Customer Reviews

Sailing on Friday : The Perilous Voyage of America's Merchant Marine

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John Butler has presented a fascinating, informative, highly readable, and entertaining story of the rise and fall of the American Merchant Marine. While written from the perspective of an insider, the author never talks down to the reader, nor overwhelms the reader with needless detail. He presents the material in a calm and even-handed way, and hold the reader's attention throughout.

But watch out for errors.

The problem with writing history books is that there are a lot of facts to check. I, for one, am harder on books where I discover inaccuracies since for each one I catch who knows how many others get past me, or worse, form my opinion of a subject.

One glaring error I found in the book occurred on page 189:

"The California school [the California Maritime Academy], operating on Treasure Island (man-made in San Francisco Bay for the 1939 World's Fair), was enlarged and relocated to San Mateo."

For starters, the California Maritime Academy operated during the opening days of World War II from the Ferry building at the foot of Market Street in San Francisco. In 1943 it moved to Vallejo, it's location ever since. At no time was it ever located in San Mateo. Since the school remains in Vallejo to this day, this would have been an easy fact to verify. So how do we know the more obscure facts are correct?

This may be nit-picking, since the book was well-written and very informative. Despite some inaccuracies, I'd still recommend it to anyone looking for a good, broad overview of maritime history. (And for anyone looking for further history of the California Maritime Academy, I'd highly recommend Walter Jaffee's The Track of the Golden Bear (The Glencannon Press, 1996).)