Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. Softcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> This book is the life story of a British coasting seaman shipmaster and shipowner in the last years of small wooden merchant sailing ships written by himself. It is a unique record a first hand account of a very old way of life which has now completely vanished and which is very much a part of the history of Britain. The record is the more valuable because it covers the period when that way of life made a partly successful attempt to adapt itself to the changes that were going on around it before it was finally lost in the general development of the modern world. It falls to very few men to be almost the sole means of preservation of any record of the way of life they followed. This has been W. J. Slade’s particular privilege. Through this book and through his very significant contribution to the writing of The Merchant Schooners he has saved the last years of one of the oldest industries from oblivion. There is as far as I know only one other comparable record Captain Hugh Shaw’s autobiography which he has deposited in the manuscript collection of the National Maritime Museum. I have with Mr. Slade’s help written at length in the two volumes of The Merchant Schooners about the historical background which gave rise to the way of life which Mr. Slade followed. Until the development of the internal. (LL)