Customer Rating: 
Summary: Incredible
Comment: If you go through life without reading this book, your life will be a
failure.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What Melville Left Out
Comment: Eric Newby, who died in 2006 at the age of 86, was an adventurer and gifted travel writer who chronicled his experiences in several books that reflect his curiosity and research about the world as well as his shrewd and often very hilarious observations of humans making their way in it. Originally published in 1956, THE LAST GRAIN RACE could be called memoir, but Newby recreates his apprenticeship aboard one of the last mercantile sailboats on the eve of World War II via his diaries, claptrap memory and research, creating an airtight world with immediacy. There is no sense of retrospect, distance of time or hindsight in the narrative.
Newby was 18 when he went to sea in 1938 on a barque owned by a Scandinavian shipping firm. Before World War II, it was still economical to deploy a commercial fleet of these behemoths around the world to scoop up grain crops from Australia for the European market. When his job at an advertising agency (hilarious) was threatened by lay-offs, he indulged the youthful romance of life at sea stoked by a girlfriend's naval father and signed up with the Erikson firm's ship, Moshulu. He kitted up grandly, found a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk. Immediately aboard ship, he learned that a lot of the work centered about scaling those tall masts, cleaning the "restrooms" and repelling off the side to scrape rust. He was the only Englishman among Scandinavians and Germans who were decidedly not of the Louis Vuitton school. Newby's character sketches are priceless and he captures the hybrid vernacular so well that by the end of the book, the reader knows as much as he learned. The book is loaded with technical information about the boat and its mission, but also with accounts of dramatic storms, bedbug plagues or occasional leisurely pursuits like capturing an albatross just to measure its wingspan. I purchased a used original UK Reader's Union edition (think Book of the Month Club) that usefully had a detailed illustration inside the back cover and a world map inside the front, with the journey dated and marked off.
Infrequently, news of the outside world drifted to the ship via a radio signal from a distant land. It is not good news, but at sea they can mostly ignore it. Like the Pequod in MOBY DICK, the Moshulu was its own complete world. That's the beauty of this book: it captures a fully evolved culture that would suddenly disappear a year later. When Moshulu unexpectedly returned first among the fleet, Newby packed it in. He had lived a lifetime and grown up in under a year. The next time the boat went out, it returned to the waiting Germans. Afterwards, it turned up in a future where commercial sailing ships were no longer competitive. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Well Told Tale of Real Life at Sea Under Sail - Circa 1939
Comment: If you want some relaxing summer reading and if you like the sea by all means get this book. Eric Newby was an 18 year old kid who, with family approval, signed on as an appentice before the mast on the Finnish owned barque Moshulu in the fall of 1938 for a nine month sail from Queensown to Port Victoria in Southern Australia and return. The Moshulu was a steel sailing vessel, built in Sweden in 1905, 3,600 gross tons, 360 feet at the waterline, three masted ship-rigged with her main mast topping out at 198 feet at the cap. She could carry 4,800 tons of wheat - and did, setting the record of 92 days for her return voyage eastward round Cape Horn. (Her outbound voyge had beeen around the Cape of Good Hope)
Newby went on to become a rather prosperous clothier in London but was better known for his travel writing till his death last year (2006) at the age of 86. I had read his "Travels in the Hindu Kush" years ago and put him down as a kind of smart alek and I had also read the paperback of this book published by Penguin in 1971 but had not appreciated it till I got it down from my shelf of sea stories last week and read it again. He's a dmaned fine writer here and I take back what I said about him being a smart alek. His description of life at sea and the sea iself is as good as anything I've ever read; and you will enjoy it. For those who like sailing ships there's a lot of technical detail about rigging, watch-standing etc. and you can skip this and read about a storm at sea if you want but if you wade through the technical stuff you will be amazed at what you learn. I strongly recommend the whole thing to you.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Exciting sailing adventure
