Pacific Voyages: The Story of Sail in the Great Ocean

“Few artists are also historians, and few historians have the talent to illustrate the people and events they study. [Gordon Miller’s] paintings of ships under sail, wrecked on a lee shore, in storms and in cities are luminous.”—Pacific Yachting

In Western myths and imagination, the Pacific is the home of soft, warm, gentle trade winds, idyllic island lagoons and waving palms—the exotic earthly paradise of escapists, adventurers and romantics. Until James Cook showed otherwise, eighteenth-century Europeans also believed this ocean to contain a great southern continent of untold riches and beauty. The islands of the South Pacific can indeed be enchanting, their charm often exceeding expectations, but as European mariners realized when they first arrived here in the sixteenth century, the Pacific Ocean is also a region of ferocious tropical cyclones, treacherous, reef-littered atolls, wearying doldrums and mind-numbing distances.

This book is maritime artist and historian Gordon Miller’s tribute to the humble little ships that first ventured across the great Pacific, and the brave sailors that manned them. It is a brief, selective and condensed story of the charting, exploitation and occupation of the Pacific Ocean, mostly in small, wooden ships, with only wind and human muscle for power. These maritime pioneers united North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, the entire Pacific Ocean, all the coasts that surround it, and all the islands within.

Even confined to the last four centuries of oceangoing sail, this is a large and complex story—a story brought to life by Miller’s carefully researched text and masterfully rendered maritime paintings.

 
“In Pacific Voyages, Gordon Miller combines both artistic skill and engaging historical narrative. His commentary and images range expansively and expertly across the vast Pacific Ocean, finding inspiration in the voyages of ‘humble little ships’ and the audacity of those who sailed them. This is a work to be studied and enjoyed by all those who, like the author and artist, find in our common maritime heritage, character and romance.”

–Kevin Sheehan, Ph.D. Curator, Maritime Museum of San Diego

“ Pacific Voyages is a remarkable book that effectively captures the evolution of travel and transportation by vessels under sail over the ages. Gordon Miller’s paintings not only capture the incredible technical detail of these vessels, but they also put them to sea, capturing the feeling seafarers offshore know so well. Miller then goes on to tie the book together with a fascinating narrative that would otherwise require a complete library of books. Some of the vessels described are preserved in today’s museums or have been recently discovered on the arctic seabed, while most simply remain in the hearts and minds of nautical aficionados around the globe. Gordon Miller does us all a great service by keeping them all alive with this wonderful book.”

–Captain William Noon, Master Mariner

“The conquest of the vast Pacific Ocean was the achievement of hardy men sailing under canvas. From the age of Magellan and Drake to our times, master mariners understood how wind, tide and current determined the natural world. In sailing ships from the small armed merchantman Victoria to the big clipper Thermopylae, sailors harnessed its elements. They braved sea states richly reimagined in Gordon Miller’s vibrant paintings. The sea claimed many an adventurer. The marine artist’s rarest gifts are on display here. And they are evocative: a wild, spray-swept watery expanse being transited by a lonely ship under canvas, navigated and crewed by men of destiny and purpose. Here is ample testimony to man’s achievement, an age when the sailing ship reordered the world, opened new trades, and put down foothold empires. Authenticity and attention to factual detail are Miller’s hallmarks. The artist-historian’s knowledge is demonstrated on every page – text highlighting image, a true marriage of hard fact and visual imagination – an essential work to our understanding of oceanic history.”

–Barry Gough, author of Possessing Meares Island