The Conquest of the Ocean: The Illustrated History of Seafaring by Brian Lavery

I know absolutely nothing about ships or sailing, and this book was entertaining, informative, well illustrated and nice to hold.  Lavery works chronologically through the history of sailing from the premodern times right up to the present day.

The book is divided into 5 sections:
The First Ocean Sailors to 1850 (Arabs, Vikings, Polynesians, Chinese, Pilgrims, Greeks and Romans);
The Age of Exploration 1450-1600 (European journeys to the Americas, first cirumnavigation of the Earth, Drake, Columbus, Amerigo and medieval ships);
The Age of Empire 1600-1815 (Colonialism, piracy, the slave trade, Cook, Trafalgar and whaling);
Steam and Emigration 1815-1915 (early steamships, American emigration, Chinese and Japanese trade, Clipper ships, submarines, liners and battleships);
The Wars on the Oceans 1914-1945 (World War I and World War II, Jutland, Midway, Atlantic, D-Day, U-boats)
The Global Ocean 1945-present (containers, Cuban Missile crisis, birth of oceanography, Falklands, ocean racing, oil spills, modern piracy)

Each section is illustrated with excellent maps showing the information such as main trade routes, winds, currents, shipwrecks, iceberg zones and battles although sometimes the colours are a hard to distinguish.  There are drawings of the ships spoken about in the text, and usefully page numbers given for cross references.  The maps are mostly accurate, although according to the Battle of the Atlantic one The Hood was sunk nearer Greenland than Scapa Flow!  However, in general the book is generously illustrated, ephermera, paintings, photographs, quotations and facts on almost every page that bring the subject alive.

Shane Spall has in effect written  three books in one. On the simplest level this is a tie in to the BBC 4 TV series, a narrative of Shane and Timothy Spall's attempt to sail from London to Wales in their sea barge The Princess Matilda. They are hilariously hapless, on their first journey they don't make it beyond the Thames Barrier and Timothy takes a thorough crash course in navigation before they set out to sea. They encounter beautiful moorings and full on prejudice and snobbery in equal measure.

This narrative itself would have made for a good book, Shane Spall's mercurial nature in contrast to Timothy's laid back nature and penchant for pink crocs is hilarious but Spall intersperses this story with the heartbreaking one of Timothy's battle with leukaemia and her diaries from nights sat by his bed when he hovered between life and death. Shane had already lost her father and best friend to cancer and her words are honest and searing.

Thirdly there are snippets of Shane's own life, again written with unflinching honesty. Of her previous life as a flower child, of her drug addiction, of the Welsh husband she lost and her experience of giving birth to their daughter Pascale. 

These elements turn a very good book into a firm favourite, and one that I read into the night. I knew Timothy Spall from tv and film, a respected and beloved actor, and this book deepened that respect.

Monsoon by Wilbur Smith


The book opens at the end of the 17th century with teenage Tom Courtney up to mischief, sneaking into the chapel of his father's great estate with his twin brother Guy to meet with a serving girl for sex, making his half brother Dorian look out.  Dorian sounds the alarm as their older brother, the brutal William, approaches and they all flee.  Tom and Dorian are caught by William and Dorian is only saved from being strangled by his father Hal, a powerful man who has built up his massive estate through his exploits at sea fighting the Dutch in South Africa and bringing trade goods back from India, Africa and the Far East.

Hal has been tasked by the East India Company to rid them of the pirate Jangiri who has been preying on their ships as they sail from England to India and Africa.  The strangling of Dorian makes it clear to him he cannot leave any of his three younger sons in the care of his eldest, and he takes them with him.

What follows is an epic swashbuckling adventure, Smith's plot is fast and compelling and his characters beautifully executed and convincing, but Monsoon is much more than that.  Every aspect of 17th century England, Africa and Arabia are cinematically rendered in exquisite detail, customs, dress, armaments, shipping, language and landscape.  A great read.

Alone on a Wide Wide Sea by Michael Morpugo

AZ: "Orphaned in WWII, Arthur is separated from his sister and sent to the other side of the world. There his extraordinary journey continues as he and his friend Marty survive brutal captivity on a working farm, find a new family with the eccentric Aunty Meg and her animals, and discover their talent for designing yachts. Sixty years later, Arthur's daughter Allie sets sail single-handed in a yacht designed by her father, determined to find his long-lost sister in England. Can family love stretch across time and the vastness of the oceans? And will the threads of Arthur's life finally come together?"

This book is split into two parts, the memoir of Arthur Hobhouse as a boy who is shipped to Australia in 1947 and his daughter Allie's account of her single handed yacht journey from Australia to the UK in 2005. It is hard to believe that the memoirs are not genuine, Arthur's experience of being ripped from his family (his sister Kitty), his home and his country and sent without any consultation to an alien country is heart rending and made me so angry, but Morpugo also captures 18-year-old Allie's voices, those of her emails and those of her own thoughts, utterly convincingly.