Ian Garrick-Mason

For Jack Tar, going to sea was the ultimate adventure

Storms, shipwreck and scurvy were generally in store for the 18th-century seaman, but that still beat the prospect of drudgery on land

‘Jack fights for the love of it, being a pugnacious kind of animal.’ J. Fairburn’s hand-coloured print of British sailors boarding an Algerian pirate ship, c. 1825
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  • Sons of Waves: The Common Seaman in the Heroic Age of Sail

    Stephen Taylor

    Yale, pp. 490, £20

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