10 Nautical Terms from Riddle of the Sands

1. Davit - device for hoisting and lowering a boat

2. Taffrail - rail round the stern of a ship

3. Mizzen-mast - mast aft or next aft of the mainmast in a ship

4. Lee-boards - a lifting foil used by a sailboat, much like a centreboard, but located on the leeside

5. Bowsprit - spar that extends at bows of a ship

6. Jib - small triangular sail extending from the head of the foremast

7. Bumpkin - spar projecting from stern of ship

8. Schooner - a yacht with two masts of which the foremost is shorter than the mizzen (opposite of a ketch rig)

9. Yawl - ship’s small boat; sailboat carrying mainsail and one or more jibs

10. Ketch-rigged - this refers to how the sails are configured. A ketch is a two-masted sailing craft whose mainmast is taller than the mizzen mast. The name "ketch" is derived from "catch" or fishing boat

The Riddle of the Sands

I finished reading The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers the other day. I picked it up and put it down several times in recent years but have finally finished it. It is a spy story in the style of a John Buchan novel I suppose. Such books are easier to watch as films than to read. The book uses a large number of nautical terms and so I had to look up several terms. I read most of it ona  kindle, which comes into its own in that situation as it is a simple matter of highlighting the word and reading the dictionary definition. The yarn is a good one adn worthy of its reputation. I seemed unable to find a copy with maps, which is a helpful extra in trying to follow the plot.

Novelists 42 R Erskine Childers

Robert Erskine Childers DSC (1870–1922), universally known as Erskine Childers, was the author of the influential novel The Riddle of the Sands a novel I have not read but am always intending to get round to. It has never gone out of print and is often cited in top novel lists. They say it was the first spy novel. An Irish nationalist he smuggled guns to Ireland in his sailing yacht Asgard. He was executed by the authorities of the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish Civil War. He was the son of British Orientalist scholar Robert Caesar Childers; the cousin of Hugh Childers and Robert Barton; and the father of the fourth President of Ireland, Erskine Hamilton Childers.

Book Buys July

Rather quiet on the book buying front this month in some ways. Almost no Christian books bought but two events piled up my supply of secular books.

First, The Times were giving away Penguin paperbacks free in certain places. By this means I picked up the following

1. Green (Adventure)
The 39 Steps by John Buchan
Treasure Island by R L Stevenson
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
(I missed Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne)
I've read the first two but not the second two. It would be nice to get round to them.

2. Pink (Romance)
The Lady with the Little Dog and other stories by Chekov
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence
(I missed Madame Bovary by Faubert)
I don't think I've read any of these.

Then, second, I was on Oxford Street and they had a closing down sale in Borders (no surprise there, they never seemed to know quite what they were doing). For £1 each I got

Julia Pastrana: The Tragic Story of the Victorian Ape Woman/Gylseth and Toverud

Hans Christian Andersen/Jack Zipes
Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakepseare/Stephen Greenblatt
Text and Experience: Toward a Cultural Exegesis of the Bible/Ed Smith-Christopher

I also got in July for £1 each biographies of George Elliot and Chrisopher Wren in the very interesting people series from OUP (I have one on Ruskin already). The other buy was the very interesting

Why not Catch-21 by Gary Dexter