Seamanship: A Voyage Along the Wild Coasts of the British Isles [Hardcover]

Adam Nicolson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 12, 2005

From Land's End to Cape Clear, past Roaringwater Bay and Cod's Head, on past Inishvickillane and Inishtooskert, up through the Hebrides, to Orkney and on to the Faeroes stretches the richest and wildest coastline in Europe. Adam Nicolson decided to sail this coast in the Auk, a 42-foot wooden ketch, embarking on a 1,500-mile voyage through what he hoped would be a sequence of revelatory landscapes. He was not disappointed.

Seamanship is more than a travel journal. It describes an inner journey as much as an outer one—disasters and discoveries, powerful landscapes and modern visionaries, and encounters with the animals living on the wild edge of the Atlantic. Above all, it is about the gaps that open up between those who go and those who stay at home.

Seamanship, in the end, is not about the sea. It's about being alive.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There's much to like in the story of how Nicolson (God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible) finds a sailing partner and a suitable boat and takes to the seas surrounding Ireland and Scotland. And his descriptions of the remote communities he encounters on the voyage are often engaging. Yet Nicolson's narrative of this voyage—which was the basis for an eight-part National Geographic TV series—is saddled with an overabundance of superlatives: it's one thing for a near fatal accident to be caused by "the biggest wave I have ever seen," but Nicolson also encounters "the darkest night," "the loneliest and most entrancing place" and so on. One wishes at times that Nicolson would turn his focus further inward; although he hints at personal tensions between himself and his sailing partner, as well as the strain placed on his marriage by his wanderlust, his slim volume doesn't fully explore these conflicts, instead falling back on slightly more abstract reflections about humans' relationship to the sea. Nicolson's voluntary pilgrimage is a good story, made frustrating by falling just short of being a great story.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Nicolson and a friend, George Fairhurst, sailed up the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland in 2003. The journey, in the 42-foot ketch Auk, took them to the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Faeroes. They were joined by a photographer, an archaeologist, and a film crew. Nicolson, the author of God's Secretaries (2003) and Perch Hill (2000), observes that "the Atlantic-besieged cliffs of the St. Kildan islands, smashed and storm-swept up to 200 feet above the surface of the sea, provide as enormous and powerful a meeting of rock and ocean as you ever find in Britain." Along the way, they saw puffins, gannets, shearwaters, seals, crabs, and a spectacular underwater cave. The book is filled with descriptive passages of the sea, cliffs, and the shoreline. There are passages revealing the anxiety and tedium that sometimes occurred, but Nicolson's love for the sea and his fervor for travel and adventure is evident from the first page to the last. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harper; First Edition edition (April 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060753420
• ISBN-13: 978-0060753429
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,300,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Do NOT Sail with this guy!, August 8, 2005

By 

RichardL "sailingperson" (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seamanship: A Voyage Along the Wild Coasts of the British Isles (Hardcover)

The text recounts a voyage that the author undertakes from the southwest of England, to the Atlantic coast of Ireland, northward to the Hebrides and the Orkneys, and finally to the Faroe Islands.
This is a genuinely annoying book. As others have noted, there is, with a few exceptions, very little description of the lands and coasts traveled to. Mostly the author waxes philosophical about this or that aspect of our relationship with nature, embodied here by the sea. But that's not the problem. The problem is that, ultimately, the author proves to be a very un-admirable individual - someone that you would NOT want to sail with, much less depend on, in challenging circumstances. The real hero of the voyage (in my opnion) is George Fairhurst, an experienced professional sailor whom the author employs to skipper his boat, the Auk. By the end you come to sympathize with Fairhurst's assessment that the author is merely a "plucker": the sort of individual who floats from experience to experience, depending entirely on others to keep the boat sailing (Fairhurst), or the home and family going (the author's wife Sarah), while assuming none of the risk. You may consider it brave of Nicolson to reveal enough about what happened on Auk to allow the reader to form such a negative judgment of him. Personally I find this simply a species of the same instinct that causes him to climb three miles barefoot over sharp rocks to a hilltop holy place, despite being an avowed agnostic. It's self-indulgence masquerading as self-revelation. It's solely about the personal experience, and not about the truth.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More philosophy than travelogue, May 28, 2005

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Seamanship: A Voyage Along the Wild Coasts of the British Isles (Hardcover)

SEAMANSHIP is author Adam Nicolson's account of his 1,500-mile voyage along the outer fringes of the British Isles aboard the 42-foot ketch "Auk".

Perhaps I should have realized the thrust of Nicolson's narrative sooner. Indeed, as soon as I opened the front cover, seen the extent of the voyage as depicted on two end page maps, and then noted that this small hardcover is only 177 pages long with relatively large print. I mean, if one is sailing from Falmouth in Cornwall across the Celtic Sea to Ireland's southern tip, then back across to Cornwall, north to southwestern Wales, across the Celtic Sea again, up along Ireland's west coast, across to Scotland, up through the Inner and Outer Hebrides, east to the Orkney Islands, and finally ending far to the northwest in the Faeroes, how much description of so many places can be jammed into such a small space? Disappointingly little, if that's what you're looking for.

Rather than a travelogue in the traditional sense, SEAMANSHIP is more a ruminative consideration of Sailing Man's relationship to the Sea and his Ship, and, in this volume specifically, Adam's success (or not) in manly bonding with the Auk's skipper, George. Nicolson's philosophical bent is well represented by the following passage:

"The nature of the voyage is set before you cast off. A sea passage is shaped by the boat's time attached to the land. Every moment at sea is dependent on, and even twinned to, a moment in harbor. What a boat sails on and in is not only the ocean and the wind but the days, weeks, and months tied up alongside."

And, using a mixed metaphor:

"That is why death at sea is such a casual affair. Death has no need to approach ... It doesn't come rolling on like a swell, proceeding grandly towards you with its bosom before it and its intentions clear. Death is already there, a few feet away, resting beneath the table, its head on its paws and a smile in its eyes, happy to accept the scraps that fall."

I love the landscape of the British Isles more than any other place on Earth, especially its wild, wave and wind-ravished margins. Here, the author's description of the ancient monastic island off the Irish coast, Skellig Michael, almost brought tears of longing to my eyes. I wanted to visit the place myself - now. But, for me, there wasn't enough of such descriptive power between this book's covers to satisfy a raging wanderlust.

SEAMANSHIP is far from being a bad read. Whereas I'm only awarding 3.5 stars (translated to four by an inadequate rating system), one more in tune with Nicolson's lyrical prose will emphatically award five and excoriate me for my shallow obtuseness. This is a book you must read and decide upon for yourself.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not A Travel Story, A Love Story About a Trip, May 13, 2005

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Seamanship: A Voyage Along the Wild Coasts of the British Isles (Hardcover)

This book is not, as you might expect from the title, a book on how to make the boat go where you want it. Instead it is a love story. It's about a love for the sea, for the boat, for life itself.

Nominally it's the story of a voyage along the Atlantic coasts of England, Ireland, Scotland, and the islands north of there. It's partly the story of the trip; it's partly a philosophy of life, of man putting himself and his wind propelled boat against the elements.

Mr. Nicolson has a way with the written word that makes his prose almost like poetry or music in the hands of another. I'm not a boating person, but it almost makes me want to go find a sailboat.

Delightful story.