The National Marine League asks, What are the ten best books of the
sea? Without pondering very deeply on the matter, and confining
ourself to prose, we would suggest the following as our own
favourites:
_Typhoon, by Joseph Conrad
The Nigger of the "Narcissus," by Joseph Conrad
The Mirror of the Sea, by Joseph Conrad
Captains Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling
The Brassbounder, by David W. Bone
Salt of the Sea, by Morley Roberts
Mr. Midshipman Easy, by Captain Marryat
The Wreck of the "Grosvenor," by Clark Russell
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
An Ocean Tramp, by William McFee._
If one is allowed to include books that deal partially with salt
water, one would have to add "Treasure Island," "Casuals of the
Sea," by McFee, and "Old Junk," by Tomlinson. The kind of
shallow-water sea tales that we love to read after supper, with our
feet on the nearest chair and a decent supply of tobacco handy, are
the delicious stories by W.W. Jacobs. Dana's "Two Years Before the
Mast," which is spoken of as a classic, we have never read. We have
always had a suspicion of it, we don't know why. Before we tackle it
we shall re-read "The Water Babies." We have always found a good
deal of innocent cheer in the passages in John Woolman's Journal
describing his voyage from Philadelphia to London in 1772. Friend
Woolman, like the sturdy Quaker that he was, was horrified (when he
went to have a look at the ship _Mary and Elizabeth_) to find
"sundry sorts of carved work and imagery" on that part of the vessel
where the cabins were; and in the cabins themselves he observed
"some superfluity of workmanship of several sorts." This subjected
his mind to "a deep exercise," and he decided that he would have to
take passage in the steerage instead of the cabin. Having our self
made use of the steerage aforetime, both in the _Mauretania_ and
humbler vessels, we feel a certain kindred sympathy for his
experiences. We have always enjoyed his remark: "The wind now blew
vehemently, and the sea wrought to that degree that an awful
seriousness prevailed."
To come to poetry, we suppose that the greatest sea-poet who never
ventured on anything more perilous than a ferry-boat was Walt
Whitman. Walt, one likes to think, would have been horribly sea-sick
if he had ventured out beyond the harbour buoy. A good deal of
Walt's tempestuous uproar about the glories of America was
undoubtedly due to the fact that he had never seen anything else.
Speaking of Walt reminds us that one book of the sea that we have
never read (for the best of reasons: it has not been written) might
be done by Thomas Mosher, the veteran tippler of literary minims.
Mr. Mosher, we understand, "followed" the sea in his youth. Not long
ago, when Mr. Mosher published that exquisite facsimile of the 1855
"Leaves of Grass," we asked him when and how he first came in
contact with Whitman's work. He said:
I don't suppose there was anything particularly interesting
about my first acquaintance with Whitman, which at 14 years of
age I made in my old family mansion situated at Smith's Corner,
America. I had been taking "The Galaxy" from its start, only a
few months previous to the date I mention. I can still see
myself in the sitting room of the old house. Smith's Cor.,
America, I will remind you, is a portion of Biddeford, Me. An
extra "d" has got into the old English name--which, by the way,
only a year later I passed through after a shipwreck on the
Devonshire coast. (That was in 1867.) No one ever told me
anything about Walt.
These amateurish speculations on maritime books are of no value
except for the fact that they elicited an interesting letter from an
expert on these matters. William McFee wrote us as follows:--
"The first thing I laid my hands on this evening, while hunting
for some forgotten nugget of wisdom in my note-books filled
with Mediterranean brine, was that list of books for a
projected sea library. Perpend....
_The Sea Farer's Library_
Tom Cringle's Log Michael Scott
Two Years Before the Mast Dana
Midshipman Easy Marryat
Captains Courageous Kipling
The Flying Cloud Morley Roberts
The Cruise of the Cachalot Frank T. Bullen
Log of a Sea Waif Frank T. Bullen
The Salving of a Derelict Maurice Drake
The Grain Carriers Edward Noble
Marooned Clark Russell
Typhoon Conrad
Toilers of the Sea Hugo
An Iceland Fisherman Loti
The Sea Surgeon D'Annunzio
The Sea Hawk Sabatini
"A good many of these need no comment. Attention is drawn not
to the individual items, but to the balance of the whole. That
is the test of a list. But there is a good balance, a balance
of power, and a balance of mere weight or prestige. It is the
power we are after here. Regard for a moment the way 'Tom
Cringle' balances Dana's laconic record of facts. No power on
earth could hold 'Tom Cringle' to facts, with the result that
his story is more truly a representation of sea life in the old
navy than a ton of statistics. He has the seaman's mind, which
Dana had not.
