Through Europe's Waterways

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31007, 12 March 1966, Page 4

Through Europe's Waterways

Willynilly to the Baltic. By John Seymour. Wm. Blackwood. 278 pp.

The English Channel and the North Sea within a thousand years of recorded history have spen everything that men could possibly do on the surface of the ocean free. John Seymour, soldier, farmer, writer, who has roamed Africa and India and written well of these, seems to be one of those engaging men of distinctive independence, who looks for the unusual or unconventional in life. In this his eighth book Mr Seymour provides evidence of his pleasure and satisfaction in sailing a Yorkshire “cobble” from the Essex coast, through the waterways of North Holland and North Germany and the Kiel Canal, to the Baltic islands, Sweden, and finishing up at Copenhagen. Cobbles seem to be sailboats out of the ordinary—larch planks on oak frames, two side keels, length over-all 21ft, beam sft, draft lift, single lug sail of 105 sq. ft—and certainly not the smell of an engine. Sailing stages on this trip were relatively short, and more often Seymour and his

companion lived ashore at night, but when necessary, their beds were in sleeping bags, mostly wet, under a tarpaulin laid across the forepeak of the boat. This was rough enough throughout for two men, but in the Baltic the author’s wife and small child took over as companions, crew and ballast. What the English, or some of them, will do for their holidays! Much value and interest is related to people and places, with some forthright views of economy, habits and institutions of those places visited. However the book drags with a literary anchor chain based on a complex that everything in the diary or log had to get in the book somewhere. Thus, “we were awakened by the sound of a motor . . . ,” “we went ashore . . . “we dropped the sail . . . “we wandered along the promenade. . . .” Being a sailman the author seemed in no hurry to reach the end of the effective part of his story, which is blessed indeed with some excellent passages. There are seven sea-route charts of value to others who may go the same way and the 39 photographs are among the very best one could find in a book of this type, excellently selected to illustrate the sea, people and places that the book is concerned with.