The dust jacket of the 1964–65 edition of Piloting, Seamanship & Small Boat Handling—as Chapman Piloting & Seamanship was then called—features a photo of a chart spread out on a desk. Ready for use on the chart are dividers, parallel rules, and a chartplotter, suggesting that someone is planning a coastal passage. In the background are a model square-rigged ship and a globe showing the Americas and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, suggesting that a mariner could go anywhere in the world with this book and a boat.
Recently I searched online for the 1964–65 edition, and that jacket photo came back to me with the full force of recognition. I looked at that photo every day for months at age 13 while taking the U.S. Power Squadrons’ entry-level boating course. Chapman was then, and remains today, the foundation text for boating in the U.S. and beyond, and it seemed to me then, with its daydream-inspiring cover photo, like the doorway into a magic kingdom. It still does.
I had joined the U.S. Power Squadrons in 1965 because my dad was teaching a navigation course. It was the same year that Charles F. Chapman met with Elbert “Mack” Maloney in New York City and convinced Mack to take over the writing, reorganizing, and updating of Chapman—which Mack did for 42 years. In 2007, Mack stepped back to a consulting editor role but remained the indispensable member of the Chapman publishing team. He was there to welcome me and keep me on task when I was hired in 2012 to prepare the 67th Edition.
Together with Peter Janssen and other contributors, we reorganized the 67th Edition to more closely relate to boating as it is practiced in today’s era of technology. We grouped a new chapter on engines with two existing chapters— one on electrical systems and one on electronic communications—to create a new major subdivision for onboard systems. We integrated the use of GPS and chartplotters for the first time with traditional chart-and-compass navigation—but without any loss of detail or emphasis in Chapman’s unsurpassed coverage of the latter. And we added new material in almost every chapter. I knew the time for these changes had come, but without Mack’s blessing and oversight, I don’t know where I would have found the courage to make them.
The 68th Edition of Chapman celebrates the 100th year of continual publication of “The Bible of Boating.” Mack Maloney passed away in 2014, so I was denied his confidence-inspiring assistance in preparing the revisions and updates for this edition. Fortunately, John Wooldridge and John Whiting stepped forward to help steer the ship watch by watch. Notwithstanding the inevitable occasional confusions of two Johns and a Jon in a team of three (“Who’s on first?”), it has been a great privilege to work with these two fine gentlemen.
It is only fitting that Mack should have the last word. His preface to the 67th edition ended thus: “Following in the true Chapman tradition, this edition remains clear, thorough, and always comradely—a book designed to help you and everyone on board your boat stay safe, have fun, and become skilled as a boater. Above all, I wish you as much joy from your boating years as I have had from mine.”
Jonathan Eaton