lamdha books -
Catalogue of books on maritime history

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201697 Adkins, Roy Nelson's Trafalgar The Battle that Changed the World Viking, New York, 2004. First edition. Octavo hardcover; quarter bound in beige papered boards, beige spine and gilt spine titling; 392pp., monochrome plates. Remainder mark on lower edges. Mild wear to dustwrapper edges. Near fine. In the tradition of Antony Beevor's Stalingrad, Nelson's Trafalgar presents the definitive blow-by-blow account of the world's most famous naval battle, when the British Royal Navy under Lord Horatio Nelson dealt a decisive blow to the forces of Napoleon. The Battle of Trafalgar comes boldly to life in this definitive work that re-creates those five momentous, earsplitting hours with unrivalled detail and intensity. Click here to order $25

51671 Andrews, Kenneth (ed.) The Last Voyage of Drake and Hawkins Hakluyt Society, Cambridge, 1972. Second series. Hardcover, octavo; 283pp, monochrome fold-out map. Toned and spotted text block edges; dustwrapper creased on upper front corner with small tear on the same; scrapes and edge and corner wear. Wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. This is an account of the expedition of royal and private ships which left Plymouth in 1595 under the command of Drake and Hawkins with the aim of capturing the city of Panama. The expedition ended in total failure, both leaders died and attempts to capture Grand Canary, Puerto Rico and Panama, were all repulsed. Click here to order $30

30115 Barbour, Philip L. (ed.) The Jamestown Voyages Under the First Charter, 1606-1609 - 2 vols. Hakluyt Society, Cambridge UK, 1969. Two hardcover volumes, octavo, 524pp, monochrome illustrations. Slightly toned text block edges. Light blue card dustwrapper worn along edges and corners with chipping and tears on head and tail of spine (2cm & 3cm respectively on Volume 1). Dustwrappers discoloured along spines; professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good otherwise. In December 1606, one hundred and twenty emigrants left London in three small vessels. They landed nearly five months later in Virginia and founded a settlement which they called Jamestown. Thus, the first permanent English colony was established in America. During the first few years, the colony was beset by extreme hardship. The local Indians regarded the settlement as an infringement of their territory and were hostile to the settlers. Famine, plague and internal dissension also took their toll. The author collected all known documents pertaining to Jamestown, and annotated them; the collection gives a fascinating and graphic picture of the colony that was destined to become the United States. Click here to order $60

208611 Boudriot, Jean (David Roberts, trans.) The Seventy-Four Gun Ship - Four Volumes A Practical Treatise on the Art of Naval Architecture: "Hull Construction"; "Fitting Out the Hull"; "Masts - Sails - Rigging"; & "Manning - Shiphandling" Jean Boudriot - Collection Archeologie Navale Francaise, Paris France, 1986-1988. Four volumes, quarto; hardcovers, with upper board titles and decorated endpapers; 1,053pp. [166pp. + 213pp. + 280pp. + 394pp.], with many monochrome and colour plates (many folding) with other monochrome decorations and illustrations. Moderate wear; all volumes rolled and a little shaken. Dustwrappers somewhat rubbed and edgeworn; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. This 4 volume set is almost essential to the understanding of all other books on naval architecture and archaeology. It gives the definitions of all parts of a ship, " from keel to mast's truck", illustrated with many detailed drawings. It also explains how to manoeuvre and operate a ship, and what shipboard life was like. Boudriot was an architect by training but turned his expertise to the study of 17th and 18th Century naval activity, both military and civilian. He brought his draftsman's finesse to the study of both existing ships and the collections of period armoury models in French museums and other collections, eventually publishing his findings in a range of definitive works of which this is perhaps the best known. He is credited with jump-starting the current interest in naval archaeology both in France and across the globe. Click here to order $850

39497 Bradford, Ernle Christopher Columbus Michael Joseph, London, 1973. Hardcover, royal octavo, 288pp., mainly monochrome illustrations. Lightly spotted text block edges. Dustwrapper slightly scuffed with wear along edges and corners and small tear on upper edge; professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Christopher Columbus, archetypal figure as sailor, adventurer and explorer, was also, interestingly, a mystic who was profoundly religious and yet at the same time ambitious with an eye to the main chance. While dreaming of recapturing Jerusalem from the Moslems, he was also quite capable of driving a hard bargain with his employers as to the rights and privileges and riches that should accrue to himself if he succeeded in his mission of finding a way to the Indies by sailing due west across the Atlantic. Click here to order $20

