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Page 54
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.
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