Olejar Books

When, as a young man in the 1880s, Benjamin Lundy signed up for unimaginably hard duty aboard a square-rigged commercial sailing vessel -- one destined for a treacherous, white-knuckle passage round that notorious "graveyard of ships," Cape Horn -- he had no idea that his experience would also provide a window into an epochal transition that would fundamentally change man's relation to the sea.
The Way of a Ship is a mesmerizing account of Benjamin's life on board the square-rigger Beara Head. It evokes both the romance and brutality of that bygone era and illuminates the history of square-rigger seamen and the last days of the "beautiful, widow-making, deep-sea" sailing ships. Derek Lundy's masterful account of his forebear's journey reminds readers what Melville and Conrad expressed so well: that the sea voyage is an overarching metaphor for life itself.