Endless Sea: A book review
by Southern Woodenboat Sailing 5 Jan 2021 14:56 PST
The art of the overlap © Southern Woodenboat Sailing
It's so much more than what that mildly derisive term implies. Once in a while a beautifully designed book such as this, lands on my desk, and I leaf through it expectantly, wanting and hoping that the substance will match the style. So often I'm disappointed...but not this time.
Recently published by Massey University Press in New Zealand ENDLESS SEA is made up of a series of stories told through the taonga, or treasured possessions, of the New Zealand Maritime Museum, Hui te Ananui a Tangaroa.
Written by Frances Walsh and photographed by Jane Ussher it surveys the collection, exploring New Zealand's maritime history through one hundred fascinating and wide-ranging objects.
Despite or perhaps because of the quirkiness of some of the featured objects, every entry contributes to a wider picture of a nation intrinsically connected to its maritime history. Take these three examples.
The art of the overlap
"If Robert Russel Jnr didn't grow up to have an aesthetic sensibility there would have been something wrong with him. His father Robert Russel Snr made this cradle to mark the advent of his birth in 1908. At the time he was boatbuilder to the Auckland firm of Bailey and Lowe which "turned out some of the finest crack yachts in the colony namely the Enda, Boomerang, Niobe and Bona"....
"Russel looks to have been a prized worker: the cradle is a tribute to his fatherly love, but also to the clinker method of construction, and to kauri.
The Vikings the clinker technique, in which hulls are assembled from thin timber planks, overlapping the one below. The planks are wrapped around temporary formers or moulds, which are removed once the shell is fully fitted. Planks are traditionally fastened to each other with copper rivets, as are the timbers to the planks-all of which makes a strong but relatively light structure which doesn't require caulking to waterproof its joins"...
"The Kauri tree from which the cradle is made, grows in the upper North Island above 38deg North latitude; it can reach over 50 metres tall, with a trunk up to four metres in diameter. To iwi Maori the tree is te whakaruruhau, the great protector, giving shelter to trees and plants below. Due to their size, strength and ability to withstand seawater, kauri trunks were hollowed out to make waka taua, some of which could accommodate more than 100 men. The arrival of Europeans in the nineteenth century resulted in the eventual decimation of the forests.
Mariners and shipwrights learnt some of what their Maori counterparts already knew: that kauri was ideal for shipbuilding. Because kauri was also knot free... it was also perfect for high end furniture. By the time of Russel's cradle making most of the 1.2 million hectares of kauri forest had been felled. Russel died in 1910. Various other infants who visited the Russell household used the cradle once Russell Jnr was unable to comfortably shelter in it"
Captain Gash and the flying machine
"Little is known of the maker of this model ship in which a toroa albatross breastbone substitutes for a hull, and feather quills for a mast and booms. He was Captain William Thomas Gash, and in 1926 he was working for the Northern Steamship Company headquartered in Auckland. He may or may not have sailed with the British explorer Ernest Shackleton.
The model's components look to be from one of the mollymawks, a genus of albatross species found in the southern hemisphere. It was Herman Melville in Moby Dick who describer the 'vast archangel wings' of the albatross, and while this mollymawk is a relatively small albatross, it still has a wingspan of well over two metres.
The elegant seabird has dazzling capabilities. Typical 50-year-old birds -the live into their 60s- are estimated to have flown 3.7 million miles** using a kind of magnetic recking system, which allows them to fix their position relative to Earth's magnetic fields. As well, albatross glide rather than fly locking their wings in an open position like switchblades, catching the wind and sailing upwards. The toroa, in the words of the ecologist and author Carl Safina, is "the grandest flying machine on Earth. It is bone, feather, muscle, and the wind"
(**For the Geeks amongst us, that's roughly 150 circumnavigations of the globe, just saying:)
Police exhibit 1490
This foot pump was recovered by police from the stern of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior, after it was bomber by French saboteurs on 10th July 1985 while moored at Marsden Wharf in the Waitemata Harbour. Two French secret service agents were later found guilty of the manslaughter of crew member and photographer Fernando Pereira.
This tiny glimpse of the eclectic and enthralling selection of items gives an idea of the sparse and non-judgemental writing of Frances Walsh, providing thought provoking detail while allowing the reader to work out for themselves, the relevance of each story to New Zealand's maritime history. Jane Ussher's images tie in beautifully with an unadorned, naturally lit style that reinforces the unpretentiousness of the publication.
Worth a place in the most selective of nautical literary collections
This article has been republished by permission from southernwoodenboatsailing.com