‘Pilots’ sets sail for greatness among maritime literature

PILOTS: THE WORLD OF PILOTAGE UNDER SAIL AND OAR, Pilot Schooners of North America and Great Britain, editor and principal author, Tom Cunliffe, WoodenBoat Publications, Brooklin, Maine, 2001, $69.95.

Make certain your coffee table is in good order before you add this book to its collection. For this is a properly weighty volume: 344 pages, most full color, beautifully reproduced on each 9-by-12-inch sheet of heavy, coated stock. And there’s more to come!

Originally conceived as a single volume that would detail the history of marine pilotage in North America, Britain, Northern Europe and the remarkable brigs of India’s Hooghly River, the publishers soon realized that even the sturdiest coffee table would buckle under the unwieldy mass, if indeed one could be produced.

This, then, is Volume One, a magnificently turned-out book of considerable and very detailed text lavishly illustrated with what must be the most comprehensive collection of 17th and 18th century maritime art ever fit between two covers.

As befits such a portentous volume, this one is the work of 10 authors under the direction of editor (and contributor) Tom Cunliffe. Each author is responsible for a section of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, all the way from San Francisco to Chesapeake Bay, the St. Lawrence and east to Liverpool and Northwest England. Talk about a tour de force.

How, you might well wonder, could there be enough known about ships’ pilots of two centuries ago to allow 10 skilled writers and an editor to find enough interesting material to fill 344 pages? The beginnings of an answer fall into place when you realize just how critically important the seafaring pilot was to maritime commerce in the days before computers, radar, global positioning systems and each of the myriad high-tech navigational aids of the 21st century.

Captains of heavily laden sailing vessels, powered only by often fickle winds and tossed by turbulent tides, were in grave danger as they neared every unknown shore. Without the skilled guidance of a pilot who knew the local waters, its shoals, its reefs, its deceptive approaches, the most experienced mariners could run aground, or worse.

Which is the reason pilots have been put aboard ships outside their harbors for more than 1,000 years. It is an ancient trade because the need for it always has been so critical. Even today, even with all the high-tech gear, very human pilots are carried out to sea off the Port of Portland and clamber up the high sides of great tankers to guide the huge vessels safely into Portland Harbor. It is he, not the captain, who is responsible for the ship’s safe arrival.

Given the number of ports serving humanity on the coasts of the world’s great oceans, it’s no wonder the history of pilotage is rich in drama and even richer in the stories of the sailing schooners that were designed specifically to carry those harbor pilots swiftly and safely to the ships that depended on them. It’s a very safe bet that the stories of those seamen and their boats never has been told in more detail or illustrated more lavishly and lovingly than in this remarkable volume. Readers will not turn a single page without being treated to splendid graphics and finely reproduced illustrations.

Some of the schooners descended from the early pilot boats were destined for glory. One, the America, perhaps the loveliest and fastest wooden schooner ever built, is just one of thousands of fine boats delineated here in such generous detail. Portraits of the ship, and there are several, seem to come alive as the ship dashes through the seas off England and New York.

But this is just one of literally thousands of graceful and (most important of all) seaworthy sailing ships, all but a few of them schooners, that sail the hundreds of pages of this unique book. Mark it well, and remember it when you are looking for that special gift for your maritime friend.

John Cole is a free-lance writer from Brunswick.