12222 Bromby, Robin German Raiders of the South Seas The Naval Threat to Australia/New Zealand 1914-17 Doubleday Australia Pty. Ltd., Sydney NSW, 1985. First edition: quarto; hardcover; 208pp., with maps and many monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; cocked; spine heel softened; light spotting to the text block top edge. Dustwrapper sunned along the spine; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. In the first days of World War I a German light cruiser detached itself from the East Asiatic Squadron with the mission to raid and harass Allied shipping. The ship, "SMS Emden", not only became world famous in its two months of raiding, during which it sank sixteen ships and captured others, but demonstrated to a cunning enemy the vulnerability of Australian, New Zealand and Empire shipping links. The two dominions were left with little naval protection as Britain gathered its ships to fight the Germans in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Then in 1916, came another raider, the "Wolf", which, undetected and unmolested, laid mines around Australia and New Zealand and preyed upon merchant ships sailing in the Tasman Sea and South Pacific. The following year the Germans made an abortive attempt to send a sailing ship to raid the South Seas, which ended when the "Seeadler" was wrecked on a small atoll. With over eighty black and white photographs, many of them previously unpublished, and detailed maps of the routes of the major ships, "German Raiders" makes fascinating reading and is an important addition to the naval history of Australia and New Zealand. Click here to order $30

208582 Canney, Donald L. The Old Steam Navy - Volume One Frigates, Sloops, and Gunboats, 1815-1885 Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD, 1990. First edition: quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 211pp., with a monochrome frontispiece and many illustrations likewise. Moderate wear; spine extremities softened; text block top edge dusted. Dustwrapper is lightly rubbed and edgeworn; sunned along the spine panel; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. From the Demologos, the US Navy's and the world's first steam warship, designed by Robert Fulton to the Mohican, the last wooden-hulled steam-and-sail vessel completed for the American Navy, this book covers some 150 vessels. It gives a full accounting of their hull design and construction, rig, engines, armament, and performance under sail as well as steam. It also describes the political and bureaucratic context of naval steamship construction and operation and examines the influence of the Mexican War and the Civil War on warship development. Appendices give details of the vessels' dimensions, horsepower, armament, construction and fate; glossaries of technical terms and a full index. A breathtaking array of line drawings and period photographs - some reproductions of the original nineteenth century plans - completes this significant contribution to US warship technical history. Click here to order $50

89132 Carlton, Mike Cruiser - signed copy The Life and Loss of HMAS Perth and Her Crew William Heinemann Ltd., North Sydney NSW, 2010. Signed hardcover, octavo; red boards with black spine titling, illustrated endpapers; 706pp., monochrome and colour plates, appendices, references, bibliography, index. Minor wear; lower board edges and corners slightly worn; toned text block edges. Otherwise near fine in like dustwrappers and covered in protective film with white paper backing. Of all the Australians who fought in the Second World War, none saw more action nor endured so much of its hardship and horror as the crew of the cruiser HMAS Perth. Most were young - many were still teenagers - from cities and towns, villages and farms across the nation. In three tumultuous years they did battle with the forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Vichy French and, finally, the Imperial Japanese Navy. They were nearly lost in a hurricane in the Atlantic. In the Mediterranean in 1941 they were bombed by the Luftwaffe and the Italian Air Force for months on end until, ultimately, during the disastrous evacuation of the Australian army from Crete, their ship took a direct hit and thirteen men were killed. After the fall of Singapore in 1942, HMAS Perth was hurled into the forlorn campaign to stem the Japanese advance towards Australia. Off the coast of Java in March that year she met an overwhelming enemy naval force. Firing until her ammunition literally ran out, she was sunk with the loss of 353 of her crew, including her much-loved captain and the Royal Australian Navy's finest fighting sailor, 'Hardover' Hec Waller. Another 328 men were taken into Japanese captivity, most to become slave labourers in the infinite hell of the Burma-Thai railway. Many died there, victims of unspeakable atrocity. Only 218 men, less than a third of her crew, survived to return home at war's end. 'Cruiser', by journalist and broadcaster Mike Carlton, is their story. And the story of those who loved them and waited for them. Click here to order $40

63192 Carter, Robert Windjammers - The Final Story A collection of memoirs, poems and paintings depicting life in the last commercial sailing ships Rosenberg Publishing, Dural Delivery Centre NSW, 2004. First edition. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles and endpaper maps; 254pp., with 48pp. of colour plates and many monochrome decorations. Minor wear; light scraping to the bpoard bottom edges; text block top edge lightly dusted. Dustwrapper mildly rubbed and edgeworn; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Near fine. This book is a blend of interviews with the last survivors of the wind ship sailors, real life stories from their final 50 years in the last great sailing ships, extracts from their diaries and poems. It provides an insight into the various reasons why commercial sail was able to exist until 1949 and how it eventually lost the battle against powered vessels. There are also included some very colourful accounts of the harsh life in the last of the windjammers. Click here to order $45

