The Saga of Cimba (The Sailor's Classics #2) [Hardcover]

Richard Maury (Author), Jonathan Raban (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 19, 2000 | Series: Sailor's Classics

The Saga of Cimba describes Richard Maury's 1934-35 voyage from New York to Fiji in the small, 35-foot, Nova Scotia-built schooner Cimba. It was a voyage of high adventure, undertaken when such voyages were almost unheard of. Maury and his crew of one survived two major storms in the Atlantic. In the book's riveting conclusion, he loses his beloved boat in another storm, on the reefs of Fiji. But what distinguishes this book more than anything else is the quality of Maury's writing, which over the years reviewers have likened to that of Richard Henry Dana, Antoine de Saint Exupery, even to Conrad. In Jonathan Raban's words, "There is a lovely clarity about Maury's writing: it's unaffected, free of journalese, simple and vivid. It's the kind of book that you can pick up a couple of years after your first reading of it, and it will surprise you with its freshness." First published in 1939, the last known edition of The Saga of Cimba was in 1973. It is long out of print. After a long career as a professional mariner, Richard Maury died in 1998. After writing this one lovely book, he never wrote another. We have exclusive publishing rights from his estate. As a volume in The Sailor's Classics, The Saga of Cimba will feature a 2,500-word introduction by Jonathan Raban, which will explore Maury's life, the history and condition of small-boat voyaging in the 1930s, and the significance of this book in the literature of the sea.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

6 1-hour cassettes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

"There is a spare, taut beauty, a stinging intensity, a fine exhilaration, in this saga of wind and wave."--New York Times

"There have not been many [tales] like it, and none so brilliantly gleaming with such aspects of wind and sea."--Times Literary Supplement

In November 1933, 23-year-old Richard Maury set sail from Connecticut in Cimba, a 35-foot Nova Scotia schooner, leaving behind the icy grasp of a Depression-era New England winter. With one other crewman he shaped a course for the South Seas, where there were still islands so remote as to be reached only by perilous voyages across vast stretches of empty ocean. At that time such voyages were rarely undertaken in small boats, but Maury was determined to have the adventure while it could still be had.

Finely wrought, with elegant clarity, The Saga of Cimba is a magical book. In Jonathan Raban's words, "It is precisely because the voyage was so fraught with difficulty and tragedy, and Maury had to work so hard to reconcile the disasters that befell him with his steadfast love of the sea, that the book rings true. The joy is real, but it is wrested from the teeth of experience by a writer of quite extraordinary skill, cunning, and determination." Maury found the South Seas of his dreams, but in doing so he had to weather three storms, serious illness, the deaths of two friends, and finally, the loss of his beloved Cimba on the reefs of Fiji.

First published in 1939 and out of print for nearly three decades, The Saga of Cimba has been compared with the works of Dana, Conrad, and Saint-Exupery. Maury's exquisite depictions of the sea's almost unbearable beauty and annihilating fury are unforgettable. Truly, as Raban says, the startling brilliance of The Saga of Cimba qualifies it as one of the best books ever written about the sea.

"The most eloquent prose hymn ever written to the exhilaration, the beauty, and the sheer joy of being at sea."--from the introduction by Jonathan Raban

"Not at all the conventional small-boat yarn, for Mr. Maury can feel and he can write. . . . Superior adventure, whose spirit recalls that of the books of Anne Morrow Lindbergh."--The New Yorker

"What comes back to you, overwhelmingly and beautifully, is [Maury's] enormously successful description of what it's like to sail a small boat across the Pacific."--San Francisco Chronicle

"One of the best sea yarns of all time."--Rudder --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: International Marine Publishing (December 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071372253
• ISBN-13: 978-0071372251
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,125,511 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Book best at conveying the essential -ness of sailing., September 13, 1998

By 

Stephen Scott ([e-mail]) (East Coast - USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Saga of "Cimba" (Hardcover)

The Saga of Cimba is a masterwork. I find this book as compelling, captivating, and yes even mesmerizing, now as when I first read it many years ago. It is one of very, very few which I can always re-read with unwavering pleasure and delight. Richard Maury has crafted a volume as close to perfect in terms of making the essential -nesses of cruising in small sail boats clear to the reader as any I have ever found. It's facinating to me that right through to the last page he never tells of himself, and only word sketches his alternating sailing companions very briefly. Cimba herself is the main character and Maury never loses sight of that fact. The Saga of Cimba is a book filled with the unpretentious magic of greatness.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A distillation of the society, the sea , and a small boat.., February 7, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Saga of Cimba (The Sailor's Classics #2) (Hardcover)

Having sailed for 40 years, I came across an old edition of this gem written in the 30's and was astounded by the economy of prose, yet the depth of feeling created by its author.

It is a deceptively simple story, but packed with thoughts and observations which are thoroughly relevant today. And it is written in a style which came BEFORE the present supermediatic hyperbolic overstatement that characterizes most of what we read and hear today.

It is an excellent gift, and an inspirational work, even if you are never planning to cross an ocean. It is in a word, a classic. (And it is wonderful to think about how these places actually were in the thirties, and to listen to proper nautical language and vocabulary which has been washed away by the advent of the jet plane and skidoo.. Bon voyage!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Saga of Cimba - - Poetry on the salt-sea., October 15, 2005

By 

C. Bryan (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Saga of Cimba (Paperback)

This is a book for sailors who love words, and readers who sail. Not an instructor, Maury spends his tale with the spareness of bare poles. Seamen will love the action - and the calms, mostly for the lovely lyric writing and the gift Maury has with print. Kin to the Maury who invented organized navagation charts for seaways, tides, winds, currents; this tale of the smallest fishing schooner to make 1937 ocean history reflects talent aboard and with the pen for Richard Maury. Best book I've read, sadly I couldn't enjoy it from land.