The Way of a Ship: a Square-rigger Voyage in the Last Days of the Sail

Benjamin Lundy crossed oceans under sail in the late nineteenth century and over one hundred years Derek Lundy, his great-great nephew, has re-created that journey. In The Way of a Ship , he palces Benjamin on board the Beara Head with a community of fellow seamen as they perform the exhausting and dangerous work of sailing a square-rigger across the Atlantic and round Cape Horn. Fed on a diet of pea soup, gristly sat horse, rock hard weevil-infested biscuits and just enough lemon juice to keep scurvy at bay, the seamen were dangerously mal-nourished and sleep-deprived. But their instinct was to give their all through the battering, screaming winds. The equation was simple: they would survive if the ship survived and so they fought to save the ship.