Customer Reviews

The Ship: Illustrated History

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About two-thirds of the book covers every type of oar and sail powered ship. The remaining part is devoted to power ships and opens with illustrations of early manually-paddled craft. After the famous "Charlotte", "Comet", Savannah" and "Sirius" there are two-page spreads of the Brunel's "Great Eastern" and the "Great Britain", the first propeller driven ship to cross the Atlantic. The book is very well bound and a delight to the serious ship enthusiast.

I first encountered this book almost 30 years ago and I still consider it the ultimate reference for the historical development of all types of watercraft, from inflated animal skins, coracles (bull boats), reed boats and dugout canoes to nuclear powered ships with an enormously impressive coverage of the steps (and side trips) in between. The illustrations are meticulous and where my certain knowledge runs, absolutely authentic. I would also love to get my hands on the same author's book, "The Search For India" which, from my memory of the library copy I pored over in the '70s, is an equally impressive scholarly combination of prose and illustration on the history of exploration. I already own his book entitled "Columbus" which is another piece of meticulous scholarship with the same type of wonderful illustrations which transport the reader "there."

This book is a must for naval history buffs. The
illustrations are all colour line drawings by the
author and it's surprising it is not better
known. Norman Boyd

The big lesson the author teaches on this book is how to transmit the scarce information given to us by ancient iconography to the public in an understandible and credible way, something that scholars usually fail to achieve. His illustrations are imbeatable; clear, technically perfect and as imposing as the one on the cover.
In his pictures he represents features not apparent on the source image, but he does it applying his sailor's instinct and lots of common sense. In my opinion all images are high-quality and credible, and that's not often achieved in books of this sort.
As the author is Scandinavian, it's quite natural that North European ships are more extensively described.
The only drawback to take into account is the fact that some chapters of the book are nowadays obsolete, as this book was first published in 1961, and underwater archaeology has progressed enormously since then.
Nevertheless, if you have an interest on boats, or even if you are a researcher on this field, you must have this book.