Archive for Items Categorized 'Maritime', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

Fireship: The Terror Weapon of the Age of Sail

by Peter Kirsch

A fireship doesn’t put out fires, it starts them. This profusely illustrated book is the first to examine the role of this device, from antiquity to the early nineteenth century.

A Century of Sea Travel: Personal Accounts from the Steamship Era

by Christopher Deakes & Tom Stanley

Relive a distinctive era in the history of transportation by, literally, sneaking a peek over peoples’ shoulders into their letters home or “notes to self.”

The Story of The America’s Cup 1851–2013

by Ranulf Rayner

Lovely paintings of that crucial event, that exact moment on which a race may have turned are accompanied by a lively history of the men and their “ladies” (the boats!) that vied for the “Auld Mug” over the last 150 years.

Torpedo: The Complete History of the World’s Most Revolutionary Naval Weapon

by Roger Branfill-Cook

Ships sink when they have a hole in them. How to put that hole into a ship, well, that’s not as easy as you might think. This very readable book offers a look into a world we rarely think about.

Ship Decoration 1630­–1780

by Andrew Peters

Such intricate work on a seagoing vessel that gets banged around and shot at and all the while needs to make a “statement” about power and influence and religion and worldviews. This is political art as much as Advanced Woodworking.

Type VII: Germany’s Most Successful U-Boats

by Marek Krzysztalowicz

Never given subs a second thought? Using Germany’s WW II workhorse as an example this thorough book shows how they work and what it’s like to sail and live on one—and how the FBI in Long Island managed to arrest a crew and another ended up in the Tower of London!

Clydebank Battlecruisers: Forgotten Photographs From John Brown’s Shipyard

by Ian Johnston

This storied shipyard built five of the Royal Navy’s thirteen battlecruisers and not only had the foresight to document their work photographically but to hold on to the photos for decades—which is why a hundred years later this excellent book is possible.

Russian Warships in the Age of Sail 1696–1860

Design, Construction, Careers and Fates 

by Tredrea & Sozaev

Britannia may have ruled the waves although at the time Scottish poet and playwright James Thomson wrote his poem Rule, Britannia! in 1740 it was meant as an exhortation, something to aspire to, not a statement of fact.

The Lancaster and the Tirpitz

by Tony Iveson & Brian Milton

The subtitle calls only the bomber “legendary” but not the battleship? A good and necessary book but a bit one-sided.

The Battleship Holiday: The Naval Treaties and Capital Ship Design

by Robert C. Stern

Battleship-building may have been forced to take a ten-year holiday in the 1920s but thinking and designing continued anyway, and the next generation of capital ship turned a new page. This excellent book describes the implications of treaties on technical developments.

Fighting the Great War at Sea: Strategy, Tactics and Technology

by Norman Friedman

A highly analytical examination of an aspect of WW I that gets overlooked a lot: naval activities. In a way, trade, and therefore the sea, was both a root cause and then an ongoing strategic goal in the war.

Shipbreak

by Claudio Cambon

A “meditation” in words and images on matters far greater than the scrapping of a ship with all its human and environmental hardship. It is enriching, articulate, has a point of view, and is beautifully photographed.

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