Mirrors of the Sea
THE first two of these books are both to do with the sailing of small craft for pleasure, yet they could hardly be more different in con- tent. In The Crest of the Wave, Uffa Fox, whose name in sailing circles is a byword, recounts the stories of a dozen voyages made in various craft across the Atlantic, the North Sea and the Channel. It is not a book for those ignorant of sea-terms, nor does Mr. Fox tell us anything about his life and times between voyages. Yet its exclusiveness is its chief attraction, and it is impossible to read the simple, narrative prose without a sense of sharing in the author's hardships and achievements.
Mr. Heckstall-Smith's book deals almost equally exclusively With the social side of sailing. The title is not unconnected with the opening words of the sermon preached in Cowes Church on the eve of the first season after the 1914-18 War. The dowagers Were again in their accustomed pews, 'a little older, a little more painted than they had been five years ago.' The old parson looked down benignly on his congregation and, moved by the poignancy of the Occasion, said : 'Before I begin my sermon, I (rust tell you what great pleasure it gives me to see the old Cowes faces again.'
This is only one of many excellent anecdotes which illuminate the history of this famous resort from the time of the founding of The Squadron' in 1815. Mr. Heckstall-Smith writes from first- hand knowledge, for his father was Secretary of the International Yacht Racing Association, and he himself spent all his early holi- days there. He brings vividly to life all the more famous of the squadron characters—the Kaiser, Edward VII, George V, Lipton, Sopwith, Henry Denison, `Tiggy' Bulkeley (most of whom he met and remembers)—as well as lesser-known members who were so addicted to blackballing that they became known as 'the pillers of society.'
From sailing for the fun of it back to sailing as a profession. In Landfall at Sunset Sir David Bone, author of The Brassbounder and The Queerfella, tells of his life in the Merchant Navy; from being apprenticed to a full-rigged sailing ship bound for Australia via the Horn to his appointment fifty years later as Commodore of the Anchor Line. It is a story of slow and fruitful progression, and if at times it sits a little heavily, it is because Sir David, unlike Uffa Fox, seems to have followed his star with quiet acceptance rather than dynamic enthusiasm.
The seas described by Eric Linklater in The Ultimate Viking are mostly those that wash our northern coasts; and his book is a history of the ultimate islands—in particular the Orkneys and Iceland—and their inhabitants from the earliest times to the beginning of the Middle Ages. The names of the great Vikings and their families, Hauskuld, Hrut, Hailvard and Hairybreeks, Lambi and Flosi, Thorkel and Thorfinn and Thorbjorn, Middle Ford and Eric Bloodaxe, Old Njal, Burnt Njal, Sweyn and Sigtygg, tumble on each other so quickly that one cannot always remember who did what to whom, and when; and their lives in retrospect seem to have followed a rather wearisome pattern of setting fire to each other's houses, drinking ale, and bashing each other on the head. Still, Mr. Linklater's prose compensates for much; and it is worth while remembering that between these wild Orcadians and the world of Uffa Fox and David Bone, there is a 2,000-years' tenuous
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