PHANTOM FLEET - THE SCOWS AND SCOWMEN OF AUCKLAND

AUTHOR - Ted Ashby

PUBLICATION - A.H. & A.W. Reed 1975

CONDITION - Very Good condition. Large previous owner's inscription on front endpaper, otherwise clean and tidy and binding tight. Dustwrapper in good condition, multiple small tears top and bottom but none more than 20mm.

PRICE - $60

DESCRIPTION - Auckland's Phantom Fleet consisted of the little deck scows and hold scows that played so important a part in the building of a great city. Between 1873 and the 1920s, no fewer than 125 of these ketches and schooners were built, the largest being the Niccol masterpiece, the three masted topsail schooner Zingara, 128 feet, launched in 1906. Of all these ships only a handful is still afloat, dieselised travesties of their former graceful selves, their numbers dwindling year by year. This book is their memorial. It brings the ships and their men into sharp focus, the work they did, the hardships they faced - Echo's misadventures, for example, show the pattern: over a period of 35 years she was stranded 11 times, was in 6 collisions, and twice caught fire. Others foundered more than once, or were wrecked outright, but yet, simple and rugged in build, as often as not lived on to sail again another day. The hard labour of pushing loaded shingle barrows up a 14-inch plank on one wheel and one leg: the battles of wits between the scowmen and the crafty merchants, who usually held the winning cards; salty yarns of even saltier characters; the ships themselves, each with her own personality; grim accidents, comic incidents - Ashby gives us all these and at first hand, as he has spent 50 years as scowman, skipper, and a rebuilder of the scows. His 118 photographs form a gallery of interest and his four sea poems tingle with nostalgia. For good measure he has included a comprehensive register of the 125 vessels that are now, alas, no more than a Phantom Fleet.

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