208493 Chapelle, Howard I. Boatbuilding: A Complete Handbook of Wooden Boat Construction W.W. Norton, New York, 1969. Reprint. Octavo hardcover; quarter bound brown boards with beige cloth spine, red spine label and gilt titling; 624pp., b&w diagrams and illustrations. Owner's name. Slightly rolled; mild wear to board edges and corners; a few spots on text block edges; one or two marks on endpapers. Slightly worn dustwrapper with faded spine, scraping and small tear to head of spine and rear panel well-rubbed. Very good. Wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film with white paper backing. Click here to order $50

207012 Chichester, Francis Gipsy Moth Circles the World Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., London, 1967. First UK edition: octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine titling; 269pp., with colour and monochrome plates and diagrams. Mild wear; toning and spotting to text block edges. Scraping and chipping to dustwrapper edges; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $30

202966 Cook, Capt. James (G. Kearsley, ed.) An Abridgement of Captain Cook's Last Voyage Performed in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, and 1780, for making discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere by Order of His Majesty; Extracted from the Quarto Edition in Three Volumes. G. Kearsley, London, 1787. Octavo; hardcover, half-bound in calf with marbled boards, gilt spine titles on a red morocco label between five raised bands decorated in gilt; 488pp. [2 Blank + xxivpp. + 442pp. + 16pp. (Index) + 2pp. of adverts + 2 Blank], on laid paper with marbled edges, with a folding engraved frontispiece ("The Death of Cook"), a folding chart and five engraved plates. Moderate wear; boards, edges and joints well rubbed; crackling to the leather on the spine; text block top edges dusted; previous owner's ink inscription to the front pastedown and title page; mild offset throughout; folding plates backed with linen. Very good. The British Admiralty claimed the rights to publish any material which had been generated on its ships during its missions of exploration and were generally scrupulous about depriving the seamen on board of their journals whenever they returned to port. The publication of Cooks' narrative of his Third Voyage - notoriously cut short by his death in Hawaii - was seen as a lucrative means of recouping monies spent upon the enterprise; an eager public, keen to read of his exploits, were not about to prove them wrong. Not everybody could afford to pay the sums expected to purchase the work however, and few wanted to deal with its quarto format with accompanying maps, so the enterprising George Kearsley (publisher) saw his way clear to producing an abridged smaller format version which suited the market admirably. The Admiralty were not so keen to see funds diverted away from them like this and entered into a battle of words with the canny publisher. As a result, the Preface to the volume is both a long apology and an explanation as to Kearsley's altruistic reasons for publishing it. Possibly due to the acrimony surrounding the publication, the main bibliographer of works by and about Cook, Beddie, overlooked the second edition in his listings (this is the fourth). The book is of interest also for the fact that it reproduces the Royal Society Medal presented to Cook post-mortem - designed by Pingo and engraved here by Trotter - and goes into a fair amount of detail about this award. (See: Beddie 1547; Forbes, "Hawaiian National Bibliography", 68). This copy of the work was previously owned by Sir Joseph Palmer Abbott, the distinguished Australian politician and solicitor. Click here to order $3000

81083 Cree, Dr. Edward H. (Michael Levien, ed.) Naval Surgeon The Voyages of Dr. Edward H. Cree, Royal Navy, as Related in His Private Journals, 1837-1856 A Webb & Bower Book/E.P. Dutton Co. Inc., New York, NY, USA, 1982. Quarto; hardcover, with decorated boards, upper board title and endpaper maps; 276pp., with a monochrome portrait frontispiece and many full-colour illustrations (some folding). Text block top edge spotted; minor edgewear to the boards. Dustwrapper is lightly rubbed and sunned along the spine panel. Very good. Edward Cree's service took him to many parts of the world, including ten years in the Far East, where he witnessed land and sea actions in the First Opium War of 1839-42. He was engaged also in the pursuit and destruction of piratical Chinese fleets, served in the Baltic in actions against the Russians, and was present at the capture of Sebastopol and Kinburn in the final stages of the Crimean War. He was acquainted with some of the outstanding personalities and most distinguished officers of his day: James Brooke, the white Rajah of Sarawak; Captain William Hall of the steamship Nemesis; the brilliant and eccentric Reverend Charles Gutzlaff; the gracious yet wily Chinese Imperial Commissioner Ch'i-ying; the painter George Chinnery - to name but a few. The spirit and atmosphere of the period are captured wonderfully well by the nearly 200 watercolour paintings and line drawings executed by Dr Cree himself. In his introduction Michael Levien outlines Cree's background and sets the historical scene in which the action unfolds. Click here to order $25

