts'.
The copy I have is the Second Edition. It appears that
the First Edition was in two volumes, and included two hand-coloured plates
of birds. More of an anthropological study, it gives a detailed description
of the flora and fauna of the islands mentioned, the poeple, and the geography.
An important work. |
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THE DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA
Garrett Mattingly.
Published 1959, by Jonathan Cape, London.
Hardcover, dustjacket, 382 pages, charts, mono prints.
I gather this is a major work on th subject. |
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THE STORY OF THE SEAMAN
Being An Account of the Ways and Appliances of Seafarers and of
Ships From the Earliest Time Until Now.
John Forsyth Meigs.
Published in 1924 by J.B.Lippincott Co, Philadelphia
and London.
Two volumes, hardcover, 674 pages total, a few mono plates.
A very imporant work as it describes how the ancient
(and modern) ships were manned and manoeuvered; there use in trade and
war. |
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THE WRECK OF THE DAMARU
A Story of Cannibalism in An Open Boat.
Lowell Thomas.
Published in 1930 by P.F.Collier & Son Corp, New
York by special arrangement wwith Doubleday, Doram & Co, Inc, New York.
Hardcover, 270 pages, mono photographs.
The steamship exploded when near Guam soon after the
end of World War 1 (from what I can gather), with some fo the crew managing
to escape in two boats. It was all downhill from there - the boats floated
off into the Pacific, and in a twenty-eight day journey which saw terrible
depravations, and cannibalism, made the Philippine islands. |
