Item #894 Cruises, Mainly in the Bay of the Chesapeake. Robert Barrie, George Barrie Jr.
Cruises, Mainly in the Bay of the Chesapeake
Cruises, Mainly in the Bay of the Chesapeake
An Early Look at the Chesapeake Bay as a Yachting Paradise

Cruises, Mainly in the Bay of the Chesapeake

Philadelphia: The Franklin Press, 1909. First edition. Black & White Photographs, 1 fold-out map. Full cloth. Octavo. [x], 276, [3] pages. Near fine. Bound green cloth over boards with black-stamped yachting vignette on upper board, black-stamped titles on spine. Bookplate on front pastedown. A few light rubs to binding extremities. Upper board has a few faint spots visible at an oblique angle.

A Chesapeake Bay classic. The first book to draw significant attention to the Bay as ideally suited for pleasure boating. The Barrie brothers were members of the Corinthian Yacht Club in Philadelphia, and made their first cruise the Bay in 1897 by way of the C&D Canal, just at the beginning of the reign of the skipjack among Chesapeake Bay workboats. There were also numerous other workboats plying the Bay's waters then, but yachts, as George Barrie later recalled "in those days were almost as scarce as hen's teeth." (in Burgess, "This was Chesapeake Bay.")

The book is written in a charmingly readable style and does not confine itself to scenes on the water but includes many interesting vignettes of Annapolis, Oxford, St. Michael's, activity around the boatyards, etc. Nicely illustrated with dozens of photographic plates depicting the native sailing craft as well as scenes in the sleepy shore towns and boatyards (note: the illustrations in the later Bryn Mawr editions are rather inferior to the original plates herein). Fold-out map of the Bay at rear.

See HOWES #B-176; TOY #1023; PRATT-EASTERN SHORE #35; MORRIS & HOWLAND p. 11.


Item #894

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