The History of Ships

The foreword of this book is written by a most distinguished former Director of the British National Maritime Museum. Part of that foreword reads as follows: "The history of ships is a vast subject, extending for over five thousand years..... and to cover it fully is a daunting challenge. The knowledge needed is encyclopaedic and calls not only for an awareness of every stage of the development of the ship, from the age of the Pharaohs to that of the nuclear submarine, but also for a detailed understanding of the changes in man's lifestyle and habitat that have led to each new maritime advance. The author must supplement the expertise of the naval architect with the scholarship of the historian. Additionally, and this is of the utmost importance, no man can truly evaluate or write convincingly of ships unless he is himself a seaman. And finally, the author must be somebody of vision and imagination who can explain a subject of immense complexity in words the reader can understand, and do this so powerfully that the story, as it unfolds, becomes difficult to lay down. The success of this book, the best of it's kind that I know, stems from the fact that in it's author all these requirements are superbly, perhaps uniquely, combined." Personally, I think this particular foreword is probably the best review any book ever had. This is a large coffee-table book of over 300 pages packed with information in the form of easy-to-read text, photographs - of the ancient and modern, and graphics of the highest standard. Together they combine to do justice to the book's own very daunting title and in so doing we have a most excellent product. NM