Seamanship Notes

by John F. Kemp, Peter Young

Covering the groundwork of practical seamanship for candidates for qualification as First Mate or Ship's Master in merchant vessels, this 5th edition has been updated in detail throughout. In particular the chapter on Rule of the Road has been amplified and expanded, and takes account of recent changes in the international regulations for preventing collisions at sea.

100 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

John Frederick Kemp was a sailor for ten years in UK merchant ships. He then “swallowed the anchor” and, as he puts it, degenerated into an academic. He became Dean of a Faculty, but took early retirement, as an Emeritus Professor, to care full-time for his wife Shirley, who was suffering from Dementia.

The following eight years were challenging, but he coped by observing the humorous side of the events that made up their lives. He recorded these in letters to his GP, because he thought that Doctors generally have sad lives as a result of meeting so many sick people every day. Later, when Shirley had passed away, he wrote this material up as his first book, “Caring for Shirley”.

John is now in his eighties and, supposedly, retired in Arundel, UK, although his new wife, Shirley, says he is usually tinkering with several projects at any one time. The latest of these has been to write “Copse and Codgers” about two octogenarian, retired sailors. These characters, Bill and Shorty, find themselves inadvertently caught up with some militant environmentalists, and there are many twists in a closely woven plot before they are able to extricate themselves.