Down to the Sea in Ships: Of Ageless Oceans and Modern Men

by Horatio Clare

'Magnificent' Robert Macfarlane

Winner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year

Our lives depend on shipping but it is a world which is largely hidden from us. In every lonely corner of every sea, through every night, every day, and every imaginable weather, tiny crews of seafarers work the giant ships which keep landed life afloat. These ordinary men live extraordinary lives, subject to dangers and difficulties we can only imagine, from hurricanes and pirates to years of confinement in hazardous, if not hellish, environments. Horatio Clare joins two container ships on their epic voyages across the globe and experiences unforgettable journeys. As the ships cross seas of history and incident, seafarers unfold the stories of their lives, and a beautiful and terrifying portrait of the oceans and their human subjects emerges.

'Tremendous' The Times

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, History, Maritime, Geography, Sociology, Business

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 2, 2014

About the author

Horatio Clare (b. 1973) is a writer, radio producer and journalist. Born in London, he and his brother Alexander grew up on a hill farm in the Black Mountains of south Wales. Clare describes the experience in his first book Running for the Hills (John Murray 2006) in which he sets out to trace the course and causes of his parents divorce, and recalls the eccentric, romantic and often harsh conditions of his childhood. The book was widely and favourably reviewed in the UK, where it became a bestseller, as in the US.

Running for the Hills was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Horatio has written about Ethiopia, Namibia and Morocco, and now divides his time between South Wales, Lancashire and London. He was awarded a Somerset Maugham Award for the writing of A Single Swallow (Chatto and Windus, 2009).

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you take a look around you at some of the things that you own, almost all of the have arrived in the country in a box. A container box that is. These containers are shipped in their millions back and forth oceans and round the world every year.

Clare was invited to be the writer on board for the Maersk Group, to see how these veins of the capitalist world work and operate. He joins the first ship at Felixstowe, the UK largest port, on its journey from there to Los Angles via Suez and Hong Kong. On the ship he is allowed free access anywhere, and to meet and speak with the crew and officers with the aim of finding out just what makes these vast vessels tick.

His second journey takes him from Antwerp to Montreal. It is an older ship, that reeks of diesel, and they are travelling into a huge storm in the atlantic. On this journey he finds out just how dangerous this journeys can be for the crews.

It is a fascinating book to read as Clare gets to the heart of the shipping industry and the people that run these ships. The size of some of these ports is huge, I know I have seen the Hong Kong port, and everything is organised down to the last detail, so much so that on his first journey they dock to the minute have travelled three quarters around the world. Clare manages to convey well the feelings and the pressure that the crews feel, as well as recounting some of the stories from other ships some of which are terrifying. Did drag a bit at times, but otherwise worth reading.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can see how this one snagged a Stanford travel writing award, as the author did a solid job both capturing the daily life onboard these runs, as well as providing historical and supplementary background information that didn't feel like "filler" to me. Fifth star lacking as the book got off to a slow start.

What to expect? It's three stories on two ships: Rotterdam(?) to Suez, and Maylasia to Los Angeles, on the first vessel; he was forbidden passage in the intervening Pirate Zone. Later, he does a run from Europe to Canada which is quite different. They had no pirate issues, but he does a solid job giving an overview of the piracy problem, as well as crew perspectives.

I'm going to cut to the chase here: he focuses a fair amount on racial issues regarding the white officers and (largely Philippino) crew. Not that there's animosity there, and less resentment than might be expected, but it's more two worlds co-existing than a single entity. Not just pay scales, but crew putting themselves in possible danger so that the line can save a few bucks.

Beyond that aspect, the North Atlantic trip highlights sailing in rough weather, while the Mediterranean serves as a sort of introduction, and the Pacific deals with aspects of a longer haul.

Finally, I'll leave it that he comes across with solid "cred" in terms of bonding with the crew members, making it obvious they genuinely liked him. Nor does he complain about the not-so-impressive accommodations, but takes that in his stride. By the way, no booze allowed at any time, period.

Definitely recommended.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book needs to come with a warning..."Be warned those who are easily influenced by what they read, you may find yourself at sea".

Horatio tells things honestly, the rough sea, the dire living conditions, long repetitive work, low pay, No FRIGGING BEER, marginally adverse weather conditions and much danger. He tells you how bad it is, how lonely it can be and yet this reader still craved the adventure....just think how much reading I could get done at sea.

