Letters from a Sea Captain to an Artist

A book for lovers of the sea and old ships. Heroic ships sail through the letters like characters in a drama, and through every letter runs the call of the sea. In 1957, two men from opposite hemispheres met, and discovered that their lives had been guided by the love of ships. Oswald Brett was a painter—one of the 20th century’s finest nautical artists, who’d mastered his craft in the Sydney studio of John Allcot and on the oceans of the world. Captain Archie Horka was a New York mariner, a veteran of working sail who’d been twice round Cape Horn, but had since become the skipper of sophisticated modern vessels on challenging Atlantic routes. After becoming acquainted the two men saw each other occasionally from then on, but their paths didn’t cross often enough for all they had to tell each other. They agreed to write letters, and Oswald kept all of Archie’s.