HarperCollinsPublishers releases new book on little-known American sea explorer

New York—William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, has published Morning of Fire: John Kendrick’s Daring American Odyssey on the Pacific. The non-fiction book follows American explorer John Kendrick as he voyages around Cape Horn and up the Pacific Coast, where he is hunted by the Spanish and falls into an intrigue that threatens to pull all of Europe into war. Kendrick opened the way for American trade in the Pacific and through his alliances with native people helped to block the ambitions of Britain and Spain to dominate the North Pacific. Twelve years before Lewis and Clark set out, this largely forgotten American sea captain owned more than a thousand square miles of land on the Northwest Coast.

Using extensive research in American, British, and Spanish archives, author Scott Ridley reveals the story of Kendrick’s seven-year odyssey in its full context for the first time. His journey began in Boston in October 1787 as a master in one of the first US-flagged ships to voyage around the storm-blasted Cape Horn to the Northwest Coast. He left with just two small ships and fifty-two men on a mission to start a trade route for furs with China, establish an American outpost on the West Coast, and discover the Northwest Passage.

Driven by desperation about the future of the United States, Kendrick’s expedition carried the hope of economic revitalization as well as Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an expanding empire of liberty. Captains who later followed Kendrick considered this expedition one of the most remarkable voyages ever undertaken by the United States. Kendrick became a trusted ally of native people on Northwest Coast, and in a series of trans-Pacific voyages he sailed the war-torn islands of Hawaii, and built up further alliances there and in the cutthroat marketplaces of China.

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Review: 'Way of the Ship' revises the standard view of America's shipping past

{cbavatar}techjunc{/cbavatar}Alex Roland, maritime historian at Duke University, teamed up with Jeffrey Bolster and Alex Keyssar to write "The Way of the Ship: America’s Maritime History Re-envisioned, 1600-2000." Published in 2008, it deserves notice by maritime historians. This review is adapted from one prepared by the author for the journal "Technology and Culture."

While traditional American maritime histories celebrate blue-water sailing and the introduction of steam power and lament the post-Civil War decline of the merchant marine, "The Way of the Ship" revises this canon. Roland and his co-authors take a global perspective, look carefully at domestic coastal, lake and river shipping and weave economics, policy, labor, military and technology throughout the story. The result is a major revision of the nation’s maritime history.

The book opens with lively retelling of the colonial and revolutionary maritime experience. In place of the simplistic and traditional “triangular trade” explanation for colonial commerce, one finds a thorough and nuanced analysis of the era’s “complicated pan-Atlantic trading system” (p. 36), a much more satisfying story. From Hakluyt’s earliest maritime plantations through New England’s maritime foundations and the rise and eclipse of Boston as America’s leading shipping center, the story focuses on the enormous extent of coastal and inland waters trading for colonial life. Readers are entreated to a marvelous tour of British North America in which rich understanding of local history fleshes out the larger tale.

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Review: Six Frigates and the birth of the USA's sea power

Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy, by Ian Toll. Published by W. W. Norton, 2006.

{cbavatar}Boatswains_and_Bacteremia{/cbavatar}First-time author Ian Toll begins his story of the fledgling American nation’s first six warships—the Six Frigates of his book’s title—with  a debate about neutrality. The young United States of America at the end of the 18th century was too weak to antagonize its former enemy, Great Britain, or a France transformed by the 1789 Revolution from a trusted friend to a suspicious rival. In Congress, two factions argued about whether a strong navy was needed to fend off these superpowers now facing off in a fresh war of their own. American neutrality was the key to survival. But how to guarantee survival? Republicans (not the ancestor of today’s Republican party) said a navy was an extraneous expense, while Federalists, led by President John Adams, believed a powerful navy was essential to preserving America’s newborn freedom.

Toll, a former Wall Street financial analyst and speechwriter, must know something about navigating political shoals in tense times. He details the struggle that ultimately led to the construction of the six frigates: Constitution, Congress, President, United States, Constellation, and Chesapeake. Opponents buckled under a patriotic call to building American national pride with an unbeatable naval force.

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Heroic rescues of U.S. Lifesaving Service comes alive with new coloring book

The history of America’s Life-Saving Service comes alive in a new, 48-page activity book, "U.S. Life Saving Coloring Book," featuring scenes of life on the sea and the depiction of water rescues. Children can color the pages while learning about efforts to aid shipwrecked sailors and the fates of wrecked ships. From Massachusetts, to the Great Lakes, and the East and West Coasts, the history of life-saving stations can be enjoyed through this fun and colorful activity. Designed for students in grades three to six, colored pencils are best for coloring these rescues.

Author James Owens is a native of Cape Cod whose family has had a long association with the sea and the United States Life-Saving Service. He is a veteran of World War II, a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, and a former commercial artist in New York and high school art teacher on Cape Cod. He is also an amateur historian and served as the former president of Eastham Historical Society. Currently he operates a seventeenth-century windmill in his hometown. He is an active painter and graphic artist.

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