Horatio explores every side of the job on board the ship, from the Captain right down to the engine room. The working conditions in the engine room are insane, how a man can work there day after day is amazing. The book is split into two, first a trip from UK to USA via the Suez canal on board a giant of a ship carrying an incredible amount of weight, the crew are neat and tidy, the ship in pretty good condition and a nice automated system for loading/unloading. Part 2 is the polar opposite Europe to Canada across the North Atlantic, a smaller boat still full of cargo, the ship is old, battered and dirty, the crew are similar, they come across as quite mad and loading/unloading is mostly manual labour.

This was a fascinating read, I have the utmost respect now for these brave sailors who bring us the crap we love to buy in shops. I'd love to see a follow up to the book, this time following one of the containers and it's contents, would be interesting to see why milk goes from Argentina to Europe and then back to Canada. I can see why this is an award winning book, brilliant writing and plan to pick up another of Horatio's books soon.

Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2019...

[Alex Sarll]

A book about how life on the oceans has changed, and how it hasn't, which inspires an urge to run away to sea at the same time as reminding you what a bloody awful idea that would be.

[Enso · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was recommended this book on a podcast as a way of getting some insight into the lives of modern seamen. In this, it was pretty successful. The author managed to get himself invited to be the "house writer" for the Maersk Group, one of the largest shipping lines in the world. He traveled on one of their flagships around the world (which is the first half of the book). He then traveled on one of their aging and more decrepit ships on the Atlantic (for the second half). You get the impression that a lot of these ships are death traps (though not the ones he is on).

He talks about the state of the ships, what it is like to live on one, but mostly about the men and women he met, what they were like, and how they lived their lives. The book itself was a little flat at times (going on and on in places) but was pretty interesting as a whole. I really don't know of another book that would discuss this sort of life that isn't decades out of date.

This book is written in the post-2008 period and on ships that now transport cargo containers back and forth as opposed to the earlier periods.

[kallis.ema · Rating 4 out of 5]

Straight 4.5 ⭐️ from me. It took me some time to get used to his long sentences and his jumps between what was happening on board the ships he was on and stories he told about other ships and captains. In the end, however, it is exactly the kind of travel literature I love: people travelling with a mission, be it to track down the lost pianos of Siberias or in this case to experience and document life on ships that carry most of the goods we consume. It was interesting to gain insight in the daily life on these ships, to see the hierarchy, the struggles, the racism and inequalities that do not end on land but continue on the seas of the world. I marked many interesting quotes and I bet this review will be a long one. I can recommend this book to people who like travel literature but are also curious to learn something about a world we usually do not enter in our daily life. I learned, that the cargo industry is a huge source Carbon Dioxide, and it adds as much as several countries do in one year. Compared to Ian Urbina and his book "The Outlaw Ocean" Horatio Clare stays more on the surface when describing inequalities, fishery, cargo ships, etc. but it is definitely an interesting addition and I am intrigued to read his other books.

"The rain continued to hammer the bridge. From time to time the thunder cracked, still violent. The storm united them. At sea storms weld the crew together. No sailor ever tells his family about times like that. Not in letters, not when he reaches home. So as not to worry them. Because they are indescribable, too. Storms don't exist. No more than sailors do, once they are at sea. Humanity's only reality is the land. So one does not know sailors, will never know them, even ashore. Unless one day you set sail aboard a cargo ship..." (Jean-Claude Izzo, The Lost Sailors)"

"Just beyond the horizon there is another world. IT runs in parallel with ours but it obeys different laws, accords with a different time and is populated by a people who are like us, but whose lives are not like ours. Without them, what we call normality would not exist. Were it not for the labours of this race we could not work, rest, eat, dress, communicate, learn, play, live or even die as we do."

"'You could read an old sailor's whole life in his tattoos. A leatherback turtle for crossing the equator, a blue star for going round the Cape of Good Hope. A swallow is five thousand miles at sea.'"

"Doing normal things in normal towns felt vaguely decadent, knowing that the men who supply them were crossing the Indian Ocean. Supermarkets never seemed more wasteful or more profligate."

"They are wrong who say the sea has no memory. The sea is all memory, and every captain who ever brought his vessel in here could feel it, almost read it."

"Seen from the perspective of the deep we are alien, a quasi-Martian species inhabiting a universe of almost entirely different physical and temporal conditions."

