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The Saga of Cimba
"The Sailor's Classics" library introduces a new generation of readers to the best books ever written about small boats under sail. In 1933, 23-year-old Richard Maury set sail from Connecticut in Cimba, a 35-foot schooner, bound for Fiji. Maury's account is an extraordinary tale of high adventure, acclaimed for its exquisite depictions of the sea's unbearable beauty and annihilating fury.
- GenresTravel
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 15, 2021
An astonishing find...that there was such a fine sailing journal I had not previously heard of came as a surprise. That it ended in defeat, on a South Pacific Island, was very real. One must ignore the circumstances...a rich kid takes off in a schooner with a buddy of his to see how far they can take it...the cruise takes place in 1935 during the Great Depression and not too many folks had the means to just buy a boat and take off around the world back then. I seem more and more prone to that kind of analysis these days, unfortunately. This prose borders on poetic at times and makes one forget all the foregoing AND I find it fitting that the copy I read came from the US Air Force Academy Library, as there is much similarity between sailing and flying. Here are some quotes and quips to remember -
"...Carroll and I stood in the moonlight watching the Cimba swaying in her new strength. She was eager to be off; she, who had been mothered in quiet harbors, who was young, untried. Would she live to someday swing to other winds in other harbors, far down in the enchanted South Oceans? Would she? Far across from Heisler's Island, over the gleaming bay, came the answering night wind; Go on . . . go on . . ."
"The end of the dusk revealed the small form of the schooner staggering under a loom of canvas that even as I watched seemed to increase in size with the coming darkness; and there came the sober conviction that beneath us lunged a frail craft of which we were asking a great deal. Sea and darkness closed in; winds ran the quarter as the delicate curve of bow thundered in the night and the low sides sheared the chop rising above them. Astern, a corkscrew of wake flashed one long ever-rolling path over a constant rise and fall of unseen waves. Now and then, on the coast to starboard, clusters of lights were seen burning, unwavering, still, appearing remote and lost in space, like visions of ghost villages never again to be visited."
"Dream ship? Well, scarcely that day, although as one old philosopher said, "Ships is only dreams before and after you've sailed 'em."
"Already we knew something of what the voyage would demand. Unless gravely mistaken we were in for no drifting match to the South Seas. The very first run would likely take our measure, for already winter was hurrying on its way and the Gulf Stream and Hatteras would surely be acting up.
No, we looked forward to a lively, full-hearted affair on roaring water, spent on the eager deck, within the diving cuddy of a highly-tempered craft; a small craft, carrying within her insignificant body a soul as stormy as the winds of her Nova Scotia. And through all this we caught the dim form of Adventure, as only Youth may sight it undismayed."
"Up the Bay boome the wind, driving clouds that frowned upon the skyscrapers. I glanced at the horizontal heights of stone, bleak, sharp-eyed, already greying: shadow on shadow on top of shadow - soon to be hull down, to be lost track of, forgotten. We drift away from things; sometimes we wails away . . . It was time to leave, to look our last at the New World, before facing the ageless Sea."
"The elements, and especially the sea, demand the respect of the conservative side of one's nature. And yet the same sea tends to draw out any duality in a voyager's nature, to bring forth his defiant, his carrying-on side, so that his life is one of constant conflict between these two opposing, contradictory impulses. We clung to our sail, as on the starboard beam a great blood-stained light lowered, grew dim. The wind dried the blood. They were gone - sunset and our first day!"
"Long ago, while serving as a rendezvous for freebooters of the West India trade and later for Confederate blockade runners, a hundred sail swung to anchors in its harbor. Steam replaced sail and the port became a coaling station. Oil replaced coal, vessels covered more ocean without bunkering, and suddenly St George's lost her ships. But not her traditions."
"One hundred and ninety-eight miles in a day, 101 miles in twelve hours - Oh, it was good all right! - Good to see these items in the logbook of a simple, unvarnished ship; in the log of a half-pint schooner hailing from a humble, never-known port - something left over from another century, from time past, born of a true humility, which is, and always will be, the essence of all true nobility. It was good to see them - these items that meant so little to the world, so much to the crew."
"Oh, it's not mere nonsense, this insistent mumble of salty voices against the shore-bound invention, the steamer. Nor is it only sentiment, romance; it is something more. A good seaman, to whom all the meaning in the world is wrapped up in his ship, feels a false note in the extravagance of a modern steamer. Strangely enough, he feels that the sailing craft has a utility lacking in her rival."
"Rather hazily he considers the width of this ocean. Maps and charts make for a sort of sophisticated regard for the wide spaces of the earth, until an entire ocean may be visualized as a few inches of blue ink on the surface of a map. For the sake of argument, muses the helmsman, scale down distance from miles to feet, and on this particular passage the schooner will be seen as but a grain of dust blown slowly over a half-mile plane, a fleck of dust that can cover little more than a hundred feet from sun-up to sun-up."
