Tall Ship*

THE WANDERER or LIVERPOOL--John Masefield--Macmillan ($3.50)./- The first book John Masefield has written as England's Poet Laureate is appropriately a book about an English ship: the steel four-masted barque Wanderer of Liverpool. The Wanderer has already appeared in enterprising Publisher Hearst's Cosmopolitan. Not all the book is poetry, but even Masefield's prose descriptions of his heroine have often the ring of verse.

The Wanderer was built in her owners' (W. H. Potter & Co.) yards in Liverpool, launched in 1891. She was the biggest sailing ship yet built, over 300 ft. long, of nearly 3,000 tons. "She was of a full model, wall-sided, rather hard in the bilge and with a flat floor, though she grew somewhat sweeter aft. Above the waterline, she was lovely. . . . She was the last achievement in sailing-ship building and rigging: nothing finer had been done, or ever was done." But her very first voyage started with disaster. While still under tow she ran into heavy weather which thickened rapidly into a hurricane, parted her from her tug and left her riding helpless. The storm whipped her new rigging to shreds. Some gear swinging loose killed her captain. The blow over, she limped back to Liverpool for repairs.

There Masefield saw her. "I have seen much beauty, but she was the most beautiful thing. She was so splendid, and so distresst: she was also moving as though she were alive." In all, the Wanderer made ten long voyages, but never one without some accident. "Men fell from aloft and overboard from her; others died, or broke bones, in her; she lost some spars; she took charge of her tugs; her cargoes shifted; she was on fire once and ashore four times." Finally, on April 14, 1907, at anchor in the Elbe River at two o'clock in the morning, a German troopship ran her down and sank her. Her officers and crew got off without loss of life, but she was a total loss. There part of the wreck still lies, in 24 ft. of water.

In two long poems Masefield tells of her first voyage and her last; in many shorter lyrics sings the praises of the Wanderer and her vanished kind. Always a competent narrative poet, the ageing Masefield embroiders fewer purple passages, forges no mighty lines. But he can still write a chantey which cries for music. The first verse:

In Liverpool where I was bred, A long, long time ago, They taught me how to heave the lead.

(Chorus) And across the Western Ocean We're bound away today.

They'll give me a donkey's breakfast, When I sign away my pay; And across the Western Ocean We're bound away today.

The Author. John Masefield was a poor boy, is not a rich man. Born in Liverpool, he went to sea at 14. As every Masefield devotee knows, he once worked as handyman in a New York bar. But for 25 years he has been a teetotaller, liking the looks but not the taste of wine. He lives with his wife and daughter on Boar's Hill, five miles from Oxford, where his melancholy mien and rusty, plunging gait are a perennial peripatetic phenomenon. He founded the amateur Boar's Hill Players, who acted now Shakespeare, now Masefield; he himself once played the ghost in Hamlet, hinnying like a snipe.

Of his many books of verse, best-known are: Dauber, The Everlasting Mercy, Reynard the Fox. Last month U. S. radio audiences heard him recite his famed Sea Fever, heard him hope he would not sneeze (TIME, Sept. 22).

/-Both regular and limited ($20) editions, published Nov. 3.

*New books are news. Unless otherwise designated, all books reviewed in TIME were published within the fortnight. TIME readers may obtain any book of any U. S. publisher by sending check or money-order to cover regular retail price ($5 if price is unknown, change to be remitted) to Ben Boswell of TIME, 205 East42nd St., New York City.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.