"Plunder and pollution are our only contribution to the worlds under the sea."

"It is evidently cheaper to catch all the fish in the East and bring them to the West Coast than it is to catch them in the West, or even to catch half of the fish in each place and leave the rest to swim."

"Marlow cannot be blamed for the way the globalised world works, but its operation is a feudal and racial pyramid, with the white and powerful at the top. This is clear in Marlow's first newsletter, published in 2007 on the occasion of the company's twenty-fifth birthday. The letter names men who have been with the company for more than seventeen years: each is to be given a watch. Of 111 Filipinos receiving watches, only three are captains. Of seventeen Germans, eleven are captains, the rest chief officers."

About Antwerp: "There is a mile of diamond dealerships wrapped around the station, most of them closed. It is as if there was once a population here who ate diamonds, drank diamonds, read diamonds, smoked diamonds, and died out, leaving the little white stones together dust behind steel grilles."

"The history of Holland is is the story of the conquest of the sea...' Van Loon dedicates his book to his sons with a homily: ' I want you to know about these men because they are your ancestors. If you have inherited any of their good qualities, make the best of them; they will prove to be worthwhile. If you have got your share of their bad ones, fight these as hard as you can; for they will lead you a merry chase before you get through.'"

"You did not have to know his story of punching himself in desperation to divine that he is a man who suffers isolation; he is a nation of one."

"Their lives are not like ours. While what it means to be a man and what is asked of a man evolves on land, the sea asks only one question, the same it has always asked. Can you face yourself - and me?"

"But I find myself recalling something Captain Koop said ,one evening in the Atlantic. He was talking about teaching junior officers to cope with the fishing fleets of the eastern seas, as they guided the Sydney through the darkness towards squadrons of bobbing fire: ' I always said don't panic, don't try to see them all at once. Bring the radar in close. Deal with what is in front of the ship. Let the fishing boats come to you.'"

[David Prowting · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read if you want to understand what really goes on in the shipping world and what it takes to get those goods delivered to your door....

[Will Britton · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

Had to read this for a sea literature module. Got just over half way through. I told myself I would finish it before I left a review but it's been almost 2 years and I just can't bring myself to pick it up again.

Overwrought, pretentious prose with a sprinkling of misogyny for flavour. All style, no substance.

Maybe I will reread this someday and be kinder. Maybe not.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

What does it take to make a man? This was the question for which Horatio Clare sought an answer when he signed on for two voyages on container ships. He discovered the endless hardship of men who sail the seas for months at a time, with perhaps only one or two days in port, delivering all the goods that we take for granted: on one ship "350 tonnes of Tanzanian seaweed fertilizer for the prairies; 34 tonnes of Belgian chocolate;90 tonnes of Argentinian milk sent to Europe to go to Canada."
All these on the enormous containers that we pass on the highways in America being delivered to their destinations. He describes the frightening storms, the indomitable spirit of the crews, the interdependence and the injustice of the wages, Filipinos being paid much less than Europeans for doing exactly the same work "because they don't need as much money." The men work here for adventure, but more from habit and necessity. He comes to the conclusion, "On the ships I began to understand that lying on the bed you made is perhaps the condition of adult life," and "This earth is a ship, and all of us are sailors."
I enjoyed Clare's poetic rendering of this adventure, his images and metaphors, and I believe that Clare found himself to be a man after he had experienced the voyages.

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't heard of Horatio Clare before. I enjoyed this account of travelling on container ships -- it's a mixture of poetry, travelogue, history, and most of all an account of globalisation from the sharp end -- the men (they are, almost exclusively) who transport goods from one side of the world to the other. It really makes you appreciate how containerisation was a massive force for globalisation and the delocalising of manufacture. Even perishable goods are not exempt -- the insanity of transporting fish across the Atlantic: "It is evidently cheaper to catch all the fish in the East and bring them to the West Coast than it is to catch them in the West, or even to catch half the fish in each place and leave the rest to swim. Or Argentinian milk, taken to Peru via Europe. In port, the crew step ashore, buy loads of the consumer goods they spend their lives transporting, and take them back across the ocean.

