The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream

Time Stream #1

by G.C. Edmondson, Stephen Hickman (Illustrator)

Joe Rate, captain of the experimental Navy yawl Alice, figured that everything that could happen to him in one day had already happened. First, after a freak electrical storm at sea the Alice had been thrown a thousand years backward in time, and it looked like they were stranded in the past. They had provisions for two weeks at the most. Then there was the voluptuous barbarian girl they'd saved from captivity--her presence on board a ship full of normal sailors wasn't likely to lessen the problems.

Then Joe saw the four Viking raiding ships bearing straight for him, and in a few minutes the first spear thunked into the Alice's foredeck.

The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream is a novel of picaresque adventure in a sword-and-sorcery past much more lively than any historian ever dreamed!

Genres: Science Fiction, Time Travel, Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure, Science Fiction Fantasy, Historical Fiction

274 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Garry Edmondson (full name "José Mario Garry Ordoñez Edmondson y Cotton").

He also wrote Westerns under the names Kelly P. Gast, J. B. Masterson, and Jack Logan.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novel comprises one half of a crumbling Ace Double - actually, more like two thirds; the collection on its obverse is very short - that I picked up in Wheeling WV. This book is a time capsule of mid-20th Century attitudes, almost far enough estranged from us now as to be a different and most mythical land. An American navy composed of nuclear battleships has one last wooden sailing ship, quietly searching for undersea invaders; its illicit brandy still under an evacuated bell jar turns out to be the core by chance of a lightning-driven time machine that sends the Alice back a thousand years.

This book is a product of its time in many ways - Edmondson tosses around racist and religious epithets in a casual way that no modern author would likely contemplate; the sexism is unexamined in a way that was waning even in the U.S. of Edmondson's day; attitudes towards tobacco and alcohol seem antiquated as well. And the proofreading is lax, as was common with these mass-market editions; I chuckled at the ship's "electric wench," mentioned on p.13.

But the story is, despite all that, rollicking and fast-paced. Edmondson takes the Alice back and forth through time with aplomb, laying various implausibilities to rest as quickly as they arise and never forgetting that the goal is to tell a good yarn.

I cannot recommend this book to everyone; too many allowances must be made for its flaws. But those same flaws make it an interesting artifact, as well as... a pretty fun read.

[Thxlbx · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 STARS
Found this in a used a book store, and the premise of time travel intrigued me.

The science here is pretty basic, and does not make a whole lot of sense. There is not really an overarching plot, the story revolves around the crew and their ship randomly bouncing around time and trying to survive.

Their present is our world in 1979, which gives an interesting perspective, since it has been 45 years since this book was written.

This book was an interesting ride, and I enjoyed it, but there was nothing particularly special about it... a typical sci-fi novel from the late 70's/early 80's.

3 STARS

[Roddy Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

'OPERATION TIME-SLIP

Ensign Joe Rate, captain of the experimental Navy yawl, Alice, figured that everything that could happen to him in one day had already happened. First, after a freak electrical storm at sea the Alice had somehow been thrown a thousand years backward in time, and it looked like they were stranded in the past. They had provision for two weeks at the most. Then there was the voluptuous barbarian girl they’d saved from captivity – her presence on board a ship full of normal sailors wasn’t likely to lessen the problems of the situation.

Then he saw the four Viking raider ships bearing straight for him and in a few minutes the first spear thunked into the Alice’s foredeck.

The Ship that sailed The Time Stream is a novel of madcap adventure in a past much more lively than any historian ever dreamed.



