THE AUTHORS WOULD PARTICULARLY like to thank Greg Easley for his many hours of research and Jessica King for her careful editing. Also, Elizabeth Aquino, Raney Aronson, Whittney Bradshaw, David Miller, Jayne Riew, Nancy Steed, Durk Steed, Paula Skreslet and Andy Trees, for their input.
Thanks also to the institutions that made this book possible, including the New York Yacht Club, the University of Virginia, the Mariners’ Museum, and the Boston Medical Library; and especially to David Seaman at the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center; to Joe Jackson, the Librarian of the New York Yacht Club; and to Tom Crew and the staff of the Mariners’ Museum.
Special thanks to David Sobel, Jonathan Swain Landreth, and Jody Rein.
For the second edition, a very warm thanks to all of the readers who so graciously wrote in with suggestions for additions and revisions. We appreciate your high standards and hope we were able to live up to them.
A special thanks to Jessica King for editing all of the language entries and for her French, Spanish, and Italian translations, and to Worth Estes for his Latin translations.
Our highest regards to John Harland, author of Seamanship in the Age of Sail, whom we consulted concerning the technical details of ship maneuvering and who kindly contributed his time in fine-tuning a number of those entries. We heartily recommend his book to any readers who wish to delve deeper into the technical details surrounding the wooden ships of this era. My gratitude also to Logan Ward for his many editorial contributions.
Finally, in compiling the first edition of A Sea of Words, it did not occur to me to do the obvious—that is, to offer my deepest thanks and heartiest congratulations to Patrick O’Brian and his publishers, HarperCollins, U.K., and W. W. Norton for their splendid work. Their long-sustained dedication and high standards of achievement serve as a beacon in the dark to all of Mr. O’Brian’s readers. Without the Aubrey-Maturin books, of course, this book would not exist.