CLEOPATRA'S BARGE: The Crowninshield Story

by David L. Ferguson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 1976

These half-dozen accounts of tycoons, rascals, charmers, and extravagant loons are fastened together with the mucilage of family. The Crowninshields had a Galsworthian history which was intertwined with that of America from 1684 when little Johannes Kaspar Richter von Kronenscheldt, friend of Cotton Mather, first arrived. His grandson George, trader in Sumatran pepper, became ""Rich Very Rich in Deed."" Then by expert privateering during the War of 1812 he made the Crowninshields the nation's wealthiest family. Crazy George, Jr. built the first seagoing vessel designed strictly for pleasure and sailed for Europe in search of a princess, any princess, and a memento of Napoleon Bonaparte; the ostentatious ship was christened Cleopatra's Barge. Richard Crowninshield, a classic rake accused of murder for hire, was doubly unlucky, for Daniel Webster himself delivered an oration for the prosecution. Clara, an illegitimate Crowninshield, took a Grand Tour with young Long-fellow and survived to become a rich and charming nonagenarian. To us, the best known of the clan was Frank, less rich but not a little eccentric himself. Shallow and mannered, ""Crownie"" of Vanity Fair (in many ways the antithesis of Ross of The New Yorker), was one of those men who invented himself, for better or worse. Francis Boardman Crowninshield, the quintessential millionaire, was married to an enormous du Pont heiress; their yacht, Cleopatra's Barge II, was the scene of many a boozy tirade against the English and FDR. Today it is just another Caribbean craft for hire. Sometimes wandering, Ferguson's book is less a scholarly history than an antic and elliptical voyage of pleasure exploring a singular American family.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1976

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1976

Categories: NONFICTION