Song of the Sirens

Ernest Gann the Sailing Man (formerly Ernest Gann the Flying Man: Fate Is the Hunter, The High and the Mighty, The Company of Eagles) applies his amusing and astonishing savvy to the sea. Mr. Gann has sailed in, and/or fallen in love with many boats, but the love of his life was the Albatross, a brigantine 'with a capricious auxiliary motor dubbed the ""African Queen."" A good deal of acute anxiety afloat related directly to desperate attentions to the recalcitrant Queen. There are tales of storms, looming sandbars, novice-to-veteran seafarers, airy badinage while waist-deep in deck wash, a variety of imaginative machines. Mr. Gann pays tribute to other craft, but from the moment her jib boom skewered the pilot house of a Dutch police boat, to the moment she sailed away with another man, the Albatross was a constant devotion. Although modest in pretensions, Mr. Gann spins out some jaunty maneuvers (including the bleeding-finger school of fishery), but landlubbers will feel at home on the rolling deck. Salty, manfully philosophical at times, with some of the most hilarious machines afloat, this is a brisk, spinnaker-smacking sail.