Between Sea and Sky: Strange and Unique Stories of the Sea

Melvin Baker is an archivist and historian at Memorial University of
Newfoundland, and the co-editor of Dictionary of Newfoundland and
Labrador Biography.

Between Sea and Sky is the latest book from one of Newfoundland’s most
prolific popular authors on its maritime history. (Earlier works include
Toll of the Sea: Stories from the Forgotten Coast [1995], Committed to
the Deep [1999], and Raging Winds, Roaring Sea [2000].) This book of
“strange and unique stories of the sea” follows Parsons’s proven
success formula: short, journalistic-style articles organized according
to several broad themes—“wreck,” “fatalities,”
“abandonment,” “people,” and “murder.” Besides contemporary
newspaper accounts, Parsons has been well served by his loyal readers,
who have provided him with oral accounts of wrecks, ships, and their
crews.

The book forms part of a large body of information on local shipping
history; what is now needed is a more authoritative publication, a
dictionary of shipwrecks and lost vessels, that could serve as a
reference index to this literature and a supplement to the tales of
heroism, mystery, and intrigue embedded in Newfoundland’s rich
maritime history.