Lundy Benjamin - The way of a ship: a square-rigger voyage in the last days of sail

Down to the Seas

Un-homing, Up-anchoring

In Narrow Waters

The Stateliest, Stiffest Frigate

That Unsounded Ocean

The Ocean Paths My Home

The Circle of Her Traverse of the Sea

The Uttermost Cape

The Bloody Horn

Not a Voyage Complete

for The Way of a Ship

A tribute to the seamen of the Age of Sail.

J ONATHAN Y ARDLEY , Washington Post Book World

A fantastic ride through one of the greatest moments in the history of adventureLundy is a master of tension and storytelling.

Seattle Times

The wealth and authority of this book make it a worthy companion to the very best histories on seafaring. This masterly documentary becomes a page-turner to rank with the very best of Patrick OBrian.

P ETER N ICHOLS in the Sunday Times (London)

A saga of life under sail that touches to the quickLundy is particularly good at evoking the most dangerous situations, recounting the interplay between heavy weather and the captains decisions with grim realism, yet lyrically portraying the ship as a living thing that must work, if not in harmony then at least in concert with the riotous elements that surround it.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

readers will surface with a strong sense of seagoing history, a knowledge of the specialized skills involved in keeping square-riggers afloat and a respect not only for the fierce power of the elements but also for Lundys considerable talent as a writer.

Publishers Weekly

An exceptionally rich and satisfying weavemaking the reader feel the sting of the wind and the vertiginous plunge of the waveheir to the tradition of Dana, Melville, Conrada descendant of such classics.

J ONATHAN R ABAN , author of Bad Land and Passage to Juneau

Fascinating. I dont think Ive ever read anything that so authoritatively brings to life what it was like to sail a square-rigged vessel.

N ATHANIEL P HILBRICK , author of In the Heart of the Sea

Derek Lundys new, and marvelous, The Way of a Ship attempts an unusual trick. After declaring itself a work of non-fiction, it co-opts the form of the novel, with narrative arc and wholly imagined charactersIt is indeed a work of nonfiction, but in the way that the best novels always are. The settingthe seaultimately becomes the principal character in this gorgeous book and, as a protagonist, Lundys ocean is as real and nuanced and true as Emma Bovary.

Toronto Globe and Mail

A unique and masterful book that offers both intellectual and visceral thrills as it explores the history of the last great windships and the men who sailed them. Lundy gives us an informed and well-researched discussion of late nineteenth-century merchant seafaring; and shows us the mind-numbing heroism and bravery of the common forecastle sailorsthe despised of the Earthperforming feats and enduring hardship and privation that we can scarce imagine, in what is a riveting account of a white-knuckle voyage around Cape Horn.

J AMES L. N ELSON , author of The Pirate Round and Blackbirder

Even those familiar with the lore of the sea will be impressed with the immediacy [Lundy] brings to hisnarrative of one of the hardest passages of the days of sail. You canfeel the numbing fatigue of half-frozen men beating themselves half to death fisting tattered canvas in the middle of the night, 40, or 80, or 100 feet above a deck that disappears under huge ocean swells.

San Diego Union-Tribune

Unique. a chronicle of seafaring life in the late nineteenth century. I became engrossed [by] Lundys attention to detail and his ability to balance the romance of deepwater-sailwith often nail-biting action.

The Times-Colonist (Victoria, BC)