David W. Shaw (1)

On September 27, 1854, the steamship Arctic, the pride of the United States trans-Atlantic shipping & passenger fleet, sank following a collision with the French steamer Vesta on the Grand Banks.

The Sea Shall Embrace Them is the story of the Arctic; of the honorable captain who was willing (with his young son) to go down with the ship and the rebellious crewmen who were not; and of the passengers who perished because of the crew's dishonorable behavior.

It is also the story of the show more 19th-century Yankee trans-Atlantic shipping trade, and the battle with foreign competition (mostly in the form of the Cunard Line of Britain.) Anyone who thinks that government bailouts are a new phenomenon may be surprised to learn that the Arctic was built and operated largely with government bailout funds.

This is definitely a story worth telling, and author David Shaw tells it well. I am somewhat disappointed with the lack of footnotes/endnotes, though the author does provide a bibliography (as well as a glossary of nautical terms). show less

A book about a record set by a female navigator in 1851 on a schooner from NY to San Francisco. Good description of transporting goods via schooners in the 1850s, the boats, sailors and conditions and how they navigated and the officers and their lives. The author did an excellent job of making the voyage real and giving us an insight into the lives of the officers, crew and passengers of a working schooner in the 1850s. I loved all of the facts he gave us about the shipbuilder, details of show more the ship and how they navigated at the time, as well as why they didn't use the Magellan Strait and what happened to the working sailing ships with the takeover of steam ships and the railway line across the isthmus of Panama. show less