97672 Dalrymple, Alexander (Foreword by Kevin Fewster; Kathryn Lamberton, ed.) An Account of the Discoveries made in the South Pacifick Ocean - Australian Maritime series, No.3 - signed First printed in 1767; reissued with a foreword by Dr. Kevin Fewster of the Australian National Maritime Museum and an essay by Dr. Andrew Cook of the British Library Hordern House Rare Books Pty. Ltd./Australian National Maritime Museum, Potts Point NSW, 1996 Octavo; hardcover, quarter-bound in Scottish calf with marbled boards, with gilt spine titles on a black morocco label between gilt rules; 188pp. [1-47pp. + Blank + i-ivpp. + i-xxxipp. + Blank + 1-103pp. + Blank], with a monochrome portrait frontispiece, one folding chart and 6 folding plates likewise. Mild wear; signed in ink by Andrew Cook at the start of his essay; spine heavily sunned. No dustwrapper as issued. Very good. An account of voyages to the Pacific previous to 1764 and prior to Captain James Cook's first Voyage, compiled by Alexander Dalrymple. Includes an essay on Dalrymple by Dr. Andrew S. Cook. Click here to order $150

89126 Dampier, William (foreword, Giles Milton) A New Voyage Round the World: The Journal of an English Buccaneer Hummingbird Press, London, 1998. Hardcover, octavo; dark green boards with gilt spine titling, brown endpapers; 294pp., colour and monochrome plates and illustrations, green ribbon marker; appendix; glossary of words and phrases; gazetteer of place-names. Minor wear; faint spotting to text block edges. Near fine in like dustwrapper, now covered in protective film with white paper backing. Click here to order $35

14822 Dampier, William (Gerald Norris, ed.) William Dampier - Folio Society edition Buccaneer Explorer The Folio Society, London, 1994. First printing. Octavo; hardcover; ochre decorated boards with gilt spine-titling, endpaper maps; 268pp., with a full-colour portrait frontispiece and many engraved illustrations and maps. Mild rubbing to boards. Near fine in like slightly rubbed black slipcase with one or two tiny marks. At one time employed as a privateer - a legitimising term for "pirate" - by the English Crown, Dampier is an instrumental figure in the story of the discovery and exploration of Australia and the Pacific. This printing reproduces his log and journal, highlighting his exploration of the Dutch East Indies, the islands of Melanesia and the northern coastline of Australia. Click here to order $32

205251 David, Andrew The Voyage of HMS Herald To Australia and the South-west Pacific 1852-1861 under the command of Captain Henry Mangles Denham Miegunyah Press, Melbourne Vic., 1995. First edition. Royal octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine titling and a brown ribbon marker; 521pp., with maps, monochrome illustrations and 22pp. of monochrome and colour plates. Minor wear; a few scattered spots on the text block edges. Rubbing to the dustwrapper and light wear to edges; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. The voyage of HMS Herald, under the command of Henry Mangles Denham, encompassed much of the South-west Pacific and substantial parts of the Australian coast. From 1852 to 1861, the Herald surveyed and charted known land masses and suspected hazards, thereby establishing safe routes for shipping. That some of these charts are still in use is testimony to the accuracy and skill of those who created them. Commander David makes extensive use of the journals of Denham and his officers to describe mid-nineteenth-century techniques of surveying and charting, often undertaken in hazardous conditions. His book also provides an unusual and often entertaining view of the difficulties experienced in field work. The collection of natural history specimens, another part of the Herald's task, resulted in significant additions to British collections. Botanical ornithological discoveries are described using current nomenclature, and the habits of some species now threatened or extinct are examined through the journals of the Ship's scientists. The South-west Pacific at the time of Denham's voyages was simultaneously a mission field, a site of commercial activity, and a colonial outpost. The accounts of the Herald's contact with native peoples are enriched by detailed descriptions of cultural practices, and give an insight into the complex and often uneasy relationships between colonial officials, missionaries and natives. Almost a decade's voyaging brought the ship and her crew to remote and inhospitable locations, threatened them with storms, disease, hunger and illness, and separated them from home and families. It also earned for them a lasting place in the history of maritime surveying. Click here to order $50

