Conrad Dixon

The two short chapters introducing this book give a good overview of the ships and construction (the engineering revolution, experimental and new designs and the designers) during this period of little action at sea but great change from sail to steam.

The layout of the book could have been rather better, though. The 48 paintings reproduced are in alphabetical order of the name of the ship and that is not very helpful; most of the paintings are of ships launched in the 1860s and 1870s. Better, in my view, would have been either listing the ships by type, in order of the year of construction, or indeed not by type but in order of the year of construction through the Victorian era, thus giving a sense of chronology. While some statistics for each ship are given, mention is seldom made of the ship's complement.

There are some good sea stories in the text accompanying each picture but, given the many changes made to the armament and appearance of the ships depicted, missing is the year of the painting (e.g "HMS Nonsuch as she was in 1880", and so on).

Some of the editing and proof reading is rather poor - who was the numb skull who thought it right for the caption on page 89 to read "HMS Shah & Chillian Ship 'Huascar'"? In the one page of text that accompanies each picture there is often unnecessary repetition, particularly as to the disposal of the vessel. Where there are two ships depicted in the picture, it is a pity that it is not clear which ship is which!

Nevertheless, as a secondhand purchase, this book contains more than enough of interest and can be recommended.… (mehr)