The Seashore Book
E. Boyd Smith
language
(Transcript, April 27, 2014)
The Seashore Book - Bob and Betty's Summer with Captain Hawes by E. Boyd SmithIn his second picture book about Bobby and Betty, Smith takes the children to Quohaug [or Quogue, as it is more commonly spelled today], on the Long Island shore, for an eventful summer vacation. With the avuncular Captain Ben Hawes as their knowledgeable guide, the children visit a boatyard and a sail maker's shop, witness the launch of one of the last great square-rigged ships, go clam digging, and learn to swim.As in The Farm Book, Smith, with equal pride in the accomplishments of past and present generations, here deliberately sets out to record a pivotal historical moment: the change-over from wind- to steam-driven sea power. To underscore the point, Bobby and Betty return home to Manhattan "just in time to see the review of the country's war fleet on the Hudson, ... great, massive steel vessels, with no sails, driven by steam." For them, and doubtless for countless young American readers in the age of Manifest Destiny, it was the perfect conclusion to a summer that had, in the childrenās estimate, been "more interesting than the most fascinating fairy book."Now I will tell you how Bob and Betty spent the summer at the seashore with Captain Ben Hawes. Captain Hawes was an old sailor. After forty years' service on the high seas he had settled down ashore at Quohaug.Bluff and hearty, and with no end of sea yarns and stories of strange adventures, and of foreign ports and peoples, he was more interesting to the children than the most fascinating fairy book.His home was a little museum of odds and ends brought from different far-away lands, with everything arranged in shipshape order. The big green parrot, who could call "Ship ahoy!" "All aboard!" delighted the boy and girl. And the seashells, which gave the murmuring echo of the ocean when you put them to your ear. And the curiosities of strange sorts and shapes, from outlandish countries.