Wayne O'Leary provides detailed descriptions of how the schooners were conceived and perfected, and paints a vivid picture of life on Tancook from the late eighteenth century into the twentieth century. He shows how national and international developments affected the lives of the Tancook Islanders and the character and uses of the vessel for which they became famous. He also includes many stories about individual builders and a wealth of photographs and drawings. The Tancook Schooners will be of interest to maritime enthusiasts as well as maritime, economic, and social historians.

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"O'Leary provides an important contribution to both maritime and material history using an interdisciplinary approach which combines oral history and tradition with naval architecture and boat-building techniques along with more traditional historical written sources ... [he makes] a major contribution to research in several fields, and deals with a topic which, to my knowledge, no other Canadian scholar is working on." Richard Henning Field, Director, Dartmouth Heritage Museum.