Overview

From Ireland and the Shetlands up to Greenland, across to Baffin Island, Newfoundland, the US, and the Caribbean – prize-winning author David Gange embarks on a seabound journey through North-Atlantic coasts and islands, exploring ways of life that have been built on small rowed or paddled boats. 'In prose that is precise and beautiful as northern light […] this book is an absolute delight' MOYA CANNON A true and verified story, Afloat also offers a vision of how those ways of life might inform all our futures. Small traditional boats fulfil roles in their communities unlike any other supposedly inanimate things. Often treated as living members of the family, with minds and lives of their own, they’ve been essential to many cultures’ ways of living in the land- and seascapes that surround them. Wherever we have statistics, small rowed and paddled boats outnumber decked ships by at least fifty to one. Yet almost all history writing is about the big boats, a strange misrepresentation of maritime history. And one this book puts right. Afloat is the story of eight journeys in search of ocean-going rowed and paddled boats, beautifully illustrated with photographs taken by the author. Gange kayaks thousands of miles, and spends hundreds of miles in wooden, canvas, and birch-bark boats, dozens of nights sleeping at the shoreline, and weeks in boat builders’ workshops learning, with saw or plane in hand, the songs and stories of these charismatic vessels. He joins community pilgrimages to tiny islands on their saint’s days, and races and regattas that express revivals of commitment to local boats and the community ideals they sustained. Along the way he encounters whales, dolphins, sharks, turtles and icebergs, as well as journeys beneath skies filled, from horizon to horizon, with tens of thousands of seabirds. Most of all, though, these journeys involve learning from the worldviews of small communities who have suffered intensely from the nation- and empire-building of modern states, but whose knowledge and ethics are far more important for the future than those of the inland bureaucracies that marginalised them.

Full Product Details

9780008413583

Table of Contents

Reviews

'A beautifully written and beautifully made book. David Gange's rowed and paddled journeys in small boats are full of drama, insight and revelation' David Gange ‘An impressive intellectual and physical journey, allowing the reader to experience the Atlantic Coast from a fresh, deeply informed and invigorating perspective; rarely have our coastlines and cultures been explored with such understanding and respect.’ Highland Book Prize ‘A tour de force’ Moya Cannon ‘This book is the product of a considerable physical achievement … A brilliant book, and a major step towards a genuinely radical reimagining of the history of the British Isles.’ Scotsman ‘The strength of Mr Gange’s account is his generosity. His own wry persona never overshadows the voices of past and present inhabitants … [his] prose is itself poetic and precise … His enthusiasm for snoozing in soggy sleeping bags is infectious … A dunking in the freezing sea, off the coast of County Mayo, leaves the author shivering but “ignited, elated”. Surfacing from the book, the reader is invigorated, too.’ Economist ‘An intensely political book … there is uncomplicated beauty as well as wonderful descriptions’ Country Life ‘Gange is both extraordinarily intrepid and deeply attentive to all he encounters … worth attention for its deeper argument as well as its thrilling surface.’ Spectator ‘[Gange is] physically resourceful, articulate, clear-eyed, informed, attentive to the realities, and crucially at home in all the elements. A book reliant in the end on one key fact: edges are revelatory.’ Adam Nicolson, winner of the Wainwright Prize 2018 ‘This beautifully written and grippingly researched book shows us that our shores are the beginning, not the ending, of things.’ Philip Hoare ‘Energetic, entertaining and erudite … Sometimes boisterous, sometimes lyrical but always engaging.’ Donald Murray PRAISE FOR THE FRAYED ATLANTIC EDGE: COLLECTIVE WINNER OF THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2020

PRAISE FOR THE FRAYED ATLANTIC EDGE: COLLECTIVE WINNER OF THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2020 BBC Countryfile Magazine Book of the Month ‘An impressive intellectual and physical journey, allowing the reader to experience the Atlantic Coast from a fresh, deeply informed and invigorating perspective; rarely have our coastlines and cultures been explored with such understanding and respect.’ Highland Book Prize ‘A tour de force’ Moya Cannon ‘This book is the product of a considerable physical achievement … A brilliant book, and a major step towards a genuinely radical reimagining of the history of the British Isles.’ Scotsman ‘The strength of Mr Gange’s account is his generosity. His own wry persona never overshadows the voices of past and present inhabitants … [his] prose is itself poetic and precise … His enthusiasm for snoozing in soggy sleeping bags is infectious … A dunking in the freezing sea, off the coast of County Mayo, leaves the author shivering but “ignited, elated”. Surfacing from the book, the reader is invigorated, too.’ Economist ‘An intensely political book … there is uncomplicated beauty as well as wonderful descriptions’ Country Life ‘Gange is both extraordinarily intrepid and deeply attentive to all he encounters … worth attention for its deeper argument as well as its thrilling surface.’ Spectator ‘[Gange is] physically resourceful, articulate, clear-eyed, informed, attentive to the realities, and crucially at home in all the elements. A book reliant in the end on one key fact: edges are revelatory.’ Adam Nicolson, winner of the Wainwright Prize 2018 ‘This beautifully written and grippingly researched book shows us that our shores are the beginning, not the ending, of things.’ Philip Hoare ‘Energetic, entertaining and erudite … Sometimes boisterous, sometimes lyrical but always engaging.’ Donald Murray

'A beautifully written and beautifully made book. David Gange's rowed and paddled journeys in small boats are full of drama, insight and revelation' Alistair Moffat 'David Gange brings us on a marvellous voyage, not of conquest, but of restoration. He kayaks between ice floes, rows us up fjords, traces coastlines in an arc from Galway north to Greenland and then south to the Barbados, introducing us to the small boats of the northern Atlantic and the communities which depend upon them. In prose that is precise and beautiful as northern light, he shares with us the aesthetic thrill of experiencing an indigenous boat in the environment which has shaped it over time. This book is an absolute delight' Moya Cannon PRAISE FOR THE FRAYED ATLANTIC EDGE: COLLECTIVE WINNER OF THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2020 ‘This book is the product of a considerable physical achievement … A brilliant book, and a major step towards a genuinely radical reimagining of the history of the British Isles.’ Scotsman ‘The strength of Mr Gange’s account is his generosity. His own wry persona never overshadows the voices of past and present inhabitants … [his] prose is itself poetic and precise … His enthusiasm for snoozing in soggy sleeping bags is infectious … A dunking in the freezing sea, off the coast of County Mayo, leaves the author shivering but “ignited, elated”. Surfacing from the book, the reader is invigorated, too.’ Economist ‘[Gange is] physically resourceful, articulate, clear-eyed, informed, attentive to the realities, and crucially at home in all the elements. A book reliant in the end on one key fact: edges are revelatory.’ Adam Nicolson, winner of the Wainwright Prize 2018 ‘This beautifully written and grippingly researched book shows us that our shores are the beginning, not the ending, of things.’ Philip Hoare ‘Energetic, entertaining and erudite … Sometimes boisterous, sometimes lyrical but always engaging.’ Donald Murray

Author Information

David Gange was born in the Peak District. He is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Birmingham and has published history books with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Oneworld Publications. He has appeared on BBC2 and Smithsonian television as well as at the Hay Literary Festival and in the TLS. His writing as published nature writing and photography in various books and magazines.

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