"Her crew learnt several things. For example, that in small cruisers long passages are the happy passage, where the crew settle down to a lengthy stretch, responding with some perfection to the rhythms of the ocean, the constant motions of a ship. We learnt that life was kept full by the schooner herself. We never spoke of here by name but always as "she" or "her", and we never spoke of her affectionately. At times she maddened us, at times she interested us by her repertoire of tricks, and then again she would amuse us by sporting gestures, stubborn, and all her own. She had a kind of humble gallantry, and she was heroic -- but only as simple fishing folk are heroic."
"When the sails were set, the womenfolk, refusing to go below, prepared for sea in the manner of all Polynesian women, binding cloths tightly about their middles before lying on deck, prostrate, covered head to foot in white sheets, neither to stir nor speak until Maupiti was gained."
"A makeshift craft will not do. Long-voyage crews are influenced above all by the temperament of the boat they sail, adjusting themselves to her living spirit. That a cruiser can be but a machine-like convenience for reaching new and alluring lands, is an illusion. She must be more. She must live, and she must be made to live. She must have the character, the turn of temperament, the high spirit to dwell in salt water -- with the flow of a wave, with something of the wind captured in her own bones. Perhaps all things touching the elements so completely must have this conforming character, and this flame, in order to exist."
"...I saw something awash, a dark form, hardly forty feet away and immediately in our path. A reef? I flung the helm to port, but the sails were slow spilling wind and the schooner closed in. ... But the obstacle began to move, to gather way, lunging on the sea. In came the Cimba smoking, heaving for all she was worth. There was a loud splash. We grazed by, and I turned to see a whale, a great sulphur bottom, awakened from sleep and beginning to sound, its tremendous black tail sliding into the ocean like a bad dream."
"On our final day in Polynesia, we climbed the top of the mountain of Vaea to find Stevenson's grave. It was a simple mold of concrete almost lost in weed and myrtle, and marked by a weathered plaque. The sun at the time had almost disappeared; only a golden line, thin and ruling the edge of a calm sea, shone in the west. The mountains were dark, heavy, leaning on the fragile base of bays and the diminutive capes far below."
"A paper suitcase dissolved, and I saw for the last time my sentimental poems, washed page by page into the oblivion beyond the hatch. I felt no regret. We cannot hold the same poetry throughout life. There must ever be change, slow or sudden; a change that breaks as one wild wave, or as a slow tide covering over that which is endeared, which, even as we love, we lose."
"...Carroll and I stood in the moonlight watching the Cimba swaying in her new strength. She was eager to be off; she, who had been mothered in quiet harbors, who was young, untried. Would she live to someday swing to other winds in other harbors, far down in the enchanted South Oceans? Would she? Far across from Heisler's Island, over the gleaming bay, came the answering night wind; Go on . . . go on . . ."
"The end of the dusk revealed the small form of the schooner staggering under a loom of canvas that even as I watched seemed to increase in size with the coming darkness; and there came the sober conviction that beneath us lunged a frail craft of which we were asking a great deal. Sea and darkness closed in; winds ran the quarter as the delicate curve of bow thundered in the night and the low sides sheared the chop rising above them. Astern, a corkscrew of wake flashed one long ever-rolling path over a constant rise and fall of unseen waves. Now and then, on the coast to starboard, clusters of lights were seen burning, unwavering, still, appearing remote and lost in space, like visions of ghost villages never again to be visited."
"Dream ship? Well, scarcely that day, although as one old philosopher said, "Ships is only dreams before and after you've sailed 'em."
"Already we knew something of what the voyage would demand. Unless gravely mistaken we were in for no drifting match to the South Seas. The very first run would likely take our measure, for already winter was hurrying on its way and the Gulf Stream and Hatteras would surely be acting up.
No, we looked forward to a lively, full-hearted affair on roaring water, spent on the eager deck, within the diving cuddy of a highly-tempered craft; a small craft, carrying within her insignificant body a soul as stormy as the winds of her Nova Scotia. And through all this we caught the dim form of Adventure, as only Youth may sight it undismayed."
"Up the Bay boome the wind, driving clouds that frowned upon the skyscrapers. I glanced at the horizontal heights of stone, bleak, sharp-eyed, already greying: shadow on shadow on top of shadow - soon to be hull down, to be lost track of, forgotten. We drift away from things; sometimes we wails away . . . It was time to leave, to look our last at the New World, before facing the ageless Sea."
"The elements, and especially the sea, demand the respect of the conservative side of one's nature. And yet the same sea tends to draw out any duality in a voyager's nature, to bring forth his defiant, his carrying-on side, so that his life is one of constant conflict between these two opposing, contradictory impulses. We clung to our sail, as on the starboard beam a great blood-stained light lowered, grew dim. The wind dried the blood. They were gone - sunset and our first day!"
