The Turning Tide: A Biography of the Irish Sea

by Jon Gower

An immersive history of a pivotal stretch of water ‘Fascinating, spellbinding, erudite and great fun.’ Roddy Doyle ‘Remarkable. Lively … Gower writes beautifully [and] the book is profoundly popular.’ Times Literary Supplement The Turning Tide is a hymn to a sea passage of world-historical importance. Combining social and cultural history, nature-writing, travelogue and politics, Welshman Jon Gower charts a sea which has carried both Vikings and saints; invasion forces, royals and rebels; writers, musicians and fishermen. The divided but interconnected waters of the Irish Sea – from the narrow North Channel through St George’s Channel to where the Celtic sea opens out into the wide Atlantic – have a turbulent history to match the violence of its storms. Jon Gower is a sympathetic and interested pilot, taking the reader to the great shipyards of Belfast and through the mass exodus of the starving during the Irish Famine in coffin boats bound for America. He follows the migrations of working men and women looking for work in England and tells the tales of more casual sometimes seasick, often homesick too. The Irish Sea is also a place with an abundant natural history. The rarest sea bird in Europe visits its coasts in summer while the rarest goose wings in during winter. The Turning Tide navigates waters teeming with life, filled with seals and salt-tanged stories and surveyed by seabirds. Lyrically written and fizzing with curiosity, this is a remarkable and far-reaching book.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Nature, Ireland, Travel, Geography

308 pages, Hardcover

Published February 16, 2023

About the author

Jon Gower grew up in Llanelli. A former BBC Wales arts and media correspondent, he was educated at Girton College, Cambridge, where he read English. He is a documentary maker for television and radio with a third of a century's credits to his name. Recent documentaries cover subjects such as the secret life as a poet of Hollywood actor Robert Mitchum (based on the book 'Oh Dad!' by Lloyd Robson) and the Summer of Love in San Francisco.

Jon has eleven books to his name, in both Welsh and English. They include 'An Island Called Smith,' about a disappearing island in Chesapeake Bay, which gained him the John Morgan travel writing prize, and 'Uncharted', a novel described by Jan Morris as 'unflagging and unfailingly inventive.' In 2009 he was awarded a major Creative Wales award to explore the Welsh settlement in Patagonia.

Along with novelist Tiffany Murray, Jon is currently a Hay Festival International Fellow, and his next books will be a novel called 'Y Storiwr', due out in July 2011 and 'The Story of Wales' which will accompany a landmark BBC series, due to be broadcast early in 2012. His second volume of short stories 'Too Cold for Snow' will appear in May 2012 as will a joint publication about the Welsh coastline where his text complements beautiful photography by Jeremy Moore.

In what little spare time he has Jon develops and performs theatre pieces with actor Gerald Tyler and trumpeter Tomos Williams, and reads, both to his children and occasionally by himself!

Jon lives in Cardiff with his wife Sarah and two book-loving daughters Elena and Onwy.

Reviews

[E · Rating 4 out of 5]

- a lot of interesting anecdotes, consciously environmentalist and subaltern so thumbs up
- doesn't amount to anything more than that in the sum total, tho
- the best parts were the parts about birds, love how he incorporated birds into as many episodes as possible

1:

"Modomnoc had only managed to get 3 miles out to sea before the little swarming bee-clouds joined him, forcing him to turn back. Worried that he would be depriving the monks at the Mynyw community of honey, he returned to land, there explaining all to St David. He in turn suggested that Modomnoc should resume his journey – if need be, bees and all, and with his blessing. As with many such tales, it wasn’t until his third attempt that he settled his small charges in a temporary shelter on the boat and made the crossing.

Once he’d settled in his new home – a church he built at Bremor near the town of Balbriggan near Dublin – Modomnoc settled his nectar-seeking charges in a quiet corner of the monastery garden, where he planted the kind of flowers his workaholic charges loved best. It’s little wonder Modmonoc became the patron saint of bees and beekeeping."

2:

"Sarah was born on 9 January 1839 to a sea captain of uncommon ilk. Education, scanty enough for boys at the time, was in very short supply for girls; yet with her parents’ backing Cranogwen demanded to be taught to read and write, rather than acquire such skills as dressmaking. Accomplishment in household chores was the norm, as if such drudgery were the stuff of female ambition. When the time came for her to leave school she was forced to take a job in nearby Cardigan, where she was apprenticed to a dressmaker – but deep down Cranogwen was having none of it. She argued that she wanted to go to sea with her father and he readily acquiesced.

Her dad captained a schooner which sailed and traded all the way around the Welsh coast and occasionally ventured further afield to places such as France. Sarah took to the sea with alacrity, mopping up knowledge and skills with ease, always eager to learn more about all the various aspects of navigation and ship handling. While it was rare to see a girl on board a ship, it wasn’t entirely unknown; but Sarah Jane’s aptitude and enthusiasm did set her as a breed apart. She appreciated the danger of the sea but concomitantly loved the freedom, the wind plumping the sails, the apparent boundlessness of a sea yet lapping at the far horizon. On one occasion she overruled her father when they were caught in a storm near Strumble Head. He wanted to take the vessel to shore but she thought otherwise and as an early biography, Cofio Crangowen by D. G. Jones tells it, ‘A storm rose between the two of them; at last she stamped her foot with force on the deck, she challenged the experience and authority of her father, and forced him to bend to her judgment.’ Not only was it a feisty show of defiance, it also probably saved both their lives.