"Then again 'Captains Courageous' and 'The Flying Cloud'
balance each other with temperamental exactitude. Each is a
fine account of sea-doings with a touch of fiction to keep the
sailor reading, neither of them in the very highest class. 'The
Cruise of the Cachalot' is balanced by the 'Log of a Sea Waif,'
each in Bullen's happier and less evangelical vein. I was
obliged to exclude 'With Christ at Sea,' not because it is
religious, but because it does not balance. It would give the
whole list a most pronounced 'list,' if you will pardon the
unpardonable.... I regret this because 'With Christ at Sea' has
some things in it which transcend anything else Bullen ever
wrote.
"Now we come to a couple of books possibly requiring a little
explanation. 'The Salving of a Derelict' is a remarkably able
story of a man's reclamation. I believe Maurice Drake won a
publisher's prize with it as a first novel some years ago. It
was a winner among the apprentices, I remember. 'The Grain
Carriers' is a grim story of greedy owners and an unseaworthy
ship by an ex-master mariner whose 'Chains,' while not a sea
story, is tinged with the glamour of South American shipping,
and is obviously a work written under the influence of Joseph
Conrad. 'Marooned' and 'Typhoon' balance (only you mustn't be
too critical) as examples of the old and new methods of telling
a sea story.
"'The Sea Surgeon' is one of a collection of stories about the
Pescarese, which D'Annunzio wrote years ago. They are utterly
unlike 'II Fuoco' and the other absurd tales on which
translators waste their time. In passing one is permitted to
complain of the persistent ill-fortune Italian novelists suffer
at the hands of their English translators.
"Assuming, however, that our seafarer wants a book or two of
what is euphemistically termed 'non-fiction,' here are a few
which will do him no harm:
"Southey's 'Life of Nelson.'
"'The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,' Mahan.
"Admiral Lord Beresford's 'Memoirs.'
"The Diary of Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty
in the Reign of Charles II and James II. It is most grievously
overlooked that Samuel was the first to draft a naval Rate
Book, which is a sort of indexed lexicon of everything one
needs 'for fighting and sea-going efficiency.' And it is a
pleasure, chastened by occasional fits of ill-temper, to
discover that the present British Naval Rate Book hath in it
divers synonyms coeval with Samuel and his merry monarchs. As
when the present writer tried to order some hammer-handles and
discovered after much tribulation that the correct naval
equivalent for such is 'ash-helms.' Whereupon he toilfully
rewrote his requisitions 'and so to bed.'
"Another suggestion I might make is a volume to be compiled,
containing the following chapters:
I. "Landsmen Admirals," Generals Blake and Monk.
II. "A Dutch Triumvirate," Van Tromp, De Witt and De Ruyter.
III. "Napoleon as a Sea Tactician."
IV. "Decatur and the Mediterranean Pirates."
V. "The Chesapeake and the Shannon."
VI. "The Spanish-American Naval Actions."
VII. "The Russo-Japanese Naval Actions."
VIII. "The Turko-Italian Naval Actions."
Conclusion. "Short Biography of Josephus Daniels."
"Only deep-water sailors would be able to take this suggested
library to sea with them, because a sailor only reads at sea.
When the landward breeze brings the odours of alien lands
through the open scuttle one closes the book, and if one is a
normal and rational kind of chap and the quarantine regulations
permit, goes ashore."
Gruesome as anything in any seafaring pirate yarn is Trelawny's
description (in "Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and
Byron") of the burning of Shelley's body on the seashore near Via
Reggio. The other day, in company with two like-minded innocents, we
visited a bookshop on John Street where we found three battered
copies of this great book, and each bought one, with shouts of joy.
The following day, still having the book with us, we dropped in to
see the learned and hospitable Dr. Rosenbach at his new and
magnificent thesaurus at 273 Madison Avenue. We showed him the book,
because every time one shows the doctor a book he can startle you by
countering with its original manuscript or something of that sort.
We said something about Shelley and Trelawny, in the hope of
starting him off. He smiled gently and drew out a volume from a
shelf. It was the copy of "Prometheus Unbound" that Shelley had
given Trelawny in July, 1822, with an inscription. As the poet was
drowned on July 8, 1822, it probably was the last book he ever gave
away.
