Glyn L. Evans

This book is a lovely idea, bringing together the poetry of the sea and marine art. I was very pleased to be given the book for, like both John Masefield and Kenneth D Shoesmith, I am a member of the Seven Sea Club, as is author Glyn L Evans.

It is, as with most books in which paintings are reproduced, in landscape format and such books can sometimes be a little unwieldy - there's a lot to hold! The format of the book is a picture to the left and a poem, occasionally prose, on the right-hand page. Thus, I wish the publisher had found a way, on occasion, better to explain what one is reading when it's not a complete poem, for continually having to go to the notes at the back of the book is tiresome. The reproductions of Shoesmith's paintings and posters are generally good but it's a pity that the author chose to use only an extract of the text opposite, albeit an extract that is certainly appropriate to the picture, as a caption for each - surely some of the paintings were given a title by the artist and I would like to know what the title was and, indeed, when the work was painted or published (some of the works are named in the notes, but by no means all).

Many readers, surely, would wish to know the names of the ships in the paintings and posters - I certainly would! Some are named but many are not and most require a dive into the notes to find the answer (or not). The ship that is the subject of the dust jacket is named, albeit incorrectly, for "RSMP Cardiganshire at Port Said" should be RMSP's ss Cardiganshire, perhaps RMS Cardiganshire (or Royal Mail Steam Packet Company's ss [or RMS - I cannot be sure] Cardiganshire (1913). The frontispiece also names the main subject, HMS Queen, but a note that she was a battleship of 1902 would have been good, with a description of what else one sees in the painting - a steam pinnace from the battleship and a dazzle-painted merchantman in the distance. The Cunard Line poster is lovely (p.14) and a very appropriate picture too, but what ship, what date? The four-funnelled liner is either RMS Aquitania or RMS Mauretania, I think.

As one starts the book, the piece on page 15 entitled 'A Steerage Steward' seemed odd, written as it is in the first person - it is Masefield but one must turn to the notes to make sense of it. In these notes, the author admits that they are heavily biased to the paintings by Shoesmith, so one might reasonably expect that the name of a ship, and date launched (the usual date for identifying a ship), were given yet, as I mentioned earlier, it is tedious to keep on having turn the pages of an unwieldy landscape-format book so as to read the notes and hope to find the answer an inquisitive reader hopes for!

The painting on page 24 is a composite work and the notes names RMS Mauretania but not the battleship.

While the poem is named correctly in the Contents, the title 'Number 543' (page 81) is wrong - it's 'Number 534' (and quite one of my favourite sea poems).

Lastly, how I wish there was an index! It need not be long, no more than one page (and there is a blank page at the back of the book!).

In short, this is a nice book but it could have easily been better. Publishers really should work harder to correct mistakes and please the book-buying and book-reading public.… (more)