Clare is good at capturing the strange other world of life at sea, where different rules apply. Democracy, freedom, and equality are irrelevant concepts here -- what the captain says goes, and a Filipino doing the same job as a Dutchman gets about a third of the wage "because they need less money". No-one finds this unreasonable enough to be bothered about protesting or joining a union, and in any case, giant freight company Maersk doesn't recognise unions. Clare combines empathy and keen observation in his accounts of the crew. I liked his insight into the captain and chief engineer, into model trains and planes respectively -- he sees them as they were as little boys, "adorable for the endless accuracy of their devotions ... Perhaps it is the owlish engagement of little boys in love with certain and calculable things which builds machines as great as the Gerd, and greater."

If the book has a fault, it's a bit long -- the descriptions of seascapes and storms are vivid, but there's only so much you can take, and once you've got the point about globalisation it doesn't really need ramming home so much. Recommended though, if only to make you think about the concrete realities of the global economy, when so often it all seems to be about dematerialised financial transactions.

[Mary Warnement · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clare's prose makes me underline many of his phrases that create images in my mind. Coates's book on the Rhine had some similar descriptions of ports with cranes, containers, and workers, but Clare tells a story with style. What story here? A world most never see or consider but without which we would flounder. Civilization would halt. He concludes--after his journey on a large container ship through the Med all the way to China and then across the Atlantic from the Netherlands to Montreal--that "this earth is a ship" (348).

His title comes from the psalms but Moby Dick seems behind his yearning to go to sea. "Land, loved ones, family, friends, work, talks, books, meetings, the job and the quotidian burden of being are all very well, but who would not leave them behind for a while. The sea is simpler" (121). I suffer from motion sickness, so the call of the sea holds no appeal; however, travel across land and by air calls to me, although I would take books & talk with me--as he did. He admitted, during the stormy North Atlantic crossing, (77) that he would entrust his journal to the sailor with the best life jacket. I wondered how and why one jacket would be better than others on same boat, but given the inequities he highlights between Filipino sailors and all others, I shouldn't be surprised.

There's some talk of looking for men, what it is to be men and only men at sea; however, on his second ship, the cook is a woman. Not a sailor, per se, but essential to the ship's working. His gendered talk falls away in that second half of the book, as only seems natural.

77 "The sea turns time into distance."

This was published first in 2014. Reality tv shows about occupations requiring physical hardship had appeared, but I doubt he was influenced. Given his taste in movies illustrated by his interactions with the crew and its dvd librarian, I doubt Clare watches reality tv. Nor do I; I can't think of a name of one.

My only disappointment. On the back cover of my 2015 pb from Vintage, there is a credit to Neil Gower for the inside map illustration; however, there is no map! I tried the publisher's and bookseller's websites to see if I could see the map, because I'd wanted one for reference as I read. I'll have to locate a copy of a hardcover and see if it is there.

I've only read two of Clare's books and look forward to the next.

[Jack Burrows · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I wanted to take someone by the arm and say, listen, there is a ship at sea tonight, and this is who is on board, and this is what their lives are like, and without them none of this world you call normal could exist..."

If any part of you desires to be that "someone", then read this book.

Horatio Clare joins the crews of the Gerd Maersk and the Maersk Pembroke as they traverse the wild oceans and seas - each ship like a single cell in the life blood of our materialistic world. At times, it felt like Clare was experiencing another world, somewhere between time-travel and an alternate universe. The day-to-day of experiences of these men (for they are mostly male) is often alien and, to us land-dwellers, beyond understanding.

In addition to the significant nature of their work, Clare captures a glimpse of enduring human spirit, comradery and human nature that is rarely, if ever, seen on land.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure if this rating is too low.

Clare does get carried away with his descriptions sometimes, my lord.

I'm still very wistful about younger me's career choices. Clare does talk about the predictable dark side of the profession, and yet... And yet...

[Charlie · Rating 2 out of 5]

“She has always done and what she will do until the day comes when someone who has never seen her, and never heard her storm songs, and certainly never smelled her, decides she has done enough.”

There is a lot of beauty in this book but there is also a lot of very random misogyny in a book about boats (?)

I’ll talk of the beauty first. I really enjoyed the stories told from the people on the ships and their experiences. Learning about the often terrible pay and conditions the men (especially non European men) who work on ships face was very eye opening. Thinking about how nearly every object you’ve ever received has gone on a journey like this is hard to comprehend. The passages about the sea itself were equally beautiful.

However, the author doesn’t realize how hard it is to visualize complex mechanical engine room scenes. And he goes into too much detail on things like this far too often. I do not care how they fixed the engine.

