THE SEA WITCH

By Alexander Laing'25, Farrar and Rinehart, N. Y.

Here is an answer to those of us who have been crying so long for a good novel of the sea, but an answer more satisfying, more salty, more complete, than we dared ask. The Sea Witch is a book of the sea and ships from dust cover to end papers. It is not thought of strictly as a novel, but rather as a history of manners, and most of-all as the story of a ship. The Sea Witch herself was the first of those clean-lined, hollow-bowed clippers that went the mad swift voyages that China tea and California gold called for. She is heroine of the book, and no author had ever a more beautiful. Mr. Laing is in love with her, as each of his readers must be. For him "the clipper ship as a type can be justly called the greatest achievement of any national ethos in the last century, combining miraculous beauty with vital use." No ship more completely justifies that praise than the Sea Witch.

We see her first emerging in the mind of her creator, Isaac Silver, then lifting her slender grace on the ways in skeleton of live oak. We feel her spirit through young Hugh Murray, fashioning his hamadryad of elm curved between bowsprit and stem. Both designer and carver of figurehead know "the wisdom of the wood" and that high place where strength and slenderness are one. They strip her body clean of the old conventional decorations. Even the very workers with saw and maul are uplifted by her. She is "the lady." For these men Mr. Laing has understanding, even tenderness.

Such perfection needs no museum walls to protect it. The long road to China and the bitter fight with Cape Stiff prove her, and she hangs up records that still hold. While she races, men live their lives within her. The human story comes out of the three Murray brothers: Roger (modelled on Capt. Bob Waterman) strong, imperious, and greatest of shipmasters; Will, simple and sturdy as the keel timbers of the ship; Hugh, weaker, keen to beauty, stiffening the structure of his life by this hard existence. For two of them there is love for Mary, Roger's wife, who is united to the ship first by Hugh's figurehead, into which has gone his unspoken love, and later by her own living aboard her. At the same time go on hardship, brutality, and, at times, the deep grumble of the mutinous- hearted fo'c'sle. There is no softening of the cruelty of storms and the beastliness of men, but the darkness is lit by the loveliness of tall masts and sheer hull.

This is no thin novel. Into it have gone years of study and research. Mr. Laing has consulted somewhere about a thousand books. Into the body of the story he brings his knowledge of old New York, ship con- struction, navigation, winds, courses, and a thousand details that give the story richness and scope. Nowhere have I seen the difficult theory of sailing made so understandable and so fascinating. Through his interpretation the landlubber has the exciting feeling that he understands these mysteries, for it is the explanation of one who combines two rarely united faculties, scientific exactness and poetic rightness.

Some may feel that the book is over- generous in its inclusion of nautical theory and terminology. They will be outnumbered by those who rejoice in the sense of reality and solidity such matters give. Only thus could the book be more than a novel and become the history of the golden years of the Clippers. Only thus could the book become like those ships, a thing of balanced imagination and fact, of beauty and utility. One fault, perhaps, is inherent in Mr. Laing's very conception. The people are never entirely real. We see the side of them that belongs to the ship and the story, not their complete selves. But I, for one, ask completeness of them no more than from Tom Bowling or Queequeg. It is the trade, the sea, and the swiftest ship on it that holds us, and too high a development of subservient characters would destroy the greater story and the constant presence of the ship's spirit.

The Sea Witch does not allow full criticism in so brief a space. It is too many things, novel of human conflicts, sea story, history of a time and a trade, and the biography of a supremely great vessel. Each reader will like some aspect of it best, but each will know it is a fascinating book, with some of the strength and personality and beauty of its heroine, the Sea Witch.