WAR AT SEA UNDER QUEEN ANNE.
By Commander J. H. Owen, R.N.
New York: The Macmillan Company.
1938. 316 pages. $7.50.
Reviewed by Captain J. H. S. Dessez, U. S. Navy
Now when the great nations of the world are all bent on rearmament, there is a particular appeal to any book dealing with war. Commander Owen’s book War at Sea under Queen Anne has the added interest of dealing with the beginning of a period of over a hundred years during which Great Britain was almost constantly at war. The end of the period at Waterloo found her “The mistress of a mighty empire, the owner of incalculable wealth, and the center of the world’s exchanges.”
Certainly there should be a genuine interest in war at sea under Queen Anne. Unfortunately, one is disheartened at the outset by the preface of this book. “It is convenient, if not imperative, to deal with war at sea by itself,” writes Commander Owen. Why? At the beginning of an imaginative period when the energies of the British people are released to accomplish such a great change in the organization of the world, why should the naval war be isolated? The phrase “for reducing the exorbitant power of France” certainly is not an adequate explanation. In short this book is a narrative written without a point of view.
This book is full of minor details which lend to the drabness of the narrative. No personalities are made to stand out. The events never seem vital or important.
The “portrait helps in reading men’s characters in print” is true and the portraits which illustrate the book do more than the text in portraying the characters of the admirals. The reproductions of contemporary charts are also of particular interest.
The final chapter, “The Alarm from Dunkirk,” 1708, is the best in the book, describing as it does the attempted landing of Prince James, the pretender, in Scotland.
It is with great anticipation that one takes up this book. Certainly there is a great field for the historian in naval history. The period is of particular interest. The theater of action is today again the scene of vital activity for the Navy of Great Britain. Spain is now again a center of interest. However, one puts this book aside with a sense of the futility of this narrative. A great imaginative and creative period in history finds no understanding interpretation here.
THE MARINE COLLECTION AT INDIA HOUSE. Privately printed at the Sign of the Gosden Head, New York. 1935. $25.00.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Ernest M. Eller, U. S. Navy
The India House is an organization founded before the World War by business men interested in expanding America’s foreign trade and rebuilding her Merchant Marine. Its home is the old Cotton Exchange Building in that section of New York which has witnessed much of the pageantry and color, the commonplace and glorious in the story of America on the sea. In its short existence, the India House has made an important collection of maritime Americana including paintings, lithographs, etchings, ship models, and such other things as a ship’s clearance papers signed by Napoleon Bonaparte.
A record of the more important items of this collection has been assembled into a handsome volume which is in many respects a view in minute detail of the greatness of America at sea.
The forepart of the book is a historical sketch, filled with the breath of the sea, on the growth of the “Port of New York.” Noah Brown, Fulton, Stevens, the Black Ball Line, the clippers—famous names live vividly again as the author relates for New York “the strange sea change of its few, forlorn, dilapidated brigs and schooners into a vast fleet of ships and steamers.”
The major portion of the book is made up of short biographies, which seems as suitable a word for a ship as for a man. Dimensions, builder, where built, masters, cruises, final end—in these prosaic elements one may read the details of American shipping. Many of the biographies are uneventful, as are most voyages at sea if we do not consider the storms the great rhythms of night and day, the currents and winds and colors on the unmarked sea. Many others are alive with adventure, for some of the most famous names on the sea have their stories told here simply and powerfully. Among them we read of the frigate Constitution, the ketch Intrepid, the famous Isaac Webb, Flying Cloud, Sovereign of the Seas, the world’s first steam warship Fulton, the Merrimac, the Kearsarge, De Long’s Jeannette, and the yacht America now at the Naval Academy. After reading the biography one almost feels that he has been associating with the characters themselves of America’s epic on the sea. One of the few defects of the book is that the items are not arranged in chronological periods so as to present a continuous story. One of its outstanding virtues, enhancing its attractiveness and its value to the student of maritime history, is 37 splendid engraved plates, 11 of which are in color.
This volume is well recommended to anyone who is seriously interested in America’s history on the sea, who loves marine paintings, and who realizes with the compilers that there has been no economic factor “that has more profoundly affected the destinies of the human race than the development of ocean transportation.”