engineering

William McFee

William McFee is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand William McFee rather than just read about it. In short: William Morley Punshon McFee (15 June 1881 – 2 July 1966) was an English writer of sea stories. Both of his parents were Canadian.

Key takeaways

William McFee belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect William McFee to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of William McFee from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

William Morley Punshon McFee (15 June 1881 – 2 July 1966) was an English writer of sea stories. Both of his parents were Canadian.

Early years The son of John McFee and Hilda Wallace McFee, he was born (as was his sister) on the Erin's Isle, a three-masted ship owned by his father, a sea captain, in London, England. The McFee family lived in New Southgate, a northern suburb of London. He was educated at Culford School, in Culford, England. As a youth, McFee worked in an engineering shop at Aldersgate, wrote a 40-page poem, and lectured on Rudyard Kipling.

Sailing McFee became a mechanical engineer at Richard Moreland & Sons and W. Summerscales & Sons in the City, before going to sea as a marine engineer in 1906. He rose to the rank of chief engineer in ships of the Woodfield SS Co. He migrated to the United States in 1911 and wrote books, afterwards going to sea in ships of the United Fruit Company. During World War I, McFee served in the Royal Navy as an engineer in various transport ships. After the war, he returned to the United States to live in Roxbury, Connecticut. He was with the United Fruit Company, as a chief engineer until 1924 when he turned definitively to writing.

Writing In addition to books, he also wrote reviews for The New York Sun and The New York Times. One of his book reviews was for the novel Save Me the Waltz (1932) by Zelda Fitzgerald, in which he said, "In this book, with all its crudity of conception, its ruthless purloinings of technical tricks and its pathetic striving after philosophic profundity, there is the promise of a new and vigorous personality in fiction." Fitzgerald said that of all the negative reviews of her book, his "was at least intelligible." McFee's works included In the First Watch (1946), an autobiography, published by Random House of Canada. He wrote several collections of memoirs. His hobby was making ship models.

Personal life While in the navy, McFee met Pauline Khondoff, a Bulgarian refugee. The couple wed in 1920, but divorced in 1932. He was married twice more, first to Beatrice Allender who died in 1952 and then to Dorothy North. McFee became a United States citizen in 1925.

Recognition In 1936, Yale University conferred an honorary Master of Arts degree on McFee.

Works

Letters from an Ocean Tramp. Cassell & Company, Inc. 1908. Aliens. Edward Arnold. 1914. Casuals of the Sea. Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1916. Aliens. Doubleday, Page & Co. 1919. Captain Macedoine's Daughter. Doubleday, Page & Co. 1920. A Six Hour Shift. Doubleday, Page & Co. 1920. Harbours of Memory. Doubleday, Page & Co. 1922. Command. Doubleday, Page & Co. 1922. Race. Doubleday, Page & Co. 1924. Sunlight in New Granada. Doubleday, Page & Co. 1925. Swallowing the anchor: Being a revised and enlarged collection of notes made by an engineer in the merchant service who secured leave of absence from his ship to investigate & report upon the alleged superiority of life ashore. Doubleday, Page & Co. 1925. Pilgrims of Adversity. Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1928. Life of Sir Martin Frobisher. J. Lane, Bodley Head. 1928. North of Suez. Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1930. Sailors of Fortune. William Heinemann Ltd. 1930. The Harbourmaster. Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1931. No Castle in Spain. Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1933. More Harbours of Memory. Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1934. The Beachcomber. Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1935. Sailor's Wisdom. J. Cape. 1935. The Beachcomber. Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1935. Sailor's Bane. Ritten House. 1936. The Derelicts. Faber & Faber. 1938. The Watch Below. Random House. 1940. Spenlove in Arcady. Random House. 1940. A Conrad Argosy. Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1942. Ship to Shore. Random House. 1944. In the First Watch. Random House. 1946. Family Trouble. Random House. 1949. The Law of the Sea. J.B. Lippincott Co. 1950. The Adopted. Faber. 1952.

References

Everyman's Dictionary of Literary Biography, English and American (1958) Love, Paul A. "William McFee." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Late-Victorian and Edwardian British Novelists. Vol. 15. The Gale Group, 1995. 195–203. Gale Literary Databases. 8 December 2008 <http://galenet.galegroup.com>. "William M'Fee, Author, 85, Dies." New York Times 4 July 1966: 15. Who Was Who 1897–2006 (2007)

External links

Works by William McFee at Project Gutenberg Works by or about William McFee at the Internet Archive Works by William McFee at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) "The Market" William McFee papers at Charles E. Young Research Library, Los Angeles William McFee Collection at Yale University Library

Illustrations

William McFee: Great Sea Stories of Modern Times (1953 ed.), edited by William McFee — Great Sea Stories of Modern Times (1953 ed.), edited by William McFee

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with William McFee

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what William McFee claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to William McFee before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about William McFee ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of William McFee

In research: William McFee appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses William McFee in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: William McFee is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1881 births, 1966 deaths, 20th-century English engineers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for William McFee outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study William McFee in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what William McFee means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain William McFee out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is William McFee in simple terms?

William Morley Punshon McFee (15 June 1881 – 2 July 1966) was an English writer of sea stories. Both of his parents were Canadian.

Why does William McFee matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study William McFee?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on William McFee.