Seal's elegant writing, sharp eye for detail and passion for investigation don't entirely compensate for his somewhat mountain-out-of-a-molehill project. Seal (A Fez of the Heart) became interested in the Scottish ship Caledonia, wrecked on a merciless stretch of English coast in 1842, when he discovered its cracked figurehead in a cliff-top graveyard in the town of Morwenstow. Upon further investigation of public records from the year of the wreck, the ship's paperwork for customs, Morwenstow's church, etc., he began to suspect the townspeople, in particular their parson, Robert Hawker, an odd character of minor notability, of deliberately causing the ship to wreck so they could loot its cargo—a fascinating premise, certainly worthy of book-length treatment. This book, however, doesn't recreate the story of the Caledonia
from the rich material Seal unearths. Rather, it recounts that unearthing process, a considerably less engaging tale. Readers are treated to a few dramatic chapters set on the doomed boat, but more often the book centers on mundane events: Seal finds a crucial file in an archive; Seal does genealogy research on a computer with his sister; and he frantically spins through a strip of microfilm while begging for more time from an "aggrieved" librarian who wants to close for the day. Moreover, wrecking was not an uncommon occurrence in hard-luck 19th-century England, so Seal's growing horror as he digs deeper into the past seems a bit naïve and oversensitive. B&w photos and illus. (Nov.)