G.C. Edmondson: Jose Mario Garry Ordofiez Edmondson y Cotton was born of Manx parentage in Stevens County, Washington, in a log cabin and weaned on maple syrup in 1922. Other sources insist on a birthdate at least fifteen years prior and a probable Scots origin from a family established some four generations in Livingstone, Guatemala. The Scots is probably a euphemism for some other Celtic breed since the one unpurchased birth certificate available hints at Belfast.
After cluttering up his mind for a year at the University of Southern California, Edmondson returned to his older and less fraudulent profession of smithing. A marginal man, he is one of the few remaining who can skin mule or missile.
He has been anthologised by Boucher and Conklin among others. Most of his stuff’s appeared in ‘Fantasy and Science Fiction’ though he’s also been in ‘Astounding’ and other s-f magazines. Non-s-f appearances range from ‘Saturday Evening Post’ through ‘Argosy’ down to ‘Popular Mechanics’ and ‘Trail-R News’.
He reads Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German and Latin. makes a stab at Greek, can ask for a drink in Yiddish and several Slavic languages. Could read Siwash and Chinook if anyone wrote them. At present learning and Chinook if anyone wrote them. At present learning Yaqui so he can converse with his more conservative in-laws.'

Blurb and bio from the 1965 M-109 Ace Doubles Edition

Captain Tate is in charge of 'The Alice', an experimental Navy vessel. While carrying out tests in the Pacific the ship is struck by lightning and the crew and ship find themselves 1000 years in the past and in the path of a Viking warship.
Edmondson combines a good knowledge of his subject matter with great characterisation and a rare laconic wit.
Luckily the Captain is resourceful, has a reasonable grasp of languages and an interest in history. Somehow he needs to find a way to get his ship back to the present day before his crew are slaughtered by Vikings, Romans or Arabs or seduced by the wanton young women of the past.

[Steve Rainwater · Rating 3 out of 5]

McHale's Navy meets the Time Tunnel

Two things to note up front with this book: First, the description on the book cover is flat out wrong as to the mechanism of time travel. I have no idea why, it's not a spoiler and is revealed within the first few pages. Second, I gather from the reviews that there are two distinct versions of the book, a shorter 1965 version and an expanded 1978 version. I read the longer edition with cover art by Steve Hickman.

It's an enjoyable book with a lot of humor and constant action. A crew of misfit sailors have been assigned to an ancient 89 foot wooden sailing vessel in order to help Dr. Krom, an old navy scientist, test new submarine detection gear that is too sensitive to operate on a vessel with a metal hull. The crew includes the usual assortment of naval misfits including Joseph Rate, the competent captain who wants a better crew and a modern ship, a naively religious sailor named McGrath, at least two sailors, Gorson and Cookie, who are suspected of being smugglers, and a few who are good sailors but trouble makers of one sort or another.

The book wastes no time in revealing that Gorson and Cookie have been building an illicit and very complex vacuum distillation still onboard. By page four the two have got their still going just in time for a highly unlikely lighting strike to interact with the still and a depth sounder, triggering a time jump that lands the ship in the path of a Viking vessel. They survive the Vikings and soon figure out what triggered the time jump. They learn to control when a jump happens but they can't control how far they jump and all jumps seem to take them back another 1000 years.

They tangle with unfriendly naval vessels from several eras with time jumps being their only escape in most cases. Before each jump, they usually pick up one or two new crew members; a woman rescued from the Vikings, an Iman, a small island of women castaways. They also encounter other time travelers who've had problems with lighting/still interactions including a prohibition era moonshiner who operated from a houseboat and a medieval monk who distilled wine for a monastery, both of whom join the crew in hopes of getting back to their respective futures.

Unless they can figure out a way to go forward in time, they're going be in big trouble soon because they're running out of civilized times to escape too. An even bigger worry is what happens if the ship appears on dry land instead of in the ocean after a jump. Both worries are realized when a desperate escape puts the ship in the middle of a muddy prehistoric river basin surrounded by large, hungry animals. The entire crew will have to work together to find a way to stay alive, much less return to their own time.

It's a fun book and worth a read if you run across it.

[Guillermina · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is the literary equivalent of those direct-to-video scifi movies with a B-list star and terrible CGI: kinda fun, but the sexism that's this author's thing and the general historically inaccurate bullshit lost it whatever points it may have gotten.

[Ann aka Iftcan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting treatment of time travel and the Navy.

