SEA MARKED

Tides and time.

British writer Cracknell brings her interest in “memory, place and movement” to an investigation of her family’s connection to the sea. Although she lived mostly inland in Britain, she always felt “a tidal drag of longing” when she visited her mother’s home near the coast. Partly to rescue her “collective seafaring past from amnesia,” partly to forge a closer connection to her mother, she found herself wishing “to be more than a spectator, to ‘belong’ to a place circumscribed by tides.” In 2016, she began her project, which led her to archives, museums, and graveyards; to photographs and log books; and to a wealth of family memorabilia in what she calls the Box. She walks along the shore, joins a rowing club, helps to build a skiff; and she takes two voyages on the Bessie Ellen, a small ship that was built in 1907, in use through the 1970s, and in 2000 was rescued and refitted for sailing holidays. In September 2018, Cracknell joined a crew to deliver the ship from Scotland to Cornwall, powered by wind in its eight sails. Responding to myriad needs on board, she knows the trip will be challenging: “I will earn the arrival just as past seafarers did,” she writes. Although she found more documentation about seafaring men than the women who kept their homes and had their children, she comes to feel closer to women’s lives and their families, “people minutely attuned to tidal rhythms, with multiple skills and an inherited allegiance to both land and sea, wet and dry.” Cracknell vividly conveys “the chop and the bite of salt air,” the power of the ocean’s tow, and the “sea-determined lives” of her ancestors.

A richly textured melding of memoir and social history.