208593 Davies, J.D. Pepys's Navy Ships, Men & Warfare, 1649-1689 Seaforth Publishing/Pen & Sword Books Ltd., Barnsley South Yorkshire UK, 2008. First edition. Square quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 304pp., with a colour frontispiece and many colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; light scraping to the spine heel. Dustwrapper lightly rubbed; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Near fine. In the forty years that it covers, this book is a history of the Royal Navy at the time it became a permanent national institution, equipped with larger warships, fighting with new and more effective tactics, commanded by an increasingly professional officer corps, and administered by a comparatively committed set of men and a relatively effective set of institutions. It is not a book especially about Samuel Pepys, who stood at the heart of it all, but naturally, he appears in it many times. He wrote more - far more - about the navy of his day than any other contemporary, and the book calls extensively upon his published work including his famous diary, and his voluminous unpublished papers. Pepys's Navy was inspired partly by Brian Lavery's seminal work, Nelson's Navy, and follows the section and chapter headings of that work as much as possible. Click here to order $50

208451 Dull, Jonathan R. The French Navy and the Seven Years' War University of Nebraska Press, 2005. First edition. Octavo hardcover; quarter bound cream boards with black spine and gilt spine titling; 445pp. Faint spotting on text block edges; mildly rubbed board edges and corners; mild rubbing to dustwrapper. Otherwise very good to near fine. Wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. The Seven Years War was the world's first global conflict, spanning five continents and the critical sea lanes that connected them. This book is a full account of the French navy's role in the hostilities. It is also the most complete survey of both phases of the war: the French and Indian War in North America (1754-60) and the Seven Years' War in Europe (1756-63), which are almost always treated independently. By considering both phases of the war from every angle, Jonathan R. Dull shows not only that the two conflicts are so interconnected that neither can be fully understood in isolation but also that traditional interpretations of the war are largely inaccurate. His work also reveals how the French navy, supposedly utterly crushed, could have figured so prominently in the War of American Independence only fifteen years later. A comprehensive work integrating diplomatic, naval, military, and political history, The French Navy and the Seven Years' War thoroughly explores the French perspective on the Seven Years' War. It also studies British diplomacy and war strategy as well as the roles played by the American colonies, Spain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, and Portugal. As this history unfolds, it becomes clear that French policy was more consistent, logical, and successful than has previously been acknowledged, and that King Louis XV's conduct of the war profoundly affected the outcome of America's subsequent Revolutionary War. Click here to order $40

63240 d'Urville, Jules S-C Dumont (Helen Rosenman, trans. & ed.) An Account in Two Volumes of Two Voyages to the South Seas by Jules S-C Dumont D'Urville... Volume 1: "Astrolabe" 1826-1829; Volume 2: "Astrolabe" and "Zelee" 1837-1840 Melbourne University Press, Carlton Vic., 1987. Two volumes: quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles on scarlet labels; 634pp. [311pp. + 323pp.] with two monochrome frontispieces, 44 monochrome and colour plates and many other illustrations. Very minor wear; previous owner's name plate to the upper corner of the front pastedowns of both volumes. No dustwrappers as issued. Near fine in lightly rubbed and dusted slipcase. Ex-libris Jonathan Wantrup. Rear-Admiral Dumont d'Urville was a brilliant sailor who made two great scientific and exploratory voyages to the Pacific and the Antarctic. The first, 1826-29 solved the 40 year old mystery of the disappearance of La Perouse. The coup of the second voyage, 1837-40 was d'Urville's discovery, ahead of the American Wilkes and the British Ross expeditions, that Antarctica was a continent. He was twice in New Zealand. In 1840 to his chagrin, when he was in the South Island, Britain proclaimed sovereignty over both islands to thwart French plans to settle the Banks Peninsula. D'Urville possessed enormous vitality, curiosity, perseverance and scepticism. His own and his officers' shrewd observations on the many places visited present a sad and often angry commentary on the devastation being wreaked on the ancient but fragile cultures and environments of Oceania. Click here to order $100

