Jack Tar: A Sailor's Life 1750-1910 by Rodney P Carlisle & J Welles Henderson

Jack Tar: A Sailor's Life, 1750-1910 by Rodney P Carlisle J Welles Henderson and Welles Henderson 1999 Hardcover Illustrated 288 Pages Over the years, Welles Henderson, the author of this intriguing book, noted that the majority of maritime museums throughout the world placed their emphasis on ship paintings, ship models, figureheads, navigation equipment, nautical tools and weapons but gave little insight into the daily life of the ordinary sailor. For over four decades, therefore, he has been collecting material in an attempt to fill the gap. This has been a great challenge as comparatively few real-life depictions of shipboard activities and the life of a sailor at sea were made during the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth century. There are countless ship portraits but very little of the human interest side of the sailor afloat. While many well-known expeditions, including that of Captain James Cook, had artists accompany them, practically all their depictions were of flora,