94Bibliography
Adams, Thomas R., and David W. Waters, with foreword by N.A.M. Rodger. English Maritime Books Printed Before 1801, Relating to Ships, Their Construction and Their Operation at Sea. Providence, R.I.: John Carter Brown Library and The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England, 1995. xxxi, 602pp. $95. (ISBN 0 -916617-43-2)
Reviewed by DEREK LAW
This important bibliography records some four thousand works dealing with “the creation and operation of the object that was fundamental to mankind’s first relationship with the sea — the ship.” The works listed cover twenty-four topics which represent the four elements that define the subject matter: ship construction, ship handling, the crew, and navigation, with an emphasis on the last of these areas. The work is arranged in two sequences: first, alphabetical by author, including a note of locations; and second, by topic, arranged by date of publication. The style of entry follows that of the STC, and locations are recorded for all but 155 items.
Despite its size and substance, the authors do not claim that the work is definitive but only that it represents a first omnium-gatherum of present knowledge in what they expect to be an ongoing task of bibliography. In a perceptive and frank preface, they attempt to disarm criticism by noting where they perceive flaws and difficulties in methodology and content. While such openness is both disarming and engaging, it does not, in itself, mitigate the problems.
The end date of 1801 is arbitrary for a work intended to cover the age of sail and is dictated by the current state of bibliography. Progress in defining a more appropriate date is felt to rest on the development of the Nineteenth Century Short-Title Catalogue, although it is acknowledged that a more logical issue is to define when sail ceased to be essential and was overtaken by steam. Although such pragmatism is understandable, it is a date more obvious in its appeal to bibliographers than to maritime historians.
The issue of completeness of coverage is acknowledged more satisfactorily. The major unrecorded items are felt to lie in two major areas, ephemera and government publications, particularly those covering naval matters. One can sympathize with the difficulties of tracing the prolific output of broadsides, broadsheets and small pamphlets. The cataloguing of the corporate entry, badly managed by STC, Wing, and ESTC, is particularly relevant in the area of government publications, and it is thought that much may lie concealed because of this. Signal Books and Fighting Instructions, sitting unhappily on the border between the manuscript and the printed book, also require further study.
The bibliography, however, includes journal articles from the Philosophical Transactions and the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, and the authors hope to expand this area much more fully. The arrival of Chadwyck- Healey’s monumental Periodicals Contents Index should open up the contents of early periodicals to humanities scholars in hitherto untold ways. Rich seams of research available thus far only to researchers in the well-indexed modern scientific literature will become susceptible to development.
Not all the works have been seen by the authors, who have taken much on trust. Some works have not been found, but the absence of locations makes it clear which are the potential ghost entries. The notion of balance of probability of existence does not seem unreasonable in this context.
On the other hand, some categories of material have been omitted and some boundaries are fuzzy. In the areas of engraved charts and mathematical and astronomical works, for example, the authors cite sources relevant to but not concentrating on navigation.
The authors do seem to waver on whether the material is exclusively maritime or whether it is also naval. It is instructive to compare Witt’s recent excellent bibliography on David Steel as author and publisher(1). Witt aims at exhaustiveness on a limited canvas, while Adams and Waters admit incompleteness on a broad canvas. Even allowing for this, there are curious inconsistencies. Each has found editions of works omitted by the other. Some of the material in Witt seems curiously omitted in Adams and Waters, but it is not always clear whether the omission is one of accident or of design. Perhaps the best example of this is the inclusion of Steel’s Naval Lists in their various editions but the omission of Steel’s Naval Remembrancer. Now it is no doubt true that this is implicit in the definitions given in the introduction and even in the use of “maritime” rather than “naval” in the title. Nonetheless, the partial inclusion of contemporary naval material is neither justified nor made explicit.
Current reference works are expensive. Despite this, all too many publishers cut corners with cheap production. That is emphatically not the case here. The volume is a pleasure to hold and use, strongly bound, printed on good quality paper, and designed both to be used and to last. It is regrettable that this is worthy both of note and commendation.
Mario M. Witt, A Bibliography of the Works Written and Published by David Steel and His Successors (London: Greenwich Maritime Monographs, 1991).
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Derek Law (Director of Information Services, King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, UK) is a naval bibliographer, has contributed to a number of naval histories, and is the author of The Royal Navy in World War Two. An Annotated Bibliography