97797 Exquemelin, A.O. (Alexis Brown, trans.; Introduction by Jack Beeching) The Buccaneers of America - Folio Society edition Comprising a pertinent and truthful description of the principal acts of depredation and inhuman cruelty committed by the English and French buccaneers against the Spaniards in America. Written by A.O. Exquemelin who himself, of necessity, was present at all these acts of plunder. The Folio Society, London, 1972. First printing. Octavo; hardcover, quarter-bound in blue calf, with silver-gilt spine titles, decorative papered boards and endpaper maps; 194pp., top edges dyed brown, with a monochrome engraved frontispiece, 9 plates likewise and maps. Minor wear; mild rubbing and scuffing to the spine and hinges. Slipcase mildly rubbed. Very good to near fine. During the late 1600s and into the early 1700s, Spain held a tight grip upon her colonies in the Americas. The passage of goods and gold went from the various islands and coastal plantations of the Caribbean into Europe via only one Spanish port - Seville - and attempts to smuggle wealth into Europe was thereby severely curtailed. In the Americas governors grew fat on their produce and hired out-of-work sailors from all nations to defend their holdings. These mercenary seamen learned every inch of the Caribbean coastlines and made contact with the local natives; soon they were paying bribes to the governors to "liberate" warehoused goods and trade them to other European ports. They lived like the Indians, smoking strips of beef to eat while out at sea, in smoking huts called "boucans" and became known as "boucaniers", or buccaneers. In time they began to forego the niceties of bribing the locals for a taste of the region's wealth and began sacking fortresses, sinking ships and shelling towns to get what they wanted. The writer "Exquemelin", about whom very little is known, worked as a ship's surgeon on board a buccaneer vessel and roamed with various notorious buccaneer leaders, often being saved by his promising to write favourably about his hosts upon his return to Europe. His decision to write under a nom-de-plume (and in Dutch, which was probably not his first language) most likely had something to do with not scaring-off his patients after he settled back to life onshore as a doctor with a large practise. Nevertheless, he left us with a stirring account of pirate wickedness in the New World, a book which was a bloody bestseller in its day and which has remained in print ever since. Click here to order $30

208488 Ferreiro, Larrie D. Ships and Science: The Birth of Naval Architecture in the Scientific Revolution 1600-1800 MIT Press, Cambridge, 2007. First printing. Royal octavo hardcover; brown cloth boards with silver gilt spine titling; 441pp., b&w illustrations. Mild spotting to upper text block edge and slight wear to dustwrapper edges especially on head of spine panel. Near fine. Wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. 'Naval architecture was born in the mountains of Peru, in the mind of a French astronomer named Pierre Bouguer who never built a ship in his life.' So writes Larrie Ferreiro at the beginning of this pioneering work on the science of naval architecture. Bouguer's monumental book, Treatise of the Ship, founded a discipline that defined not the rules for building a ship but the theories and tools to predict a ship's characteristics and performance before it was built. In Ships and Science, Ferreiro argues that the birth of naval architecture formed an integral part of the Scientific Revolution. Using Bouguer's work as a cornerstone, Ferreiro traces the intriguing and often unexpected development of this new discipline and describes its practical application to ship design in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing on previously untapped primary-source and archival information, he places the development of naval architecture in the contexts of science, navy, and society, across the major shipbuilding nations of Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Italy. Ferreiro describes the formulation of the three major elements of ship theory (the science of explaining the physical behaviour of a ship): manoeuvering and sail theory, ship resistance and hydrodynamics, and stability theory. He considers the era's influential books on naval architecture and describes the professionalisation of ship constructors that is the true legacy of this period. Finally, looking from the viewpoints of both the constructor and the naval administrator, he explains why the development of ship theory was encouraged, financed, and used in naval shipbuilding. A generous selection of rarely seen archival images accompanies the text. Click here to order $50

51680 Fisher, Raymond H. (ed.) The Voyage of Semen Dezhnev in 1648 Bering's Precursor with Selected Documents Hakluyt Society, Cambridge UK, 1981. Second series. Hardcover, octavo, 326pp, monochrome illustrations. Lightly toned & dusted upper text block edges. Owner's name on endpaper. Lightly scuffed dustwrapper with edge and corner wear; professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. In 1736 Gerhard Muller, a member of the new Russian Academy of Sciences, while gathering historical materials in Siberia, uncovered in Yakutsk reports briefly describing a voyage in 1648 from the Arctic river, Kolyma, around a great rocky promontory to a point south of the Pacific river, Anadyr. The reports were those of Semen Dezhnev, leader of the expedition and one of its 26 survivors. They gave very few details about the voyage, but said enough to lead Muller to conclude that it demonstrated the separation of Asia and America, a matter insufficiently determined in 1728 by Vitus Bering. Click here to order $30