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

really, surprisingly good. The stoey flowed and I really enjoyed all the bits of history that was thrown in. Sad about Raquel though

[Nicole Normand · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book for my 2022 Challenge as it was published on the month & year of my birth; this is my honest review.
-When reading, remind yourself that this book was written in the 1960's when everything was peace ☮ and love ♥, thus we got a bunch of clean naked ladies aboard the ship to the utter happiness of the sailors :-D.
-Interesting facts - true or not, I didn't care - and a fun ride. A bit of romance, suspense, mystery, some violence (especially with the Moors). The action was the main interest here and there was lots of it.
-Some stuff were fantastic, which makes it a great science fiction story. Entertaining.
-Here I felt the big difference between a print and a Kindle. I couldn't research right away all the words I didn't understand, mainly anything to do with the ship description.
-Did Joe get his 2nd chance with Raquel? We don't know and it's too bad, which is why I took one star off. There are tons of questions left unanswered and the sequel was written 16 years later.
-Clearly the editing was done but a few words were either missing or was an homophone. Nothing to distract me so I didn't take note of them. Good job.

[Chak · Rating 2 out of 5]

The joke was on me, thinking how cool it was that I have a pristine, unread copy of this book! It cracked and disintegrated a little more each time I read it, demanding a constant application of scotch tape and a cleanup of tiny flakes of 55 year old, yellowed, pulp paper pages.

I finished it, but found much of it at odds with its own internal logic, and most of it not terribly engaging. However, I think this edition might possibly be an abridged version of the story. Either way, I'm not motivated to learn more. The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream seemed to me to be your average "lightning+X-moved-us-in-time," "yay!-women-will-have-sex-with-us-in-this-time/dimension!," 60's-70's era sci fi.

Meh.

[David Bradley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm stunned to see positive reviews of this title. To me it seemed amateurish, slapped together and pure nonsense. Just for example, the ship goes through a bad storm and afterward sees another ship, this one made of wood. The only conclusion, one sailer says, is that they've gone a thousand years back in time.

And every other sailer onboard just agrees.

C'mon. There's suspending disbelief, and then there's just silliness. I think an author needs to EARN my suspension of disbelief, not just count on it to cover his poor storytelling.

This is, quiet possibly, the worst book I've ever read. I'm hard pressed to think of any as bad.

[Apocryphal Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pulp fiction novel about a modern naval sailing ship that finds itself jumping through time and space (luckily always on the surface of the earth). In their journey they meet vikings, moors, romans, greek nymphs, and perhaps least likely of all a woman from Goose Island (Chicago?) named Ma Kettle.
Good for passing the time, I guess.

[Shalom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dated, but so inventive it hardly matters.

[De Owner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book in England back in the late 1970's.
It a real good book and the story flows well. I have read it several times.

A wooden ship in the 1960's Navy has a glitch and ends up traveling in time.
A good scfy book.

[Mark White · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an old school SF adventure tale of the type popular in the mid 20th century - contemporary protagonists thrown into another world. Usually it's a university professor experimenting with some weird equipment who ends up in some sort of fantasy - think The Dragon And The George, The Incompleat Enchanter, etc. This time it's a naval crew propelled by a lightning strike on a depth sounder and an illicit still. The writing is admirably direct - by page 5 we've been introduced to the ship and her mission, travelled in time and met our first historical characters. The story continues at the same hectic pace with little let up as things go from bad to worse for the accidental explorers. It makes a nice change from modern fiction that would have taken four or five fat volumes to tell the same story. Sensitive New Age characters they are not (remember it is copyright 1965) but it's a rollicking good yarn and a lot of fun.

[Tomislav · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 1965 Nebula nominee is a lightweight adventure story about a US Navy research sailing ship with a small oddball crew that accidentally finds themselves transported from 1965 back 1000 years. That said, I did enjoy the plot and the internal workings of the captain, so totally disconnected from his own feelings. In fact, this book is much better than Blue Face, my only prior G. C. Edmondson read.

And who knew that time travelers could encounter so many naked women? The book is kind of ridiculous that way, but I chose to consider it part of the overall wackiness of the adventure.

The sequel to this book is To Sail The Century Sea.