In 1976 a team of hand-tool shipwrights and a blacksmith; working with raw materials on a bare public lot; re-created a fully functional Baltimore clipper. The feat was like bringing a woolly mammoth back to life. This ship; Pride of Baltimore; a topsail schooner with a sail plan of well over nine thousand square feet; embodied the sailing technology that had once enabled a newborn United States to take its vigorous place among the nations of the world. On her first voyage in 1977; she traveled to ports throughout the western Atlantic. Then she went global. Wherever she went; she inflamed the desire of cities; states; and countries to reclaim their own nautical heritagemdash;a heritage that had been largely forgotten in civilizationrsquo;s rush toward the industrial technologies of steam; oil; and iron. Melbourne Smith made this happen. Melbourne is a self-invented human phenomenon with a mind equal parts mechanical exactitude and reckless enthusiasm. In youth he was an apprentice sign-maker and hyperactive misï€t from a drab city on the shore of Lake Ontario. He has been at various times a musician; commercial artist; book designer; sailor; painter of meticulous watercolor portraits of historical vessels; shipbuilder; nautical technician; historian; marine architect; and even; briefly; a lieutenant-commander of the Guatemalan Navy. His story includes shipwrecks; natural disasters; desperate escapes; glorious failures; but always the assumption that any personrsquo;s life is an unscripted adventure demanding unquestionable expertise. Combining mechanics and vision; Melbourne Smith shattered the amnesia of progress and reawakened the world to the great history of towering masts; fast hulls; shining sprawls of canvas; and extreme risk on the high seas.
#3456623 in eBooks 2015-11-30 2015-11-30File Name: B018V1IMK4
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