Edward A. Salisbury

European centered histories of the twentieth century usually focus on World War I as the great dividing line between the old Europe and its monarchies and empires and the modern age, with its focus on ideologies--communism, fascism, capitalism. But in reading The Sea Gypsy you quickly realize that this does not hold true for the rest of the world. It is especially untrue of the South Seas, where most of this book is focused. There, the crew of the Wisdom, a small schooner out of Los Angeles on a three year tour around the world, encountered the still breathing life and culture of Polynesia. The journey went on to find similar "lost worlds" still devoted to their thousands of years of history in the Andaman Sea, Abyssenia, and the Red Sea. But it was the ports of call in American Samoa, the Solomons, New Guinea, Marquesas, and Society Islands (Tahiti and Bora Bora) that most capture the reader's attention. Here, life and customs retained their traditions. And in the early 1920s. when the journey of the Wisdom took place, it was impossible to imagine the cataclysm of World War II. For it was that war, not World War I, that shattered the long held ways of life throughout the Pacific, particularly in the South Seas.

The noted explorer and documentary filmmaker, Edward A. Salisbury, authored The Sea Gypsy. Although Merian C. Cooper, the World War I and World War II aviator, explorer, filmmaker (of the original King Kong), commercial aviation pioneer, and businessman, is listed as a co-author, Cooper's official sole account is of the trip into Abyssenia, which nonetheless is another highlight of the book. Some sources also claim that Cooper, in fact, wrote the entire book but just took credit for the Abyssenia chapter.

In each stop, Salisbury outlines the varied ways people live, construct homes, prepare their foods, and worship their gods. And he does so in a world that is much larger than the one we live in today. Then, it might take months before letters found their ways to their rightful recipients as they plied the waterways of the South Pacific. Communication was haphazard. Travelling in relatively unknown parts of the world remained a death defying adventure. Encounter with disease, accident, or severe weather might mean being wiped from the pages of history.

Yet that was the world the Wisdom encountered almost 100 years ago. It is not nearly such a crowded world either. Nor was it teeming with the conveniences and technological advancements taken for granted today. Then, a gasoline engine, an electric generator, or an old biplane were the cutting edge of human development. It was a world without antibiotics, modern medicine, or advanced surgical techniques. In a word, it was a world still largely unsullied by its contact with the West. That would eventually come. Peoples lives would improve in material ways. But the cost would be the obliteration of age old customs. That, in the end, is what The Sea Gypsy tells us.… (meer)