Table of Contents

THE HISTORY OF BRITISH LIFEBOATS AND LIFE-SAVERS

By Nicholas Leach

For 175 years the lives of mariners around British coasts have been saved by volunteers using boats and equipment funded by voluntary contribution from people of all walks of life. The boats of the twenty-first century are far removed from those of the 1800s, and are fitted with efficient engines, state-of-the-art searching equipment, and saftey features once unimagined. Nevertheless, despite the technological advances, the ethos of selfless bravery continues.

SAILING INDIANS OF THE NORTHERN GREAT LAKES

By Owen S. Cecil

Among the most legendary of traditional small craft are the birchbark canoe and dugout of the North American Indian. Less familiar, however, are the small, planked, sailing boats built and used by the Native Americans of the northern Great Lakes. Little material evidence of these boats survives and few records have been discovered, yet the author has weaved together a fascinating insight of a waterborne culture that was fundamentally important to native people on either side of the United States-Canadian border.

RESCUING USS CONSTELLATION

By Geoffrey M. Footner

While many large ships of historical interest have been restored, preserved, or replicated in recent years few can have attracted more intrigue and controversy than USS Constellation. Through most of the twentieth century the debate over the ship’s type frigate or sloop-of-war and year of build 1797 or 1853 rumbled on until, by the late 1990s, a consensus was arrived at and, with that, a massive restoration was set in motion to much critical acclaim. The author presents a detailed view of the final conclusions and an in-depth appreciation of the restoration that was underaken in the full glare of public and media scrutiny.

TRADITIONAL POLYNESIAN NAVIGATION

By Jeff Evans

When the first European explorers sailed into the Pacific ocean they were unknowingly signalling the beginning of the end for traditional Polynesian navigation skills. However, some of those traditions do still survive in Micronesia and, by studying these, the author puts together a fascinating picture of how Pacific-voyagers of the past may have navigated and how they were trained in that knowledge by their elders.

THE KAISER’S YACHTS PART II

By Kristin Lammerting

The first yachts owned by the last German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, were of British or American origin. But as yachting in his own country grew around the turn of the nineteenth-twentieth century, so, too, did the yacht design and building industry. At last the Kaiser was able to commission, own, and race successful yachts that were ‘made in Germany’. The author tells the tale of the great Meteors IV and V, and of the proud but short-lived glory days of German yachting.