Clouds of White Sail: Fishermen, Racing, and the End of an Era

Fishermen from New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces once made a reputation by driving their schooners under a full press of sail in a howling gale on their run into market, fueling the popular imagination with romantic images of Captains Courageous. But by the early twentieth century, they seemed destined to go the way of workers ashore, who had been displaced by new technologies. Then fate intervened in the form of the International Fishermen’s Races. Clouds of White Sail tells the story of how schoonermen were able to reignite the public’s love affair with the beauty of their ships and the romance of the sea and hold onto their way of life in a way that few other workers were able. Michael Wayne Santos’s narrative takes a page from the fo’c’sle traditions from which he draws; like the men whose saga he immortalizes, he not only loves a good story but also knows how to tell one.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction: Romanticism and Reality: Fishermen as Workers and Heroes Competition and Working Class Tradition among the GloucestermenClass, Community, and the Fishermen of GloucesterThe Early Races, 1886–1913“Bucking the Inevitable”: The View from the United States“Bucking the Inevitable”: The View from Canada“Bona Fide Fishing Vessels”: The Early Races for the Halifax Herald Trophy, 1920–1921Forgetting Principle: Nationalism, Civic Pride, And the Quest for the Trophy, 1922Boosterism, Sentimentality, and Working Class Sport: Racing Between 1923 and 1929“Clouds of White Sail”: Romanticism and the End of Racing in the 1930sEpilogue: Continuing Legacies Notes Selected Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Michael Wayne Santos is professor of history at the University of Lynchburg.

Review :
Michael Wayne Santos masterfully weaves the tale of the newly arrived Irishmen who contributed to the growth of maritime industries and who invigorated New England seaport life through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Men like my great-great grandfather John H. McManus and his sons, ‘America’s Cup’ sail-maker Charlie and the renowned knockabout schooner designer Thomas, worked alongside Boston Brahmins as well as other new immigrant groups to shape New England’s rich maritime history. Eventually, as this book documents, they would compete with their Canadian counterparts in swashbuckling schooner races that captivated both nations. In so doing, these groups of old and new Americans helped to forge some of the best maritime traditions of our country, which we all still share. The Schooner Adventure was built in 1926. Designed by Thomas McManus as a ‘knockabout’—having no bowsprit, which was known as a ‘widow maker’ due to the danger of working on the jib—she spent twenty-seven years fishing cod, haddock, and halibut off Georges Bank. Since her return to Gloucester in 1988, she has become a National Historical Landmark and serves to preserve and celebrate the traditions of America’s oldest port through education, interpretation, and community events. As her skipper, I appreciate what she stands for, which is why I find Santos’s book, Clouds of White Sail, so compelling. He has captured the story of the fishermen and the ships they sailed in a readable narrative that helps us to understand their experiences and their contributions to American maritime history.