by J.T. Rothrock, M.D.
Here it is at last! A wonderful and very, very hard-to-find book on vacation cruising in Chesapeake and Delaware Bays.
This is a tour de force of History, Natural History, Social and Political Commentary and (unfortunately) highly prescient judgements about the environment of the day (1884). Rothrock's observations on the flora and fauna he finds during his cruise are leavened with good and salty yachting opinions and highly charged concerns about what he sees about to happen to these same flora and fauna and the lingering social concerns just about 20 years after the close of the Civil War. This book is very much like that of George Reiger's Pulitzer Price-nominated A Wanderer on my Native Shore, and one can well imagine that, (if time could be conflated), Reiger's little canoe made fast to the taffrail of the Martha and he and Rothrock sharing a pipe and observations beneath the warm glow of the cabin lamp of an evening. The author begans with "The plan of spending this vacation on the water grew gradually, and last commended itself to my judgement, because it was cheap, full of health, and promised as complete a change in mode of life as one could hope tp obtain.--To carry out my plan a strong, nearly new boat was purchased, not a racing yacht, in which everything was sacrificed to speed, but a solid, "well-fashioned" little sloop, whose qualities were safety first, comfort second, and some speed at the tail-end of a long list of good points." The Contents are: Description of the Yacht, and Reasons for the Cruise, Down the Chesapeake and up the James, Down the James and up the Chesapeake, Cruising on the Delaware River and Bay, Who should go Cruising, and Winter-Quarters in the Choptank.
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