"Long ago, while serving as a rendezvous for freebooters of the West India trade and later for Confederate blockade runners, a hundred sail swung to anchors in its harbor. Steam replaced sail and the port became a coaling station. Oil replaced coal, vessels covered more ocean without bunkering, and suddenly St George's lost her ships. But not her traditions."
"One hundred and ninety-eight miles in a day, 101 miles in twelve hours - Oh, it was good all right! - Good to see these items in the logbook of a simple, unvarnished ship; in the log of a half-pint schooner hailing from a humble, never-known port - something left over from another century, from time past, born of a true humility, which is, and always will be, the essence of all true nobility. It was good to see them - these items that meant so little to the world, so much to the crew."
"Oh, it's not mere nonsense, this insistent mumble of salty voices against the shore-bound invention, the steamer. Nor is it only sentiment, romance; it is something more. A good seaman, to whom all the meaning in the world is wrapped up in his ship, feels a false note in the extravagance of a modern steamer. Strangely enough, he feels that the sailing craft has a utility lacking in her rival."
"Rather hazily he considers the width of this ocean. Maps and charts make for a sort of sophisticated regard for the wide spaces of the earth, until an entire ocean may be visualized as a few inches of blue ink on the surface of a map. For the sake of argument, muses the helmsman, scale down distance from miles to feet, and on this particular passage the schooner will be seen as but a grain of dust blown slowly over a half-mile plane, a fleck of dust that can cover little more than a hundred feet from sun-up to sun-up."
"Her crew learnt several things. For example, that in small cruisers long passages are the happy passage, where the crew settle down to a lengthy stretch, responding with some perfection to the rhythms of the ocean, the constant motions of a ship. We learnt that life was kept full by the schooner herself. We never spoke of here by name but always as "she" or "her", and we never spoke of her affectionately. At times she maddened us, at times she interested us by her repertoire of tricks, and then again she would amuse us by sporting gestures, stubborn, and all her own. She had a kind of humble gallantry, and she was heroic -- but only as simple fishing folk are heroic."
"When the sails were set, the womenfolk, refusing to go below, prepared for sea in the manner of all Polynesian women, binding cloths tightly about their middles before lying on deck, prostrate, covered head to foot in white sheets, neither to stir nor speak until Maupiti was gained."
"A makeshift craft will not do. Long-voyage crews are influenced above all by the temperament of the boat they sail, adjusting themselves to her living spirit. That a cruiser can be but a machine-like convenience for reaching new and alluring lands, is an illusion. She must be more. She must live, and she must be made to live. She must have the character, the turn of temperament, the high spirit to dwell in salt water -- with the flow of a wave, with something of the wind captured in her own bones. Perhaps all things touching the elements so completely must have this conforming character, and this flame, in order to exist."
"...I saw something awash, a dark form, hardly forty feet away and immediately in our path. A reef? I flung the helm to port, but the sails were slow spilling wind and the schooner closed in. ... But the obstacle began to move, to gather way, lunging on the sea. In came the Cimba smoking, heaving for all she was worth. There was a loud splash. We grazed by, and I turned to see a whale, a great sulphur bottom, awakened from sleep and beginning to sound, its tremendous black tail sliding into the ocean like a bad dream."
"On our final day in Polynesia, we climbed the top of the mountain of Vaea to find Stevenson's grave. It was a simple mold of concrete almost lost in weed and myrtle, and marked by a weathered plaque. The sun at the time had almost disappeared; only a golden line, thin and ruling the edge of a calm sea, shone in the west. The mountains were dark, heavy, leaning on the fragile base of bays and the diminutive capes far below."
"A paper suitcase dissolved, and I saw for the last time my sentimental poems, washed page by page into the oblivion beyond the hatch. I felt no regret. We cannot hold the same poetry throughout life. There must ever be change, slow or sudden; a change that breaks as one wild wave, or as a slow tide covering over that which is endeared, which, even as we love, we lose."
March 11, 2019
You've really got to understand that people with sea fever are particularly pursuing the feeling of roughness. Needless to say they have the experience, courage and knowledge to survive as well. I think it was the very type of person necessary or fundamental for the thriving of contemporary sea voyage era that led to inconceivable discoveries. The way they describe the sea is totally different from normal people. Seeing through their lenses, seas suddenly have feelings, emotions, throwing tantrums and become humane. They also describe their boat in an affectionate way. If you look at the name of Cimba, it probably indicates their expectation of an energetic and ruthless boat as well.