One wonders what may have become of the log of the American clipper
that Shelley and Trelawny visited in the harbour of Leghorn shortly
before Shelley's death. Shelley had said something in praise of
George Washington, to which the sturdy Yankee skipper replied:
"Stranger, truer words were never spoken; there is dry rot in all
the main timbers of the Old World, and none of you will do any good
till you are docked, refitted, and annexed to the New. You must log
that song you sang; there ain't many Britishers that will say as
much of the man that whipped them; so just set these lines down in
the log!"
Whereupon Shelley autographed the skipper's log for him, with some
sentiments presumably gratifying to American pride, and drank some
"cool peach brandy." It was his last drink.
We ourself, just as much as Shelley, enjoy visiting ships, and have
had some surprising adventures in so doing. We remember very clearly
our first call upon William McFee, when he was First Assistant
Engineer in S.S. _Turrialba_. But getting aboard vessels is a much
more complicated and diplomatic task than it was in Shelley's day.
Even when armed with Mr. McFee's autographed card, it was by no
means easy. We went dutifully up to the office of the United Fruit
Company at Pier 9, to apply for a pass, and were surveyed with grim
suspicion. Why, we asked gently, in these peaceful times is it so
difficult to visit a friend who happens to be in a ship?
Prohibition, said the candid clerk, and a whole province of human
guile was thereby made plain to our shrinking mind. Mortals incline
readily to sin, it seems, and apparently evil and base men will even
go so far as to pretend a friendship with those who go down to wet
territory in ships, simply for the sake of--well, we cannot bring
ourself to mention it. "How do you know Mr. McFee wants to see you?"
we were asked. Luckily we had Mac's card to prove it.
We had long wanted to see Mr. McFee in his sea-going quarters,
where he writes his books and essays (so finely flavoured with a
rich ironical skepticism as to the virtues of folk who live on
shore). Never was a literary sanctum less like the pretentious
studios of the imitation litterateurs. In a small cabin stood our
friend, in his working dungarees (if that is what they are called)
talking briskly with the Chief and another engineer. The
conversation, in which we were immediately engulfed, was so
vivacious that we had small chance to examine the surroundings as we
would have liked to. But save for the typewriter on the desk and a
few books in a rack, there was nothing to suggest literature.
"Plutarch's Lives," we noticed--a favourite of Mac's since boyhood;
Frank Harris's "The Bomb" (which, however, the Chief insisted
belonged to him), E.S. Martin's "Windfalls of Observation," and some
engineering works. We envied Mac the little reading lamp at the head
of his bunk.
We wish some of the soft-handed literary people who bleat about only
being able to write in carefully purged and decorated surroundings
could have a look at that stateroom. In just such compartments Mr.
McFee has written for years, and expected to finish that night (in
the two hours each day that he is able to devote to writing) his
tale, "Captain Macedoine's Daughter." As we talked there was a
constant procession of in-comers, most of them seeming to the opaque
observation of the layman to be firemen discussing matters of
overtime. On the desk lay an amusing memorandum, which the Chief
referred to jocularly as one of Mac's "works," anent some problem
of whether the donkeyman was due certain overtime on a Sunday when
the _Turrialba_ lay in Hampton Roads waiting for coal. On the cabin
door was a carefully typed list marked in Mr. McFee's hand "Work to
Do." It began something like this:
_Main Engine Pump-Link Brasses
Fill Up Main Engine Feed Pump and Bilge Rams
Open and Scale After Port Boiler
Main Circulator Impeller to Examine
Hydrokineter Valve on Centre Boiler to be Rejointed_
The delightful thing about Mr. McFee is that he can turn from these
things, which he knows and loves, to talk about literary problems,
and can out-talk most literary critics at their own game.
He took us through his shining engines, showing us some of the
beauty spots--the Weir pumps and the refrigerating machinery and the
thrust-blocks (we hope we have these right), unconsciously
inflicting upon us something of the pain it gives the bungling jack
of several trades when he sees a man who is so fine a master not
merely of one, but of two--two seemingly diverse, but in which the
spirit of faith and service are the same. "She's a bonny ship," he
said, and his face was lit with sincerity as he said it. Then he
washed his hands and changed into shore clothes and we went up to
Frank's, where we had pork and beans and talked about Sir Thomas
Browne.
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