Now for the misogyny. What? In one chapter, “World of Men” he goes on and on about how there’s no women and children here, it’s weird and cool!!! and then mentions the first mate on another ship who is pregnant and a woman… okay?

Even worse, in a chapter where he describes the sexism and abuse women at sea have to go through he also partakes in that same kind of harassment! He’s listening to two female coastguards over the radio and begins speculating (just from how they speak) about how one of them must have liposuction and breast enlargements and the other one seems like a much better “choice”. Hm I wonder if YOU and your casual sexism are part of the reason why women don’t thrive at sea? Why are random chapters littered with anti-woman sentiment? Why is so much chat about the best lays when you land at port included in a book that’s meant to be about the shipping industry??? I just don’t get it.

edit: Actually I think I’ve solved the mystery. The author didn’t think any woman would be interested in such a Manly and Manlike and Man Dominated industry so he just wrote the sexism parts to appeal to his Sailor Bros and wasn’t expecting anyone else to read it 💪 .. anyways could have been 100 pages if you cut out the rambling and the misogyny and then it could have also been 4 stars

[Yiling · Rating 5 out of 5]

I suspect one would either be annoyed with Clare's prose and perspective, or find it absolutely sparkling. I'm the latter case. I read this cover to cover. Clare is bloody funny. Many have written absolutely dry and dastardly books about ship life (IMO as a librarian in a library with a significant maritime collection), but he does keep me flipping the pages, googling the nautical jargon, checking Google Maps for where the Bay of Biscay is and even youtubing what the unlashing of containers is about (Clare devotes 2 pages to its description). It was quite a voyage! Not bad for a random title placed on display by an anon colleague.

[J.A. Pieper · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can muster interest and fascination in almost any topic for at least the length of an extended essay in the New York Times Magazine. The author managed to keep my attention for at least half the book and then the details of life at sea on a merchant marine ship began to grow tedious. Horatio Clare's prose almost bridged the gap, but not quite.

[Julie Wake · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was hard work and I only finished it because it was my book club choice. From the very beginning it lost me as it referred to the desire of the author to live in a world away from women, children and families.
Awful book.

[Nel Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to be on a boat at sea

[Desmond Reid · Rating 2 out of 5]

‘I did not see them with their wives and children, but I saw them. Their stories have one thing in common: they all begin with a wish. All these men made the same one, when they were to young to know better. They wished to go to sea.’

The appeal of the sea after reading Moby Dick, carries Clare on voyages aboard two very different container ships. What he finds is all that we come to take for granted in our daily lives, really depends on a legion of hard working seafarers - predominately men, mostly Pilipino.

Battling extreme weather, and hazards such as pirates, they do so all under the tight rein of their Captain. The voyages of container ship push through the brutality of nature, all highlighting the best of our fellow man.

When Horatio Clare appealed to the Danish ‘mega corporation’ Maersk, not only did they accept his offer to be Writer in Residence but allowed him complete autonomy. The premise of going abroad the ‘Gerd’, a container ship ‘larger than the biggest US aircraft carrier travelling from Rotterdam to Los Angeles is appealing.

It’s just a pity that life is indeed more mundane aboard than expected.

Clarie certainly makes a worthy stab at revealing life for a typical seaman aboard a container ship. Yet, the characters he meets are just, well ordinary. Floating hotel the ‘Gerd’ she is not. What she is, is a colossus burning 70 tones of oil a day, at a cost of $56,000 a day.

We do discover some second hand accounts of men restricted to tight conditions over time which allude to bullying or even death. Yet, if its more waxing lyrical on the sea and horizon, then this is the book for you. Fair dues to Clare for his ability to describe the sea in so many different ways.

To compensate, we discover the world seas are littered with wrecks. Considerable pages are given to those he sails over including the many victims of the Battle of the Atlantic. Deadly U Boats savagely claimed many of the conveys suppling Europe during the Second World War.

This is more a salute to the very unsung hero’s of the container industry. They predominate as a nation, yet can do the same job, with the same skills and still continue to be paid a third of the wages of someone with a lighter skin. Filipino’s accept with ‘struggling fatalism’ their fate, whilst being the backbone of many ships. Still, their union negotiated that wherever they are the majority, the Captain must supply them a Karaoke machine!

