The tall ship Sofia sank off New Zealand’s North Island in February 1982, stranding its crew on disabled life rafts for five days. They struggled to survive as any realistic hope of rescue dwindled. Just a few years earlier, Pamela Sisman Bitterman was a naïve swabbie looking for adventure, signing on with a sailing co-operative taking this sixty-year-old, 123-foot, three-masted gaff-topsail schooner around the globe. The aged Baltic trader had been rescued from a wooden boat graveyard in Sweden and reincarnated as a floating commune in the 1960s. By the time Sofia went down, Bitterman had become an able seaman, promoted first to bos’un and then acting first mate, immersing herself in this life of a tall ship sailor, world traveler, and survivor.

In the Nature of Landscape presents regional cultural landscape as a new direction for research in cultural geography. Represents the first cultural geographic study of the Norfolk Broads region of eastern England Addresses regional cultural landscape through consideration of narratives of landscape origin, debates over human conduct, the animal and plant landscapes of the region, and visions of the ends of landscape through pollution and flood Draws upon in-depth original research, spanning almost two decades of archival work, interviews, and field study Covers a great diversity of topics, from popular culture to scientific research, folk song to holiday diaries, planning survey to pioneering photography, and ornithology to children’s literature Features a variety of illustrative material, including original photographs, paintings, photography, advertising imagery, scientific diagrams, maps, and souvenirs

(C) by, The Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation.