Table of Contents

A BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST

By Roger Michael Johnson

In 2002, on the island of Java, Indonesia, a group of university students with no previous boatbuilding or seamanship experience set about building their own Bantry Bay gig.

DOG HOLES AND WIRE CHUTES

By Jevne Haugan

Lumber from the great forests of the Pacific Northwest built the coastal cities of the south — San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego — and mill — and shipowners alike amassed vast fortunes. But demand fluctuated and before long the ships were being converted for multifarious cargoes and passengers. In less than 100 years an immense local trade rose up, blossomed, and was gone.

THE RETURN OF BESSIE ELLEN

By Graham MacLachlan

From Devon to Denmark and back again — a 100-year-old West Country ketch returns to sail and a working life in home waters.

MATT WALSH BORN AND BRED TO THE SEA

By Thomas Skahill

The story of a Nova Scotia boy who went West to seek his fortune, and found a life in yacht design and sailing.

THE THIRSTY MARINER

By James E. Held

The rise of the Guinness Brewery owes as much to the integrated use of waterborne transport as to the talents of its brewers. For more than 200 years the ‘lovely black stuff’ has been carried near and far, in lowly barges and lofty ships, inland through Ireland, and across the sea to England.