Roland Wild

"Smellie" must be the name of some forgotten Babylonian god. Because this book is more like an ode of praise to an ancient Middle Eastern deity than a biography.

I have to start by saying that this book was not what I was hoping for. I wanted a book about the Nascopie; what I got was a biography of one of her captains. So this book was bound to be a disappointment to me. But I don't think it's very good even as a biography of Thomas F. Smellie. Even the introduction says that he was something of a martinet. And his arctic service is treated as ground-breaking (or at least sea-lane-breaking), when all the areas he visited had been explored. It's true that the charts were inaccurate, but that should have been known -- much of the area, e.g., had been explored by John Ross, and he had to abandon his ship on his years-long expedition; little wonder if Ross had problems making charts! So the book treats Smellie as overcoming huge obstacles that simply weren't huge, and makes him a hero as a result. Smellie, with a much more modern ship and modern equipment, should have had (and did have) a much easier time. It all just felt too fulsome.

To top it all off, there is no index, so you can't go back and find something you remember from earlier.

It does, at least, read fairly well, if you don't mind that taste of sycophancy. But it feels like a rough study for a real biography -- and, as far as I know, Smellie wasn't important enough for that real biography ever to have been written. There are two Thomas Smellies with articles on Wikipedia. The Smellie of this book... isn't either one of them.… (meer)