When God Was an Atheist Sailor: Memories of a Childhood at Sea, 1902-1910

At 87, Cogill offers a memoir of her childhood, telling of her first eight years spent aboard her father's lumber schooner; he was a roughshod captain who plied the seas from the American Northwest to South America. In this charming evocation of a seagoing Victorian family, the author and her sister make ``mud'' pies with flour from the galley; they sit in the ship's carpentry shop and collect wood curls. On birthdays, the Japanese cook bakes the children's favorite mince pie. The captain was an exacting disciplinarian with the crew, a softie with his daughters; the author's mother educated them and, when necessary, reined them in. In an epilogue, Burgess ends her lighthearted story on a somber note with her father's death in 1938 from what was likely murder. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)