Clouds of White Sail : Fishermen, Racing, and the End of an Era

Clouds of White Sail tells the story of how early-twentieth-century fishermen from New England and the Maritime Provinces used the International Fishermen’s Races to reignite the public’s love affair with the beauty of their ships and the romance of the sea in order to hold onto their way of life.

Fishermen from New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces once made a reputation by driving their schooners under a full press of sail in a howling gale on their run into market, fueling the popular imagination with romantic images of Captains Courageous. But by the early twentieth century, they seemed destined to go the way of workers ashore, who had been displaced by new technologies. Then fate intervened in the form of the International Fishermen’s Races. Clouds of White Sail tells the story of how schoonermen were able to reignite the public’s love affair with the beauty of their ships and the romance of the sea and hold onto their way of life in a way that few other workers were able. Michael Wayne Santos’s narrative takes a page from the fo’c’sle traditions from which he draws; like the men whose saga he immortalizes, he not only loves a good story but also knows how to tell one.