SOURCE: A review of The Johanna Maria, by Arthur van Schendel, in The New York Times Book Review, October 13, 1935, pp. 7, 21.

In the following review, Marsh praises The Johanna Maria for its artistry and simplicity.

[The Johanna Maria] is the story of an old-time sailorman and an old-time full-rigged ship. It is a slight tale, but it is also a chip of the old epic tradition. Its bald and factual bits of narration of events and explanations of people, its high seriousness and its concealed but conscious artistry combine to render it poetic, a little Dutch miniature of an epic in cleanly patterned prose—if we may guess from the translation.

The ship is the Johanna Maria, launched 1865 out of the port of Amsterdam, tall of mast, ready to compete with the best the English have to offer, Captain Jan Wilkens. Many, many years later she is docked in...