Comment: In 1938 Eric Newby was eighteen years old. He left a dead end job with an advertising agency in London and signed as an apprentice seaman on the four-masted sailing ship Moshulu for a trip to bring back a shipload of grain from Australia. Moshulu was one of a dozen sailing ships still engaged in the grain trade and the 1938 trip was destined to be the last of the merchant sailing era. Newby is undeservedly less well known than other writers who have imitated him. His books, "A Small Place in Italy, "On the Shores of the Mediterranean" and "The Big Red Train Ride" have been imitated by other authors. His writing style is spare and matter-of-fact; he doesn't try to impress the reader with overblown prose instead letting the facts speak for themselves without florid editorial comment. There's a funny account a trick played by the Belfast stevedores on the sailors of Moshulu. Among the tons of rocks loaded into the hold were two dead dogs. The decomposing dog carcasses fill the ship's hold with an overpowering odor that plagues the men as they dump out the ballast and load the grain months later off the shore of Adelaide. The Last Grain Race goes into great detail describing the operation of a sailing ship, complete with obscure jargon names for the sails and rigging. Newby seems to have been working too hard on the trip to completely enjoy and appreciate it. The books gives a glimpse at a lost world of merchant sailing ships and the quiet life of sailors at sea, now exchanged for sparsely manned giant container ships crossing vast oceans in a matter of days. Moshulu returns to Queenstown, Ireland on June 10, 1939 after a pace-setting 91-day passage by war of Cape Horn. It had taken 8 months for a round-trip in which Moshulu brought 4,875 tons of grain from Australia to Ireland. Newby leaves the ship a full-fledged Ordinary Seaman. World War II will start in a few months and obliterate the peaceful world of merchant sailing ships.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: If You Read Only One Book This Year: Get Them Both
Comment: Unfortunately the unappealingly named "The Last Great Grain Race" might be left on the bookshelf if it were not for its companion volume of photographs more appropriately titled "Learning The Ropes; An Apprentice on the Last of the Windjammers," both by Eric Newby. Oddly these volumes were issued over forty years apart, Grain Race in 1956 and Ropes in 1999. (A recent volume of Grain Race was reissued in 1999, possibly to take advantage of the pictorial release.)After a brief stint as an office clerk, Newby at eighteen signed on as an apprentice seaman for an around the world cargo voyage, with no nautical experience or skills other than a careful eye and superb memory for detail. "The Last Great Grain Race" is the story of one of the last four-masted barques, which in 1938 sailed from Ireland to Australia to pick up a cargo of grain and return to Ireland, a voyage which would take nine months. Ultimately it was to become the last voyage in such a vessel, as the impending war would change the world forever. We are fortunate that Newby was along to document the voyage. We are equally appreciative of his thoughtfulness in bringing his camera, as "Learning the Ropes" is the superb photo essay of this journey. Newby apparently was a very skilled photographer. Oddly, he only briefly mentions his possession of a camera in "The Last Great Grain Race." He never lets on that his is so actively chronicling events and shipmates throughout the voyage. Though Newby does an excellent job describing what is like to climb aloft in all kinds of weather, the black and white photographs take the reader aloft as well and provide the narrative even with more impact and grace. The crew is as varied and colorful as one might expect the conditions are harsh and oftentimes dangerous; the work is unrelenting, demanding and dangerous in its own right. Newby works alongside seasoned veterans and never shirks. Grain Race however does have its limitations. There is a tremendous amount of technical detail that can often leave the reader literally at sea. For example "There were still the sheets of the topmast staysails to be shifted over the stays and sheeted home, the main and mizzen courses to be reset, and the yards trimmed to the Mate's satisfaction with the brace whips." Newby does provide a graphic of the sail plan and running rigging (79 reference points), but these are only of marginal assistance. Another shortcoming is the language barrier Newby faces. This is a Finnish crew and commands are rarely given in English. Newby and the reader often have to work out the language; if the reader misses the first context or explanation then subsequent uses of the terminology will be lost, a glossary might have helped here. Newby does faithfully record dialects especially when he is being spoken to in occasionally recognizable English and these dialogues are often amusingly recounted. Eric Newby should seriously consider issuing both in a single volume and one has to wonder why this wasn't done when Grain Race was first issued or at least when "Learning the Ropes" was released a couple of years ago. It is interesting to speculate on the length of time between the original release of Grain Race and the very vivid and informative photographs. Regardless it was worth the wait. Grain Race the narrative and Grain Race the photographs make for an enjoyable double read.
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