Gives precise details of the wooden warships built by the Royal Navy between 1600 and 1815, with exact information on sizes and scantlings.

This heavily illustrated reference is a treasure house of facts and figures with pages of tabular data providing specific dimensions on masts, rigging, and spars.

The perfect guide to Nelson's Navy for all those with an interest in the workings of the great fleet.

The idea behind this volume, according to its editor Brian Lavery, was to give a rounded picture of life at sea during the age of sail. It concentrates on the daily routine of shipboard life rather than more dramatic events such as battles and mutiny. It supplements other volumes produced by the Navy Records Society, notably Five Naval Journals 1789-1817 (vol 91, 1951, ed H G Thursfield) and The Health of Seamen (vol 107, 1965, ed C C Lloyd.) The selection begins in the second quarter of the eighteenth century because, stated Brian Lavery, 'there are no suitable documents from earlier periods' and closes in 1815, when the navy entered a new era with the advent of steam and a long period of peace. One of the most important aspects of shipboard life was that it was intensely self-contained, especially in the later part of the age of sail. After the conquest of scurvy, ships were able to stay at sea for many months at a time and the world-wide battle for empire caused them to make very long voyages, often away from their home bases over a period of years. Even in port seamen often stayed on board and shore leave was not in any sense a right. This volume throws a spotlight on the way in which a crew of up to 850 men could be crammed into a small space for many months at a time, and the ways in which they were fed, clothed, allocated space for eating and sleeping, at the same time as they were organised for sailing and battle duties. It contains separate sections dealing with Admiralty Regulations, Captain's Orders, Medical Journals, discipline and punishment. It also includes an extensive glossary of the nautical terms and descriptions of the time.

A beautifully illustrated history of the early ship models of the Royal Navy that are prized today as works of art. From about the middle of the seventeenth century, the Royal Navy’s administrators began to commission models of their ships that were accurately detailed and, for the first time, systematically to scale. These developed a recognized style, which included features like the unplanked lower hull with a simplified pattern of framing that emphasized the shape of the underwater body. Exquisitely crafted, these were always rare and highly prized objects—indeed, Samuel Pepys expressed a profound desire to own one, and today they are widely regarded as the acme of the ship modeler’s art. Today, examples are the highlights of collections across the world, valued both as art objects and as potential historical evidence on matters of ship design. However, it was only recently that researchers began to investigate the circumstances of their construction, their function, and the identities of those who made them. This book, by two curators who have worked on the world’s largest collection of these models at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, summarizes the current state of knowledge, outlines important discoveries, and applies this newfound understanding to many of the finest models in the collection. As befits its subject, Navy Board Ship Models is visually striking, with numerous color photographs that make it as attractive as it is informative to anyone with an interest in modelmaking or historic ships.

This new reference book describes every aspect the English navy in the second half of the seventeenth century, from the time when the Fleet Royal was taken into Parliamentary control after the defeat of Charles I, until the accession of William and Mary in 1689 when the long period of war with the Dutch came to an end. This is a crucial era which witnessed the creation of a permanent naval service, in essence the birth of the Royal Navy. Every aspect of the navy is covered - naval administration, ship types and shipbuilding, naval recruitment and crews, seamanship and gunnery, shipboard life, dockyards and bases, the foreign navies of the period, and the three major wars which were fought against the Dutch in the Channel and the North Sea. Samuel Pepys, whose thirty years of service did so much to replace the ad hoc processes of the past with systems for construction and administration, is one of the most significant players, and the navy which was, by 1690, ready for the 100 years of global struggle with the French owed much to his tireless work. This book is destined to become a major work for historians, naval enthusiasts and, indeed, anyone with an interest in this colourful era of the seventeenth century.

In The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, 1600—1800, Phillip Reid refutes the long-held assumption that merchant ship technology in the British Atlantic during the two centuries of its development was static for all intents and purposes, and that whatever incremental changes took place in it were inconsequential to the development of the British Empire and its offshoots. Drawing on a unique combination of evidence from both traditional and unconventional sources, Phillip Reid shows how merchants, shipwrights, and mariners used both proven principles and adaptive innovations in hulls, rigs, and steering systems to manage high physical and financial risks. Listen also to the podcast where the author is interviewed about the book for New Books Network and the podcast with Liz Covart for Ben Franklin’s World by clicking here.