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

Derek Lundy

ISBN 10: 067697371X / ISBN 13: 9780676973716

Published by Ecco/Harper-collins, 2002

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 011000

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Way of a Ship A Square-Rigger Voyage in the Last Days of Sail
• Publisher: Ecco/Harper-collins
• Publication Date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 067697371X
• ISBN 13: 9780676973716
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: Ist
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Rail, Water, Air, Transport (RWAT)

About this title

Synopsis

From the author of Godforsaken Sea -- a #1 bestseller in Canada and “one of the best books ever written about sailing” (Time magazine) -- comes a magnificent re-creation of a square-rigger voyage round Cape Horn at the end
of the 19th century.

In The Way of a Ship, Derek Lundy places his seafaring great-great uncle, Benjamin Lundy, on board the Beara Head and brings to life the ship’s community as it performs the exhausting and dangerous work of sailing a square-rigger across the sea.

The “beautiful, widow-making, deep-sea” sailing ships could sail fast in almost all weather and carry substantial cargo. Handling square-riggers demanded detailed and specialized skills, and life at sea, although romanticized by sea-voyage chroniclers, was often brutal. Seamen were sleep deprived and malnourished, at times half-starved, and scurvy was still a possibility. Derek Lundy reminds readers what Melville and Conrad expressed so well: that the sea voyage is an overarching metaphor for life itself. As Benjamin Lundy nears the Horn and its attendant terrors, the traditional qualities of the sailor -- fatalism, stoicism, courage, obedience to a strict hierarchy, even sentimentality -- are revealed in their dying days, as sail gave way to steam.

Derek Lundy tells his gripping tale with the kind of storytelling skill and writerly breadth that is usually the ken of our finest novelists, and in so doing, imagines a harrowing and wholly credible history for his seafaring Irish-Canadian ancestor.

About the Author

Derek Lundy is the author of Scott Turow: Meeting the Enemy and the international bestseller Godforsaken Sea: Racing the World’s Most Dangerous Waters. He lives on Salt Spring Island, B.C.