The Railway in Town and Country 1830–1914 by Jack Simmons

Abstract

308 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE thus denying the islanders good anchorages as well. So the settlers of these unpromising places were from the beginning pushed to develop boats with particular characteristics. They had to be shoal-draft and capable of being pulled ashore; hulls needed to be easily driven be­ cause summer morning calms meant rowing for miles out to the fish­ ing grounds; getting back home in a northwesterly gale required an ability to beat to windward; and for fast sailing the boats had to be able to carry plenty of canvas. What Post makes clear, though, is that hands, minds, and the forces of culture were the crucial ingredients shaping these long, slender, schooner-rigged centerboarders. The is­ landers’ keenness for speed, for instance, was not simply a matter of getting fish to market quickly; it had as much to do with generations of particularly skillful builders and a local tradition of boat racing, but also a certain feistiness born of the vagaries of economic life, occasional contraband trading, and a disposition to push systems— whether of mainland rules or building boats—to the limits. There are delightful nuggets of information in every chapter. We learn about an ingenious mooring system developed in the absence of usable harbors or anchorages and discover that the invention of the mackerel jig influenced boat design. We find out that in these closely knit families everyone had well-defined tasks; men planted potatoes and cabbage while women planted the rest; women dressed herring and men generally took care of the cod. Now, finally, I also understand how boat builders used small models of a hull to construct the real thing. What comes out of Post’s skillful use of varied sources is a touching evocation ofhuman experience. In lifetimes measured more by chang­ ing seasons than the passage of years, this is how the people on the Tancook Islands farmed, built boats, and fished. But there are nice historiographical lessons here, too. The analysis of artifacts in terms of culture and environment makes the elusive nature of craft skill more accessible, to historians as well as to apprentice boat builders. Besides that, thinking in terms of regional styles and values gives human dimension to technologies usually treated anonymously. As a consequence, we get history rich in texture and persuasive in its understandings. Bruce Sinclair Prof. Sinclair sails an old wooden boat and occasionally writes for Canadian Yachting. The Railway in Town and Country 1830—1914. By Jack Simmons. North Pomfret, Vt.: David & Charles, 1986. Pp. 400; maps, tables, notes, appendix, index. $34.95. Jack Simmons’s latest work is a sequel to his Railways ofEngland and Wales 1830—1914 (1978), wherein he discussed the creation of the TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 309 network, the companies’ technical achievements and progress, and the legal framework within which the railways operated. The purpose of The Railway in Town and Country, on the other hand, “is to examine the services rendered by railways in England and Wales during the Victorian age, and some of the effects they produced: in the impact on local communities, on London, on the great cities and other towns, on villages and farms” (p. 15), something that, he argues correctly, has seldom been attempted before. For London and the major cities he could build on the work of Barker and Robbins, and Kellett; and his chapter on watering places owes much to the recent spate of scholarship on the rise of the English seaside resort. Even here, he adds much significant detail culled from a wide variety of sources ranging from government papers to private letters. But his most im­ portant achievement is to bring together a vast array of scattered materials relating to the influence of railways on ports and harbor development and their effect on small towns and the Victorian coun­ tryside. This was a particularly difficult task since, as he says, most local historians forget about railways as soon as the tracks are laid, and most railway company historians are uninterested in the envi­ ronment of the railways they discuss. The outcome of all his labor is a rich diversity of experience that Simmons generally allows to...