Customer Reviews

Chapman Great Sailing Ships of the World

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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Except for who says what is great, it's a good book. Lots of detailed info on many of the most interesting ships, but no one I know is interested in the rest of them.

I am such a tall ship nerd that I can sit down and flip through this book for hours. Great Sailing Ships of the World has really great pictures and an extensive list of sailing ships from around the world. The vessels are organized by country, then alphabetical for easy reference.

However, sometimes the information given in the biography of a ships seems very random. If the ship in question is a replica or recreation, it will often tell about the original ship in great detail and then have little or nothing about the replica itself. The sentences are commonly structured oddly, but that may be because the text was translated from German.

One thing I wish (and this is somewhat minor) is that the dimensions of the different vessels were given in feet as well as metric, at least in the US edition, as it is tiresome to constantly convert the measurements.

And finally, I noticed the book is missing at least one tall ship that was launched before the publication date in 2005, the schooner SULTANA, so I'm curious what else they left out. Plus the name of the H.M.S. ROSE was changed to H.M.S. SURPRISE in honor of ROSE starring as the SURPRISE in "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" in 2003.

All in all, a very good book for anyone who is interested in tall ships. I'd just like to see an updated version.