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Publisher:
Picador (Pan Macmillan UK) |
Release
Date: March 2003 |
ISBN:
0330374656 |
Awards:
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Format
Reviewed: Paperback |
Buy
it at Amazon US
|| UK |
Read
an Excerpt |
Genre:
Historical [Contemporary and 1842, Cornwall and various locations]
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Reviewed:
2003 |
Reviewer:
Rachel A Hyde |
Reviewer
Notes: |
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The
Wreck at Sharpnose Point
By Jeremy
Seal
Wandering
through the Morwenstow's churchyard in North Cornwall, the author
happens upon a most unusual statue: made from whitewashed wood,
it depicts Scotia, the romantic 19th century embodiment of Scotland
and was the figurehead of the Caledonia, wrecked in 1842 with all
hands lost save one. What follows is the author's obsession with
this wreck, and his search to find out as much as he can about it.
He quizzes locals in and around Morwenstow and the ship's own home
of Arbroath, pores over dusty records up and down the country and
ponders on the chain of extraordinary circumstances that led to
the tragedy.
This is a romance of research, a detective's
dream and a fascinating book that veers from fact to fiction, as
Jeremy Seal in the present day by turns researches and then reconstructs
a version of the ship's last voyage. It is like dropping a stone
in the water as the ripples spread out from one tiny corner of Cornwall
to far-off countries and from the present day back to 1942 and beyond.
But is it all a romance, or an antidote to such? Was the coast notorious
for wrecking, or truly for far more mundane things? This is a beautifully
written book that takes one event and tries to decide whether it
was a dark and dastardly thing following a voyage of high drama,
or nothing of the kind. Even if you are not moved by descriptions
of dusty ledgers in records offices, conversations with farmers
and genealogical research, you might well end up being so, as Jeremy
Seal makes it all sound so compelling. It starts off in an ordinary
enough manner, but progresses to become psychologically fascinating,
as the figure of Rev Hawker appears and the factual forays become
interlaced with an account of one possible reconstruction of the
final voyage. This is a tale of the romance of the past, and our
longings for what ought to have been above what probably was. Highly
recommended.
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