AROUND CAPE HORN, by Charles G. Davis, edited and introduced by Capt. Neal Parker, Downeast Books, Camden, 2004, $14.95.

Charles G. Davis wrote in his journal Aug. 3, 1892, “Here was I, a gentleman’s son, who had always had a good home and loving parents, leaving all the luxuries I was used to and selling myself into modern slavery for what? – for the fun of it.”

For the previous three years, Davis had been an apprentice draftsman to the famous New York yacht designer William Gardner. The close work soon strained his eyesight and a doctor suggested that he go to sea for a year as a curative measure. Having been an accomplished yachtsman, the logical step seemed to include shipping out on a sailing merchant vessel.

“Around Cape Horn” is taken from a manuscript that Davis wrote based on his journal. That manuscript came into the hands of Capt. Neal Parker, skipper of the 67-foot schooner Wendameen of Rockland. Capt. Parker, a sailor, author, wooden-ship restorer and model maker, is almost as interesting a character as Charles G. Davis, who, in later life, made his living building museum-quality ship models. Parker served as editor for this edition. Where pages of the manuscript were missing, he was able to refer to Davis’ journal and fill the blanks.

The morning after penning the initial entry in his journal, Davis landed on the deck of the 880-ton bark James A. Wright. The economic times were changing and the blue-water sailing vessels were being challenged for cargoes by steam-powered ships of steel.

Cutting the work force to the bone is nothing new. The Wright, a full-rigged ship, left New York on a ten-month voyage to Chilean ports with a crew of eight seamen, two mates, the captain, a cook and a cabin boy; 13 souls to sail such a vessel through the gales of Cape Horn. In the 1840s, the heyday of the Cape Horners, such ships carried a crew of 30 seamen.

The eight seamen were split into two watch sections that spent alternating four-hour shifts on duty. Davis writes about the outbound trip around the Cape that “more than once I found myself crawling up the jumping ratlines with a crowd of dark figures all about me. Up to that moment I had been unconscious. My sleepy, tired faculties refused to awaken, and the wonder of it was I didn’t go overboard.”

In a gale, going aloft was preferable to remaining on deck. “Imagine … such a man trying to keep his footing on the deck when the seas are breaking aboard with force enough to stave in the side of a house and the bark rolling so her decks are at an angle of forty-five degrees each way.”

Davis brings to the reader the true life of the men who sailed before the mast. There was precious little romance to it. The water was rationed. The food was both bad and, many times, in short supply. The work was backbreaking, endless and dangerous. Raising the main topsail called for all hands, including the captain and the mates.

Davis was also a talented artist and “Around Cape Horn” is sprinkled with illustrations he made either on the voyage or later when the story was serialized in the magazine Forest and Stream. There is also an interesting photo of the Wright shortly after launch at Wilmington, Delaware, in 1877. On the pages following the picture are deck and sail plans of the ship, supplied by Blue Jacket Shipcrafters in Searsport. Unfortunately, when reduced to page size, much of the labeling on the plans is illegible, even with a magnifying glass.

To this correspondent, the book has only one glaring weakness. Numerous references are made to evolutions that involve sails found today only on such ships as the U. S. Coast Guard’s training ship, Eagle. It would have been ever more enjoyable to be able to refer to a drawing of such a ship under full sail with those clearly labeled.