A thriller, an adventure, and a lovely picture book
Published May, 2004
By Sandy Marsters
For Points East
There are images in this powerful book that last for a long, long time. How about a school bus, stranded on a narrow spit of land, unloading its young passengers only to have them swept away by thundering seas? Or this: "The younger Moore children were weeping. Through the bedroom window they had watched the house next door blow down. They saw Ann Nestor step outside, wrapped against the weather in a scarf and hat. A huge wave came, and suddenly she wasn't there. All at once, the storm was not fun."
I'll say.
Sudden Sea
The Great Hurricane of 1938
R. A. Scotti, Little, Brown and Company, 279pp., $24.95 |
Here's what another witness saw from a train stopped on a trestle — or what was left of it. "The house was floating on the water. One wall had been torn away, leaving the interior exposed like a dollhouse. Mother and children clung together." As the passenger watched, helpless, " Ôa terrific blast ripped off the roof. The walls fell apart, the flooring gave way, and the woman and children plunged into the heaving sea of wreckage.'"
R.A. Scotti is a journalist, a former newspaperwoman, and she brings her skills as a researcher and storyteller together with an instinct for the powerful image and the telling anecdote. Her account of the Hurricane of 1938, from a hot sunny day on the beach to, just hours later, what could only have appeared to be Armageddon, is electrifying.
Talk about a perfect storm: This monster of a tropical cyclone roared up the east coast at 60 miles per hour, too fast for any warning from the fledgling weather service, and slammed into southern New England with winds clocked at 186 miles per hour.
Rhode Island got the worst of it, but Maine was the only New England state without a victim among the 682 dead.
Wouldn't it be nice to know that this could never happen again.
If you like boats, and I presume you do if you're reading this magazine, then this is a book for your coffee table. Don't bring it on the boat — it's far too beautiful (not to mention expensive.) And it won't fit in a bookcase.
Bound for Blue Water
J. Russell Jinishian; The Greenwich
Workshop Press; 184pp.; $85 |
This is an art book, but you really don't even have to especially like art to appreciate it. If all the wonderful marine art collected in this book were to appear in a single museum exhibit, the line of boat shoe-clad visitors would stretch for miles.
It's like having a boat show in your own living room.
New Englanders will especially like it because so many of the paintings, which range from historic oils to modern watercolors to sculpture to some unbelievable scrimshaw, have their roots here.
And everyone will develop their favorites for the memories and emotions these pictures stir.
Mine is Christopher Blossom's "Run to Current Cut," depicting a lone cruising boat on a crossing in the Bahamas. Downeast cruisers will love Blossom's "Silhouette," capturing all the beauty, wonder and adventure of a Maine sail
Much of the text I could do without — the paintings speak for themselves. And in a few cases, the text can be annoying for its sloppiness. "Soames" Sound? "South Bristle" Maine? Worst of all was the text accompanying my favorite painting, mentioned above. Though the perspective is clearly from the bow, the text claims we are looking forward from the helm. Nobody's perfect, present company included, but for $85 you ought to be pretty damned close.
Still, you'll spend most of your time looking at the paintings, admiring the fine reproduction, and wishing you could afford just one of the originals to hang in your living room.
By Carol Standish
For Points East
In 10 endearing chapters, John Conway, sailor, boat restorer and father extraordinaire, relates 10 years of family catboating adventures, mostly in Buzzard's Bay. His crew variously and singly are his two daughters, Abby and Caroline, son Ned, and supportive but scarce wife, Christine. The kids become more involved every year and the adventures become more elaborate.
Catboat Summers
John Conway, Sheridan House, 224pp, $19.95 |
Buckrammer, the scene of the action, is a 90-year-old, 24-foot Crosby Catboat, named in the Conway incarnation after an " over-sized street-smart breed of cat (purportedly) developed by the railroad to counter the rat problem in the South Boston yards." Conway's grandparents lived nearby. When the grandchildren visited they were cautioned against approaching these fearsome beasts. Thus, Conway piles his own happy childhood memories into his ample boat.
Adventures include Buckrammer's benighted participation in the Tall Ships parade in Boston in 2000; several diving and treasure-hunting expeditions, explorations of the harbors of the Elizabeth Island chain; an encounter with a ghost ship in the fog; winning the annual Catboat Association race by coming in last; and a family visit to the Crosby yard.
Conway's quirky, self-deprecating humor laces every scene. He calls himself an "addled middle-ager," the boat "the family-infected woodpile" or "the old bucket."
When I finished this charming book I had three wishes: that the book hadn't ended, that I'd been a Conway kid, and in lieu of either, that summer would hurry up.
Carol Standish reviews books for Points East.
|