The appeal of the high seas is universal. Yet, life aboard a container ship is unsurprisingly pedestrian. As is this account. Many will appreciate Clare’s account of the variability of the sea and stories of wrecks of old. For this reader, the interest gradually disminshed as the Gerd headed west. 5/10

[Szegedi László · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book, one of my best acquisitions of the last year. I was already captivated by its cover, the clean, yet sophisticated graphics, which actually just depicts one of the ships in the book.

The concept is simple, the author took two cruises to write about the contemporary life of cargo shippers based on personal experiences. Befitting a long, weeks-long journey, the pace of the descriptions is pleasantly soothing and peaceful. I fell asleep several times while reading the text, but I was always happy to pick it up again.

In addition to the description of the operation of the equipment, the cargo and the work processes, there is an opportunity to show the personality of the sailors, to explain their motivation and background. The author takes an ironic view of the consumer society, even by simply listing each load, he questions why we need so much stuff (300 tons of logs from Germany to forested Canada, 25 tons of Greek wine, used machinery, etc.). But in addition to the romanticizing tone, he does not ignore difficulties, salary injustices, violence, crime, and dangers.

This documentary book is for those who read a lot of ship stories in their childhood, Verne's adventure books, especially pirates. And for those who are interested in modern shipping, they are used to looking at ships on the Internet and following their journeys (the first ship in the book, the Gerd, is returning from China at the time of writing this, according to vesselfinder).

The only drawback I have to mention is that the author quoted the accounts of medieval sailors in the text a little too extensively, but he also includes descriptions of World War II on the second trip across the Atlantic Ocean, which are more interesting.

Such a good book is rare, I'm glad I found it. The author also wrote an icebreaker ship book, I will get that too.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A little dry (did you see what I did there) but nevertheless very engaging tale of a writer who embeds himself on container ships sailing the seas.

Written in 2014, the author wrote to Shipping Company Maersk requesting he be allowed on board a couple of container ships to see what life at sea was like for their crews.

He encountered fantastic human beings working in incredibly difficult situations, with some (Filipinos usually) being paid a pittance to perform significant and stressful duties whilst often travelling through massive storms and dangerous seas. The writer refers to historical accounts of life at sea, during war and peace as well as during the early years of discovery through sail.

Mr Clare is a very good writer and has considerable sympathy for the lesser paid staff on these huge container ships - some send home no more than $300 USD per month to their families and may be at sea for many months at a time in cramped and unpleasant (If not downright dangerous) conditions.

We should know where all our "stuff" comes from when we buy a doodad from K-Mart. Most of it comes in the form of tonnes of identical products housed in shipping containers, lashed to the decks of these mega-ships. The story of the men who crew them is important.

[Jane Wilson-Howarth · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's astonishing that Clare has produced such an engaging and fascinating book about I topic that I didn't expect to interest me, but then I've read his excellent and .
This book is a tale of voyages on two unattractive merchant ships and squeezed in between evocative descriptions of the experience of fear, sea-sickness, boredom and the loneliness of life beyond sight of land, internet and female chit-chat there are amazing stories of the bravery of seamen and some of the history.
This is a wonderful book - giving lots of think upon.
Definitely a good read.

[Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will open your eyes to a whole other world. It is rare that any of us think for longer than one second about how our products, goods and 'necessary' items are transported to us. This book reveals the startling realities of what it is like in the world or cargo shipping. An ocean-based world without which our lives would fall apart. Clare covers enormous ground in this book as he documents his experience aboard two different cargo ships, introducing tales of shipping disasters, shipwrecks and diary excerpts from early explorers. Sometimes I wished that there was greater structure to the way that he relayed these fascinating stories, or more detail. Essentially, I just wanted more. However, the adaptability, strength and sheer selfless courage of the people aboard these ships made me escape from and reframe my 'big' problems/fears/concerns. How these crews do what the do I do not know. Read this book, gain some perspective and discover how your life would not function without these ships and their crew. They are silent sea-based heroes and we owe them an enormous thank you. Also, the last sentence: breath taking.

[David Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The sun makes bright bars as it sinks and the sea is an endless dream, as though it has forgotten it can be anything but kind. I look at the faces of the men as they look at the sea, with equanimity, with satisfaction and an unexpressed awareness of the temporary and the timeless, with acceptance and certainty that this was all and nothing at all, and that everything is always changeable, and that they are a crew whose completeness would only be proved tomorrow when it will be broken, and that they had brought their great ship to land again, almost, and that foul weather and hardship lay in her futures and in all their separate courses, and that there would be ports, hopefully, at the end of them. And I though for a moment I understood a little of seafaring men."

