The Cape Horn Breed
True Adventure Autobiography Young Adult Non-Fiction Colonial History Maritime History Nautical Memoir Age of Sail
The Cape Horn Breed is a scarce 1999 hardcover re-issue of one of the most gripping real-life sailing narratives ever set to paper. Written by Captain William H. S. Jones—Royal Navy Reserve officer, veteran marine surveyor and last of the Cape Horn “iron men” who drove square-rigged ships around the world—this 328-page memoir drops the reader straight onto the icy yards of the full-rigged ship and the teak decks of the barque Caithness-Shire. From brutal apprenticeships in the British Isles to command under the British India Steam Navigation Company and the loss of the troopship REWA, Jones charts the sunset era of sail and the birth of steam with the authority of a man who actually lived it. Illustrated throughout with period photographs and line drawings, the book is wrapped in a vivid dust jacket that evokes the salt-stung glory of life under canvas.
Collectors prize this vintage edition because it preserves P. R. Stephensen’s original 1939 text in a sturdily bound volume that still feels at home in the cockpit or on the library shelf. The pages are clean and unmarked—no inscriptions, ex-libris plates, or dog-eared corners—so the copy you receive is ready to shelve or gift without apology. Light thumbing on the closed edge is the only trace that the book has waited twenty-five years for its next reader, making it an unusually well-preserved example of maritime publishing history.
For lovers of Australian colonial history, the book doubles as a first-hand chronicle of how wind-ships knit the empire together: Australian wool, Indian jute, and Welsh coal all pass through Jones’s voyages, while his later career as a marine surveyor along the Queensland coast illuminates the young colony’s dependence on sail. Young adults studying exploration or maritime technology will find the technical explanations of rigging, navigation, and Cape Horn storms both thrilling and classroom-friendly, while adult readers will savor the wry humor and stoic philosophy that carried men through 100-day passages. Whether you’re building a collection of true sea adventures, hunting a memorable gift for a boater, or simply want to feel deck-plank vibrations beneath your feet without leaving home, The Cape Horn Breed delivers an authentic blast of salt air you can’t find in modern nautical fiction.
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