Customer Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Ships

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I've been a naval enthusiast since my parents took me to lower Manhattan and I saw a great spectacle: The liners, United States, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, and the Olympia all together; It was 1956, and the great liners were still the preferred mode of travel. This book is filled, perhaps I should say crammed with ships of all types. To date it is the best single volume available on a wide variety of ships. The author, the former senior officer of the United Kingdom's carrier, "Invincible", has done a fine job of giving the reader an overview of each vessel, including naval, merchant, and passenger type ships. This book was printed in the United States in 2001, yet, from various comments made by the author throughout the text, I suspect the manuscript was written no later than 1999, since so many of the great new vessels such as the huge Queen Mary 2 and the world's largest fully rigged clipper ship (5 masts of sails ), "The Royal Clipper" are all absent from the volume.
Although this book was printed in the United States, the content of this book is distinctly European with only the most familiar ships from the United States given space. This is, of course, not surprising since the author is British. In fact, only three of the 6 original US frigates are listed. I also found the book's Index to be quite lacking with many omissions of vessels described in the body of the various sections. For example, the "Gorch Folk II" is listed as the training ship for Germany. The original training vessel, the "Gorch Folk" is only mentioned as being sold to Russia as the "Tovarich". This is in error, since it was sold to the Ukraine, not Russia. In addition, the "Tovarich" is not listed in the index, neither is the Gorch Folk. Recently, in fact, the Gorch Folk was sold BACK to Germany being bought by a private group of German citizens and renamed the "Gorch Fok". As an "encyclopedia", it would have been a great plus to have some provision for an updated "Annual" edition, or at least a revised version. Of course, that costs more than most publishers would ever be willing to spend.
To summarize, despite shortcomings, this remains the best single volume covering hundreds of ships. It attempts to provide some type of descriptive listing of a clearly huge undertaking--a comprehensive listing of all the world's ships. It is printed on superior glossy paper and cloth bound. Each entry has a colour drawing or photo. There are about four entrys on each page, with superior ships such as the "Victory" and the "Titanic" given at least a full page.
I would enthusiastically recommend "The Encyclopedia of Ships", despite some of the issues I pointed out. It is also an excellent book for just browsing through. For those who want more on ships, I would also highly recommend to the reader the excellent comprehensive set of books collectively known as "Conway's History of the Ship". Under that title are actually 12 distinct and separate books in a series edited by Bob Gardiner and featuring the world's best marine and nautical contributors. Most of these books are available right here at amazon.

This is one of the best ship encyclopedia's out right now. It doesn't have as much information as the Jane's Ship books, but makes up for it by the shear number of ship types. It covers every era from Ancient Egypt to the Ships that are now in the Persian Gulf.