Terry Crowdy, Formidable. Arthur Flint’s War Against Tirpitz and the Kamikazes by Robert L. Shoop

Reviews 501 nursed him back to health after contracting rheumatic fever with "a mixture of laudanum, camphorated spirits, ginger, and capsicum" (17).Far from harming the ship and crew with her presence, Barkley's medicinal knowledge, French proficiency, natural sea-legs, constitution, and enterprising spirit were likely key in facilitating Captain Barkley's fame and name, which is still inscribed on the maps of Vancouver Island's west coast to this day (i.e.Barkley Sound).Female voices are far and few in maritime historical scholarship.As such, Converse and Barkley's joint stories put words to a world (and a subfield) that has largely barred women from the record.Be that as it may, as British colonists by nature, Converse acknowledges Frances' account of her and Captain Barkley's voyages as one "filtered through the lens of British merchant seamen" (115) who held colonial prejudices and benefited from colonial activities, although they were not directly involved in colonizing the land (5).Therefore, while Converse reports that Barkley did not voice her opinion in her original notes (5), her memoir's inclusions and omissions implicitly demonstrate her innate motive, subjectivity, and bias from the perspective of an educated Briton, exposed to the luxuries and etiquette of the elite while abroad.This does not nullify the value of Barkley's record, but this subjectivity serves to clarify Converse and Barkley's stylization, grammar, descriptions, anecdotes, and other literary choices and allows the reader to think critically about their story's depictions.In sum, Converse's work breathes new life into Barkley's understudied two-hundred-year-old tale.As the first European woman to circumnavigate the world with her husband, Frances' life is certainly remarkable, and her first-hand testimony aboard the Imperial Eagle and the Halcyon contributes critically to women's experiences at sea during the early modern period.It also includes valuable information pertaining to the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific, such as their adornment, customs, trading practices, and relationships with Europeans.If readers are curious about histories of capitalism, women, shipping, Indigeneity, geopolitics, and imperialism's pervasive effect on the early modern world, Converse's reconstruction of Frances Barkley's life encapsulates all these facets and much more

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