Most of the pages are pure depictions with many context-specific words, not so much as jargon or terminology though. The lack of a story line also made it challenging for me to follow. There are a few narrations of excursions that shed a bit light on local folklore, otherwise some interesting reflections about how a lone yacht still occasionally gets interactions with and helps from fellow seamen/community. It is also interesting, from an outsider's perspective, to see their obsession to mechanics, the ability to control and the fighting spirit.
Most of the pages are pure depictions with many context-specific words, not so much as jargon or terminology though. The lack of a story line also made it challenging for me to follow. There are a few narrations of excursions that shed a bit light on local folklore, otherwise some interesting reflections about how a lone yacht still occasionally gets interactions with and helps from fellow seamen/community. It is also interesting, from an outsider's perspective, to see their obsession to mechanics, the ability to control and the fighting spirit.
July 24, 2018
Three men sail to the South Seas
This is a good book for those who enjoy a lavish, poetic use of adjectives in the description of almost everything seen or experienced by the author, a young man who sailed a New England-built sloop halfway around the world in the 1930's. I would liked to have seen more written about the way the men interacted during the journey. I was left thinking that for sharing such a small craft, the author and his crew rarely spoke to one another. If they did, it was never given much ink. I would still recommend the book as it is a good story, never tedious, and sheds some light on attitudes and beliefs of that time period.
This is a good book for those who enjoy a lavish, poetic use of adjectives in the description of almost everything seen or experienced by the author, a young man who sailed a New England-built sloop halfway around the world in the 1930's. I would liked to have seen more written about the way the men interacted during the journey. I was left thinking that for sharing such a small craft, the author and his crew rarely spoke to one another. If they did, it was never given much ink. I would still recommend the book as it is a good story, never tedious, and sheds some light on attitudes and beliefs of that time period.
August 28, 2020
A classic pre-war small boat voyage.
February 17, 2024
A very special read
The Saga was a surprise as I first read about it from Lin Pardy,s writing. This was a tremendous find, well crafted and a total surprise ending.
The Saga was a surprise as I first read about it from Lin Pardy,s writing. This was a tremendous find, well crafted and a total surprise ending.
June 23, 2025
Any fans of nautical and sailing books must read this classic. An excellent tale with drawings by the author.
July 21, 2025
Slowing making all the authors of the sailor’s classics my imaginary friends.
October 11, 2020
In 1934, Maury bought a miniature schooner built in Nova Scotia by the master Vernon Langille. In this book, he relates his experiences sailing to Bermuda, through the Panama Canal and on to Fiji with various stops along the way. His narrative concentrates on the joys of sailing, enhanced by the performance of the Cimba.
They suffer a storm on their way into Bermuda which the Cimba handled, while the storm sunk "a forty-five foot schooner, a sixty-five foot ketch, and a four-masted schooner".
Maury includes many amusing anecdotes of his encounters with the local people. When he showed a map of the West Indies to a local skipper who had never seen a map before, the fellow examined the map for half an hour and said "She's pretty near right, sir, Pretty near".
Maury had a single partner for much of the voyage, but two toward the end. He reflects on how a three man crew can easily fail if one man fails to carry his share or if two of the three form a tie excluding the third. Happily, his crew of three worked well together.
An exceedingly good book describing the joys of sailing.
They suffer a storm on their way into Bermuda which the Cimba handled, while the storm sunk "a forty-five foot schooner, a sixty-five foot ketch, and a four-masted schooner".
Maury includes many amusing anecdotes of his encounters with the local people. When he showed a map of the West Indies to a local skipper who had never seen a map before, the fellow examined the map for half an hour and said "She's pretty near right, sir, Pretty near".
Maury had a single partner for much of the voyage, but two toward the end. He reflects on how a three man crew can easily fail if one man fails to carry his share or if two of the three form a tie excluding the third. Happily, his crew of three worked well together.
An exceedingly good book describing the joys of sailing.
April 17, 2007
One of the most expressive authors in all of the literature of small boat sailing. When I read Richard Maury, I sip his prose, a spoonful at a time, so rich and satisfying a broth he has made for us. The author speaks for himself:
"At the end of another sunset, when only a handful of miles from our destination, we joined forces at the steering well, sipped tea from our tin cups, and shared the landfall watch. The craft drove on under a vast, a punctuated fire of windy stars, while the trade[winds], bearing down, whined in the tophamper, hinting at some magical liberty, some living freedom beyond the eternal horizons."
"At the end of another sunset, when only a handful of miles from our destination, we joined forces at the steering well, sipped tea from our tin cups, and shared the landfall watch. The craft drove on under a vast, a punctuated fire of windy stars, while the trade[winds], bearing down, whined in the tophamper, hinting at some magical liberty, some living freedom beyond the eternal horizons."
Read
April 17, 2014good account of sailing around the world
January 28, 2015
In my favored The Sailor's Classic series.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews