Customer Reviews

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

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

I find it curious that some readers found this book wanting. I would admit it had its slow times, but over all I was very impressed.

Besides a reasonable story line of the fictional voyage, the author had lots of the sea history of steam vs. sail, rounding the "Horn", navigating, scurvy, etc. I liked it all and appreciated the author's connection with long-lost relatives.

My recommendation: if you like "fictional history" from that era this is a good choice.

"Them was the days, sonnies,
"Them was the men,
"Them was the ships,
"As we'll never see again."
(From the book)

This book is the author's imagined account of his grand-uncle's voyage as a crewman on the "Beara Head," a four-masted barque sailing around Cape Horn from Liverpool to Varparaiso, South America, in the 1880's. The author creates an engaging narrative of characters and things that may or may not have happened on the voyage, based on log information and what is known about the trip. Interspersed are chapters with general background material on the ships, history, and difficulties of the time.

I found this a very engaging read, and when I had finished it I was wishing for more. The life of a seaman in those days was truly harsh, a life of constant misery and hardship. The men live on short rations, long hours, little or no sleep, constant cold and damp, battling storm after storm, climbing up in the masts 160 feet above the rolling deck to deal with canvas sails weighing hundreds of pounds. Some men get their fingernails pulled out, some fall to their deaths in the sea, never to be seen again, and some live on to see the next port and another voyage.

If you are interested in sailing ships and stories of the sea, you will like this book.

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.

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!

The Way of a Ship is a strangely structured book on an interesting topic. Derek Lundy tells a good story, but it is spoiled by the other information interleaved in it.

One of the authors forebear's was a sailor on a square rigger that sailed around Cape Horn. That is what sparked his interest in the story. He describes this as well as some of the research he did for this story. Fortunately these interruptions are short.

He then goes on to interrupt the story with lessons on the economics and history of sea transport at the time of the story. He also describes the social life of the people who made up the crew on these ships and has some comments on the types of ships being built as steam ships over took sailing vessels. There are also interludes of historical information about Joseph Conrad, Richard Henry Dana and Herman Melville.

While they are reasonably well written and are interesting by themselves they just serve to confuse the fiction. They look very much like filler to me. The story that makes up the central theme of the book is a well told sea tale with a sympathetic protagonist. However the story cannot survive being lumped in with all these other distractions. The reader has to be motivated to read yet another sea tale to bother with this one.

Lundy uses an interesting, entertaining and very informative format of combining a factual narrative with a fictional account of a four-masted square-rigger sailing from Britain to San Fransisco by way of Cape Horn.

If, like me, you've ever dreamed of a sailing life onboard a ninteenth century windship, this book will probably cure you of any romantic notions. It was a brutal life. And you'll experience every nautical mile of it.

And you'll also close the book with new found knowledge of precisely what it took for men to master wind and waves in the roughest oceans on the planet. Highly recommended.

This was not the book that we thought it was. Derek Lundy used the title of a much better book by Alan Villiers--printed in 1970. Lundy even cited the Villiers book but it was just a book written to ride the popularity of the Villiers book. We had to go to a rare book site to buy the real book by Villiers. It was a waste of our money.

The book was delivered promptly and in very good condition, though I noted a "Not for Sale - Proof Copy" title on the front. The book is well written, entertaining, and very authentic.

The way of a Ship / Terek Lundy

This purchase was a mistake and I am simply unable to start the reading, although I tried.
I am collecting/reading "the real thing" on the saile era,written by those who were then involved.( Am finding texts in English, Dutch, French & a bit in German - unfortunately, I do not read Swedish/Finnish ).
Maybe Mr Terek Lundy is an excellent author, but this book is not what I was looking for.

R Grommé