Sailing ships and boats were among the most beautiful of man's purely utilitarian creations. Now working sailing ships have completely vanished, together with the whole way of life which went on around them and most of the skills associated with their building, maintenance, handling afloat and management. The old photographs in this book commemorate the ships that sailed from Britain during what was effectively the last three-quarters of a century of their active existence.
Basil Greenhill (who is the Director of the National Maritime Museum) and Ann Giffard write of and illustrate these ships in all their diversity. The book is divided into sections which show in turn the sailing ships of characteristic stretches of the coast line: the East Coast, the South Coast, the South-West, the Bristol Channel, Wales, Scotland, and so on. Further chapter divisions are on more thematic subjects such as the Royal Navy, the Shipbuilders, and Wrecks and Disasters, while a final section defines and illustrates the technicalities which made the speech of the days of sail into something of a special language.
Throughout, the emphasis both of the photographs and of the authors' enlightening commentaries on them is as much on the human element-the dangerous, ill-rewarded and highly skilful life of the sailors themselves - as it is on the ships.
One of the most photogenic of all themes is here recorded in a range of old pictures which are often themselves of outstanding beauty.
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