After three years of voyaging with her dad the strong-willed Sarah returned to school to satisfy her craving for more knowledge. In Ysgol Twmi, in the nearby village of New Quay, the art of navigation was one of the most prominent subjects. From there she went on to enrol in a school in Cardigan before rounding off her nautical education in Liverpool and London, where a combination of book-learning coupled with all the experience she had gained on her father’s schooner helped her gain a master’s certificate, and thus the right to both sail and command ships anywhere in the world. In this she was fairly unique, as it was beyond uncommon for a young woman to gain such a sought-after piece of paper, with all its attendant rights and privileges. Along the way she learned not only about the use of charts, but also their unreliability.

The world was now very much her oyster and she could have chosen to settle anywhere, but Cranogwen – by now a tall, dark, striking woman – chose to return home, where she found herself at the helm of the British School. There, in addition to teaching boys and girls, she also admitted adults who could plump for studying the art of navigation, the thick heavy charts to hand. She taught celestial navigation and the use of sextants, showing her charges how to recognise the stars and which ones to expect to see. Some would leave their dependency on the North Star behind and learn how far south they were when they could see the Southern Star. In school, small, eager hands handled big brass seaman’s dividers, cautious about their sharp ends. Sarah turned local boys into mathematicians with a sense of wide oceans. To do this she had to overcome the engrained prejudice that argued that a woman couldn’t or shouldn’t have such a position. Over the years many men learned the art of sail from her, with many of them becoming officers or master mariners themselves before going on to captain their own ships. Cranogwen’s life journey, or voyage, took her in another direction – indeed in many directions – as she became a pioneering activist for women’s rights, a spirited advocate of temperance, a celebrated poet – whose bardic name became her well-known moniker – the editor of a magazine for women, a persuasive preacher, and the founder of a home for destitute girls in the Rhondda valley. It was as if she rolled many lives into one frenetic one, as if her life wasn’t a single vessel but a whole fleet of ships."

[Penny Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would give it three and a half stars really - at times it was just glorious, rising to five stars for its lyricism, broad interest and fascinating details but also at times sinking beneath its own weight of sheer information. This book was deeply personal for me as the waterways described flowed in and around my childhood and the history of my family. Its narrative underscored the realities of any seafaring family - arrivals and departures, the risk of shipwreck and drowning, the possibilities of adventure and trade. I particularly enjoyed learning of some of the earliest female ship owners and navigation teachers. Well worth the read especially for lovers of birds and the folklore of Wales and Ireland.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting idea for a book. Informative and engaging, and it covered a variety of subject themes. The writing style is a combination of journalism and autobiography, and has a gentle thread of humour throughout. I'm not so sure about the editing though, there were too many times when I thought 'I've just read this'. I'm visiting the coast in this area soon and this gave a new perspective, and I must learn to identify gulls and seabirds before I set off!

[Marylyn Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

a passionate detailed multi faceted life history of the Irish sea, I learnt a lot. Well read by the author 📚 so I could picture where I was, I really wanted a VR experience whilst listening, instead of having to Google a few details here and there 🌊🐳🎣🌡️🌦️⛴️⚓

[Rhiannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and gently amusing in some places though lots about birds and shipbuilding! He’s clearly a big birdwatching fan and would have liked to hear more about human stories, though the way he tells it is lyrical and endearing

[Jonathan Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Winchesterian take on the Irish Sea with lots of detailed attention to environmental concerns and birds. Solid writing technique, but not a lot of whimsy. The author was also the reader and he was great!

[Dei Mur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Llawn ffeithiau bach diddorol. Hanes y bobol, natur yr anifeiliaid mewn iaith ffraeth llawn hiwmor.

A little gem full of interesting facts. Humourous prose about the people and the animals of the Irish Sea.

[Bex Jeffrey]

DNF, too much bird content

[Nel Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but didn’t grab my attention which made it slow to read

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, especially the bits about birds

[Mollie Hughes · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Irish sea is in my blood and I loved hearing the history behind the places I know so well

[Mairead · Rating 2 out of 5]

Varied

[Enrico Mascarpone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of good writing and interest but often feels like facts and anecdotes are being being levered in a bit too randomly.

[Scott Morrow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much about birds

[Steve Chilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 'biography' of the Irish Sea caught my eye in a bookshop and is everlasting evidence of the joy of the surprise buy. With chapters on the islands, the coastlines, the waters themselves, and especially the birdlife, this is an interesting look at the Sea and the relationships between the ports on it and the rest of the world. An extensive bibliography produced another couple of future reads.

[Paul Daly · Rating 2 out of 5]

A disappointing read.

[Tôpher Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating trawl around the Irish Sea. Gower is especially good on the birds of this area as they fly through bringing all sorts and wonders. Indeed he meets so many bird aficionados you begin to suspect he’s a bit of a twitcher whisperer! There’s so much here, shipping (from coracles to great Ocean liners), sea creatures, the smallest fish to Blue whales (even a fake 75ft Moby Dick drifts b into things) and so much more. This is marvellous cornucopia of facts and has enough scintillating anecdotes to make you sea sick!