Naval History

This thorough and very important study is offering completely new perspectives on the marine hunter-gatherers on the basis of the information and data collected during several decades of the cutting-edge researches conducted in southern California region.

The list of issues covered within this publication includes such the important ones as early seafaring, human-environmental interactions, colonial encounters and others. This truly provocative volume is intended to energize the healthy debates about the maritime societies in the above mentioned region. This work is addressing many critical issues in the recently conducted studies, including maritime intensification. The authors of this book have also tried to demonstrate that the original colonization of the San Clemente Island took place much earlier than anyone thought.

In short and according to the numerous review by the professionals and enthusiasts who have already tried this book, it offers readers an excellent and thoroughly compiled synthesis which brilliantly summarizes many years of intensive research in this field and placing San Clemente Island in a very heart of the ongoing debates about the problems of peopling of Americas, as well as the nature and antiquity of the marine adaptations, cultural complexity and other important aspects.

Throughout the whole history of maritime enterprise and achievement, few ships have ever excited so much interest as the clippers, even though they existed for quite short historical period. In both the America and Great Britain there was a great surge of interest and enthusiasm in the design, construction and performance of the clippers which were of a type unique in the annals of the sea.

Never before had shipbuilders been in such a hurry to construct large ocean-going ships to sail at maximum speed, and this was particularly true of America. Here the clippers were for the most part intended to transport eager prospectors to the "land of gold" in California, and this necessitated a battle with the elements in the storm-swept oceans around Cape Horn. The gold rush frenzy, as far as the ship building was concerned, lasted in the US from 1849 to 1854, although the performance of the clippers continued to be studied avidly.

Unfortunately, the years of the American Civil War terminated all this. In Great Britain the picture was slightly different, because fold was discovered in Australia three years later than in California, and clippers sailing from Britain did not have to contend straight against the fierce westerlies off Cape Horn on their outward passage.

So the clipper ship era overlapped in the 1850s, and thereafter the China tea trade produced a fine selection of clippers, a sprinkling of which were of the "extreme" category. However, this second clipper ship boom was brought to a sudden close in 1869 by the opening of the Suez Canal, which forced down freight rates for sailing vessels to ruinously low levels, and consequently, the construction of clippers ceased.

An excellent title providing all readers with quite absorbing look at the life on aboard the sailing ships of the past times, namely those plying the North Atlantic area during the French colonial era. Gilles Proux, the author of this brilliant volume, has mainly been focusing on the first half of the XVIII century and the historical period including the Seven Years' War, analyzing four main aspects of the crossing, namely the maritime shipping traffic and the outfitting of the ships, people of these times together with their occupations, the Atlantic course and ship navigation, and life aboard the vessels.

Combined together, they all making a truly fascinating picture of the sea life. When preparing this publication, the author has used the official correspondence between the Canadian authorities and the Minister of marine, plus the valuable historical documents that have been seized on the ships, personal diaries of the seamen and official log-books, in order to get all required details on the shipboard experience.

In addition to that, numerous photographic images have been included in the volume to better illustrate that exciting period in the history of Canada. The content of this perfectly compiled volume will be very highly rated by all people interesting in the subject.

By 1855, Canada ranked among the greatest ship-owning and shipbuilding nations of the world. A vast dispersed flotilla of 7196 Canadian-constructed wooden ships sailed the oceans of both hemispheres. Quebec was the business centre of it all, one of the world's most important maritime trade, and that was where that Henry Fry settled about a century passed after the British forces ended France's failed North American empire.

Two very decisive battles took place on the Plains of Abraham; Quebec city was overwhelmingly French-speaking, and the city would become so again. But for a few years in the middle of the nineteenth century, two of every five residents of the port city used the everyday language of English, and even more did so in business Shipbuilding and owning, and timber commerce — largely conducted by men like Henry through their British contacts — dominated the economic life of Lower Canada, while the city was its capital. At those times, shipping agents and brokers did not care too much about their business ethics.

Many of them were quite well known for continuously charging really usurious fees in advancing money to the shipbuilders. They overloaded unseaworthy ships with timber to enlarge their profits and this was directly endangering the lives of the seafarers. Henry Fry was one of the notable exceptions. Beings very honest and generous, he did his best fighting against human rights abuses, "He was an outstanding figure in the maritime history of Canada", wrote Basil Greenhill....