The Way of a Ship: A Square-Rigger Voyage in the Last Days of Sail

Norman P. Goldman is a retired Civil Law Notaire (Notary) who also
specializes in Montreal history and culture.

While traveling to Salt Spring Island, one of the Gulf Islands in the
Strait of Georgia between the mainland and Vancouver Island, Derek Lundy
discovered a photograph of his great-great uncle, Benjamin Lundy.
Benjamin left Ireland in the latter part of the 19th century to go to
sea and eventually settled on Salt Spring Island.

Incorporating fragments of what he knew about Benjamin, as well a great
deal of research on square-riggers and life aboard them, Lundy
re-creates the story of a young man who “learns the eternal lessons of
the sea, which is to say that he finds out the sort of a man he is.”
Benjamin’s square-rigger is given the imaginary name of Beara Head in
a plausible tale that focuses “on his voyage—not the voyage
itself—as it might have been and could have been.”

Woven into the text are poignant descriptions from the writings of
Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad. Both were seamen before they became
writers, and both compared the sea voyage to the trials and tribulations
of life itself. Lundy, who has meticulously researched the history of
navigation, folklore, sociology, and old Cape Horn seamen, vividly
captures the indignities and hardships of life at sea.