Product Description

The ships of any age express the needs and ambitions of the people who build them. They also reflect the state of technology at the time. But the history of ships is not just a reflection of the history of man; it is a complete and fascinating story in itself. It began 5,000 years ago, on the banks of the Nile, with the funeral ship of a distant pharaoh. At first, ship propulsion was largely a matter of sweated labour, but gradually the oared ship gave way to the sailing ship. With progress in ship design, voyages became longer and more adventurous. The result was the discovery of new lands and an upsurge in maritime trade, calling for new types of ship to carry and protect it. Then, in the 1880s, seafaring was transformed by the twin revolutions of steam power and iron construction. Today, little more than half a century since the demise of the last great sail trading vessels, we are in the age of the hovercraft, container ship and nuclear submarine. The scope of this book includes merchantmen and men-of-war, ceremonial, pleasure and working craft of all civilizations and all ages, as well as the people who built and sailed them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2734585 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Peter Kemp, described in The Times as 'a distinguished marine author and a man of salty jest and fathomless knowledge of the sea', is one of the best-known writers in the fields of naval and maritime history. A former naval officer, he served in submarines and naval intelligence during World War II.

Customer Reviews

A veritable wealth of information.
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