208591 Garvey, Robert To Build a Ship The VOC Replica ship Duyfken Tuart House/University of Western Australia Press, Crawley WA. 2001. First edition. Quarto; hardcover, with decorative endpapers; 104pp., with many full-colour illustrations. Mild wear; spine extremities lightly bumped. Dustwrapper is rubbed and edgeworn; a small tear to the top edge of the lower panel with associated creasing; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. The scent of smoking oak clouds the salty air, while the sounds of sawyers and shipwrights at work mingle with the bustle of a busy port. The ship under construction is the Duyfken, a sturdy Dutch 'jacht' destined, in 1606, to become the first recorded European vessel to drop anchor in Australian waters. Nearly four hundred years later, on the west coast of Australia, a team of experts and enthusiasts research and build a museum-standard replica, using the seventeenth-century 'plank first' technique, bending timbers over fires and pinning the hull together with wooden 'tree nails'. No plans exist for Dutch ships of the era - master shipwrights designed as they built. Robert Garvey's vivid images transport the reader back to a by-gone era of wooden ship-building and exploratory voyages, invoking the sensation of tarred hemp rope in calloused hands and the thrill of discovery in an Age of Sail. Garvey documents not only the construction of the VOC replica ship Duyfken, but also her maiden voyage to the luscious spice islands of Banda, where the hillsides are dotted with crumbling Dutch ruins and nutmeg is still harvested by hand for the world's kitchens. Click here to order $95

76665 Harlow, V.T. (ed.) Ralegh's Last Voyage Being an account drawn out of contemporary letters and relations, both Spanish and English, of which the most part are now for the first time made public, concerning the voyage of Sir Walter Ralegh, knight, to Guiana in the year 1617 and the fatal consequences of the same N.Israel, Amsterdam & Da Capo Press, New York, 1971. Quarto hardcover, 379pp., fold-out monochrome maps and frontispiece. Plain tan boards with red title plate and gilt lettering with top edges dyed pale blue. Minimal wear; fine. Reprint of the 1932 Argonaut Press edition. "The circumstances of Ralegh's final enterprise have been the subject of heated controversy ever since he himself produced his 'Apologie' and James I responded with the 'Declaration'... The justification of the present volume lies in the fact that it brings together for the first time all the important letters and official documents of English origin relating to the episode, a number of which were not known to previous writers, and at the same time presents entirely new evidence drawn from contemporary Spanish sources. English captains, government spies, Spanish eye-witnesses, friends and foes, combine to give their testimony. In consequence, a much fuller and greatly altered story emerges..." (from the preface). Click here to order $65

75656 Hattendorf, John B. (ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History - Four volumes Oxford University Press Inc., New York NY, 2007. Four volumes: quarto; hardcover, with silver-gilt board decorations and spine and upper board titles on black labels; 2,386pp. [677pp. + 715pp. + 722pp. + 722pp.], with many monochrome photographic illustrations, maps and line drawings. No dustwrappers as issued. Near fine. This is a handsome set for the true maritime history aficionado. Across four volumes, the writers outline every step in maritime development from all four corners of the globe. Potted histories of each innovation in maritime endeavour encapsulate each advancement with recommendations for reading further afield. Each volume has handy indices and cross-references, so that pinning down a sea-worthy subject has never been easier. Click here to order $350

33099 Hilder, Brett The Voyage of Torres The Discovery of the Southern Coastline of New Guinea and Torres Strait by Capin Luis Baez de Torres in 1606 University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia Qld., 1980. First edition. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles and endpaper maps; 194pp., with a monochrome portrait frontispiece, maps, many monochrome illustrations and 8pp. of colour maps. Mild wear; mild wear to the board edges; text block edges lightly toned. Dustwrapper lightly rubbed and sunned along the spine panel. Very good. The brief report Torres sent to the king of Spain after his two small ships reached Manila in May 1607 is tantalizingly vague and ambiguous. The narrative of Don Diego de Prado, an aristocratic adventurer who sailed with Torres, is more detailed but still has frustrating gaps and allows for differences in interpretation. Both these documents were lost to the world for hundreds of years after the voyage. Since Prado's narrative was published in 1930, other clues have come to light from old maps thought to have been based on missing charts drawn by Prado, from documents previously overlooked, and from the discovery that two important lines had been omitted from the transcription of Torres' letter to the king. Click here to order $35

208598 Hoving, A.J. (Alan Lemmers, trans.; Foreword by Andre Wegener Sleeswyk; Appendix by Diederick Wildeman) Shipbuilding - Ed Rachal Foundation Nautical Archaeology series Nicolaes Witsen and Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age Ed Rachal Foundation/Texas A&M University Press, College Station TX, 2012. Quarto; hardcover, with illustrated boards; 314pp., with a monochrome frontispiece and many illustrations, diagrams and schematics likewise. Mild wear. No dustwrapper as issued. Near fine. Whoever tries to master the text of Witsen's Ancient and Modern Shipbuilding and Management, soon discovers that the task is akin to finding one's way in a decayed labyrinth, even if he or she reads seventeenth-century Dutch without difficulty. The frequent rather pointless elaborations in which Witsen indulges resemble shrubbery that has overgrown the paths, and some of the walls, likewise, seem partly collapsed because Witsen has the disturbing habit of not furnishing the explanations that he has announced. In spite of these shortcomings, since its publication in 1671, Witsen's book has been a most valuable source for our knowledge of shipbuilding in the seventeenth century, even if very few of the many authors quoting the work had really read it. It is not surprising that it took A.J. Hoving fourteen years to arrange that part of Witsen's work which directly bears on the history of shipbuilding in a logically coherent manner, to supplement and elucidate where necessary and to provide helpful commentary. Hoving's presentation of this large part of Witsen's construction principles clears out the labyrinth, lays out a path with clear signposts and importantly describes the building of a pinas, which Witsen intended to present in 122 consecutive steps. Click here to order $180