Down to the Sea in Ships: Of Ageless Oceans and Modern Men ** Read on Bequia Island, The Grenadines - Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (April 2022)

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much of the stuff that surrounds us and on which we depend is moved around the world by a constant flow of international shipping, almost all of it in containerised form. In this fascinating and revealing book, Horatio Clare hitches a ride in two very different container ships for two very different journeys. He joins his first vessel, the Gerd Maersk in Felixstowe and travels with it through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, is obliged to leave it in the Red Sea on the insistence of the owners due to the risk of piracy, but rejoins it for the next stage if its journey to China and then across the Pacific to Los Angeles. His second trip takes him north across the Atlantic to Montreal on a rusty ship that has seen better days.
Clare’s portrayal of life on board and the experience of travelling through storms, ice and the tropics is sharp and vivid, but the book comes most fully alive in his sympathetic descriptions of the men he sails with, the inequities that are part and parcel of seagoing life and the strength of character that pulls them through.

[Matthew Whyndham · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author was the narrator/walker recreating Bach's walk to Lübeck, which came on the radio on Christmas Eve. Having been entranced by his observational acuity and prose, I was eager for more. Rather than pick out any of his land-based journey books, which would perhaps sit nicely alongside Sebald, Deakin, MacFarlane etc, I somewhat randomly chose this. Very glad I did. It's an intriguing ethnography of the tribal bands who populate the high seas, bringing those endless containers of the stuff we seem to need "getting and spending, we lay waste our powers". As a writer in residence he's able to transcend the boundaries of the ships' hierarchies and get sympathetically in the heads of all on board. He then reserves his greatest descriptive powers to attempt a portrayal of all the moods of the sea. In this he fails (there is simply too MUCH sea for one, or two hundred pages), but the descriptions and impressions are delightful and, well, impressive. 


[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

An author called Horatio. References that include Conrad and Monserrat. This looked like a promising find after inadvertently stumbling into a church second hand book sale. A book of two halves, with two contrasting voyages. The first, in an ultra modern giant container ship, seemed like a completely different nautical experience to my own, almost half a century ago. But the account of a stormy North Atlantic winter trip in an older, smaller and careworn vessel was compelling and authentic. Clare's reflections on the crew members came to the fore. He romanticised and exaggerated their properties is the way that most seafarers recount their encounters with bad weather, accidents and the exotic. Overall, his recipe of personal experience, historic reference, character observation and industry info' served us well.

[Garnet Walters · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read about something I'd not really thought about before. How does all the stuff we buy get around the world?

The style was a bit hard to get used to - a bit flowery and maybe assuming a bit too much how the various crew members actually thought and felt. Each chapter has part of the voyage and then a historical snippet about ships in the past.

I enjoyed the first half the most, the sailing was interesting and the snippets weren't too grim. The second half was a bit repetitious and some of the historical facts were grisly and disturbing. I know that we probably need to know the grim side but it got a bit relentless, especially the Atlantic crossings.

Overall a worthwhile read, though I may have enjoyed a different structure more.

[Roger Boyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter sent me this, I think. He knows how much I like boats.

It's an unprepossessing premise but Clare writes very well. His trick of pulling on established literature about the sea works without being schmaltzy, and his descriptions of the danger and the boredom are splendid. It is [largely] a company of men, but they can't drink ... it's such an artificial environment in which complete knowledge of what you are doing is sine qua non. Then the wind, and then the ice. Two very different voyages in which you get at least part way to learning just what it is like.

Great stuff - how did he persuade Maersk to let him do it?

[Darryl Tomo · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable bit of Gonzo journalism. Strange how much we depend on those who labour on the sea still, and yet how little we understand about how we are kept supplied with all of the stuff we have come to rely on, from food to plastic junk. I found the author's tone a bit wearing at times, but on the whole this was an interesting, humourous and illuminating journey into the greasy holds of container ships.
After reading this, I found myself staring at container lorries on the motorway and wondering about where it had come from, what seas it had crossed, and what badly paid Filipinos had risked their lives to bring it to us, which I imagine is what the author intended.