Maritime historian and author Lincoln Paine has launched a new online platform and email newsletter that features his take on new books, articles, media, and other works about maritime history, culture, arts, and law.
The website, called “A Sea of Words,” is located on the Substack online platform that provides support for subscription newsletters. In his initial entry on Aug. 17, Paine wrote that his postings will fall somewhere between publishers’ book jacket copy and full-blown reviews. The platform and newsletter are free.
Paine isn’t aware of any other email newsletter or platform that focuses exclusively on books related to maritime history. He plans to post new reviews at least once every two weeks. By early November, 200 people had subscribed to his site.
Paine was motivated to launch “A Sea of Words” after being elected chair of the John R. Lyman Book Awards Committee of the North American Society for Oceanic History. That position requires him to read a lot of books, and he thought other maritime buffs would also be interested in those same books. He’s identified more than 100 titles being published in 2023.
“I’ve always been an evangelist for maritime history,” Paine said. “So if I can get more people excited about it, I’m very happy to do so.”
Paine, who lives in Portland, has written three maritime books—Down East: An Illustrated History of Maritime Maine, The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World and Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia.
He’s also written hundreds of articles, reviews, and lectures, and is currently chairman of the board of trustees at Maine Maritime Museum.
People might be surprised at the variety and number of maritime-related books that are being published, Paine said. Some of his postings so far have included reviews of books about a U.S. Naval officer; U.S. imperialism and merchant marines; animals at sea; marine artists from Liverpool, England; a history of shipwrecks at the mouth of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest; and even a page-turner about a CIA operation to recover a 2,000-ton section of a Soviet ballistic-missile submarine that sank 16,000 feet down about 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii in 1968.
“If you take a look at what’s being published,” he said, “you’ll see how wide people are casting the net.”
