LAST OF THE CAPE HORNERS (Firsthand Accounts from the Final Days of the Commercial Tal)

When we think of commercial sailing, most of us are apt to picture square-riggers as vessels of the nineteenth century or earlier. Yet the graceful, multi-masted beauties of our imaginations actually sailed on into the 1950s before they disappeared from the seas forever. Veteran sailor Spencer Apollonio has selected from little-known sources some of the best-written and most representative accounts of life aboard the last of these ships that sailed around the southern tip of South America...the fabled Cape Horners. Written by officers, crewmen, and passengers aboard American, British, and Finnish vessels, they pro-vide a realistic picture of a maritime era the likes of which will not ever be seen again.

Spencer Apollonio is a marine biologist who has sailed a traditional wooden gaff-rigged sloop along the coast of Maine for more than twenty years. Boothbay Harbor, Maine, is his homeport.