September 2019 | SMITHSONIAN.COM 29The $3 million
to rebuild will
embrace the
latest electronics
while aiming
to preserve the
craft’s historic
character.In Port Townsend, Washing-
ton, shipwrights toiling on the
scuttled Western Flyer face
steep challenges, replacing
70 percent of the boat, from
stem to stern.
In the spring of 1940, the boat was chartered for six
weeks by the novelist John Steinbeck, who had pub-
lished The Grapes of Wrath the previous year, earning
national acclaim, sudden wealth and death threats
from reactionaries outraged by the novel’s populist
message. With his close friend Ed Ricketts, a brilliant,
eccentric marine biologist, Steinbeck sailed to the Sea
of Cortez to survey marine life along the Baja coast,
escape from the modern world and Steinbeck’s new
celebrity, and hone the deep, holistic, ecological phi-
losophy that they were developing in tandem.
It was the most renowned literary collaboration be-
tween a great American novelist and a great American
scientist , and it produced a highly original and infl u-
ential book. The Log from the Sea of Cortez, Steinbeck’s
account of the trip, is a high-spirited blend of adven-
ture travel writing, marine science and freewheeling
philosophy, shot through with a marvelous sense of
wonder at the interconnectedness of the world. Like
Thoreau’s Walden or Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Al-
manac, it is a foundational text for the modern envi-
ronmental movement, but looser and funnier than
its counterparts. Steinbeck told his third wife, Elaine
Anderson, that it was the best book of his career, and it
still inspires a cult-like devotion.
One of the devotees is John Gregg, a 57-year-old
geologist who owns a California-based company spe-
cializing in geotechnical engineering, deep-ocean
coring and underground testing for contaminants.
He’s now spending another $2 million—his own GETTY IMAGES / ISTOCKPHOTO