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January 2013 www.sname.org/sname/mt (in review) REVIEWED BY ALAN HUGENOT Back in 1995, I met a docent at the Maritime Museum in Newport News, Virginia. Well into his 80s, he arrived every day in crisply pressed merchant marine chief engineers dress blues. Twice my age, the wizened old salt regaled me daily with yarns of sail- ing aboard tramp tankers and cargo ships in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. He was liv- ing proof that the rollicking life of those characters?Tod Moran in the novels by Howard Pease and Glencannon in Guy Gilpatricks ction?were in fact based on a real lifestyle that had existed even while I was growing up reading those novels in junior high school. Men still living actu- ally followed that career right up until the dawn of the jet age in 1958, when Pan Am began regular Boeing 707 service, quickly killing the passenger ship industry, and the ags of con- venience began taking the tramp tankers and cargo ships overseas. e old chief had a stroke the following month, and when I visited him at his home he showed me a map of the world crisscrossed with plots of all his ship voyages to every corner of the globe. Apparently, with my career start- ing only in 1967, I had been born just a decade too late. Unfortunately, the chief passed on before I could record all his stories and they were lost to history. But now that void has been partly lled by this new book by Robin Burnett, in which is describes a similar lifestyle in the nal days of tramping. Indeed, in July 1965, Burnett decided to go ashore, hoping to retire from active sailing in the British Merchant Navy because he saw the end coming. In his words: The very ships, the way of life and the shipping com- pany itself were coming to an end to be replaced by air travel, bulk carriers, automated container ships and even larger tankers. At the same time the British Merchant Navy, which had once dominated world transport and commerce, was already shrinking under the influence of flags of conve- nience, with the lower standards that entailed.? Water Under the Keel: Memories of the Sea By Robin Burnett PUBLISHED BY BOOK GUILD PUBLISHING used for training more than 17,000 navy pilots in basic car- rier operations. Or consider the salvage ship USS Glomar Explorer (AG 193). After the Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 sank in the Pacic in 16,000 feet of water, Glomar Explorer was designed and built in the early 1970s for the specic, secret, and semi-successful purpose of retrieving that submarine along with its prized contents from the deep. Ian Fleming of 007 fame would have been amazed. With many of the ships covered in this book, the author seems to take great delight documenting the compara- tively innitesimal amount of time that frequently elapsed between the date a keel was laid and the date a ship was placed into service, particularly during World War II. My, how times have changed. But these are just brief snippets for illustrative purposes. Uncommon Warriors is replete with photographs, speci- cations, and a thorough biography for each of the 46 ships covered. Most of these vessels served for decades, providing safe transport, workspaces, and bunks for countless sailors, and each of them deserves to be documented for posterity. The book includes a complete directory of all miscella- neous? U.S. Navy vessels. Ken Sayers has assembled a very valuable book. This is fun, informative, and suitable reading for anyone inter- ested in naval history or, for that matter, an important piece of American history. MTDavid A. Breslin , a PE and a member of SNAME, is a marine engineer at US Naval Sea Systems Command. Burnetts memoir of his life at sea as a cadet, ships ocer, and, later, nautical journalist, takes the reader to that world of tramping from port to port.