Forty Years Master: A Life in Sail and Steam

During Daniel O. Killman’s more than fifty years at sea, hewas shipwrecked off Coos Bay, discovered gold in Alaska, wasdismasted in a hurricane near Fiji, lost a rudder en route toAdelaide, had run-ins with bureaucrats, officials, and seamen,and found himself in court facing charges of murder, all the whileremaining in impeccable standing with the owners of his vessels.His thrilling life at sea during the last decades of sailing ships andthe emergence of steam vessels in the Pacific is chronicled in FortyYears Master: A Life in Sail and Steam.

Edited and annotated nearly forty years after Killman’s death byprominent Pacific Coast maritime historians John Lyman andHarold D. Huycke Jr., Killman’s memoir has been compiled byRebecca Huycke Ellison from her father’s papers, archived at theSan Francisco Maritime Museum. Now with an introduction bymaritime scholar Brian J. Rouleau and an afterword by DavidHull, Killman’s rollicking narrative of storms, surly mates, bustlingports, and the business of navigating the high seas will entertainand inform scholars, students, and general readers interested innautical and maritime history, late nineteenth-early twentiethcentury trade and commerce, and West Coast/trans-Pacificmaritime history.