211596 Howarth, David (photos. Robin Constable) Dhows Quartet Books, London, 1977. Quarto hardcover; brown boards with gilt spine titling, illustrated endpapers; 159pp. colour & b&w illustrations. Browned text block and page edges; mild edgewear to illustrated dustwrapper. Very good. Wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Dhows are the ancient sailing ships of the Arabian seas and the oldest type of ship still in use. They are also the largest wooden ships being built today and they ply trade routes that have existed for 4,500 years. Naval historian David Howarth here reveals the origins of dhows right back to Sumerian times and asks: was Noah's Ark a dhow? He describes the unusual methods of the dhow-builders working in the boatyards of the village foreshores of Arabia, the archaic simplicity of their rigging and sails, the fantastic difficulty of handling the sails at sea, the common-sense navigational methods of the sailors who use no modern aids, the variety of cargoes they carried in ancient times and the no less surprising variety that they carry today. Click here to order $40

201127 Huchthausen, Peter A Shadow Voyage: The Extraordinary Wartime Escape of the Legendary S.S. Bremen John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, 2005. Octavo hardcover; blue boards with gilt spine titling; 260pp., monochrome illustrations. Mild rubbing and edgewear to dustwrapper. Otherwise near fine. On August 30, 1939, the 52,000-ton Nazi passenger ship Bremen stole out of New York harbour, cleared Sandy Hook, shut out its lights, and veered north toward Greenland, using bad weather as a shield against what would become many pursuers. For the British to gain the Bremen would be a propaganda victory, but, more important, its seizure would also provide the Royal Navy with a much-needed troop transport ship, the eventual use the Kriegsmarine put it to. The Bremen therefore steered an elaborate evasive course that took it far into arctic waters and to Murmansk, Russia, a friendly port by virtue of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. From there it steamed to Germany, evading a British vessel that did not fire upon her, it appears, for humanitarian reasons, inasmuch as warships were not then supposed to sink passenger ships. By the time the Salmon found the Bremen, Germany was no longer observing such niceties, a fact by which Britain scored propaganda points and claimed moral victory in the engagement. Huchthausen's recounting of the Bremen's tortuous, 14-week journey has its Hunt for Red October moments in great detail. Huchthausen also shares Tom Clancy's fascination with technical arcana; along the way, for instance, he explains why the shape of the Bremen, both long and broad, and its use of the 'bulbous forefoot' (this protrusion makes a hole in the water as the ship plows ahead, forcing seawater away to both sides and downward, thereby reducing drag on the skin of the ship, increasing the mass of the water at the stern, and strengthening the bite against which the propellers can thrust) were factors in its escape. A solid bit of maritime history, ably recounting a mere footnote - but an interesting one - to the larger Battle of the Atlantic." - Kirkus Click here to order $25

85114 Hurst, Alex (intro.) The Medley of Mast and Sail: Volume II - A Camera Record Teredo Books, Brighton, 1981. Volume II only, hardcover, large octavo; blue boards with gilt spine titling and gilt ship decoration on front board; monochrome ship illustration endpapers; 471pp., monochrome illustrations. Minor wear only; one or two spots on upper text block edges and minimal wear to dustwrapper edges. Near fine and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. This is not volume two of its predecessor but the second in a series of self-sufficient books. The common theme is implicit in the title: the setting of merchant sailing craft within the perspective of each other and of other aspects of sail that exercise people's minds today - Preserving, training, aberrations of yachtsmen and even the revival of merchant sail. The well-known clippers and famous four-masters were no more important to those concerned with them, and to their local economies, than were the dhows of the Indian Ocean, or the prahu craft today within their environments. A wool clipper could no more match a collier brig at her job than the collier brig could vie with the clipper in hers. Each type was fitted for a purpose, individual vessels varying in their performance. Large and small vessels, their triumphs and disasters and some of their ports, are presented without fear or favour. They were all a part of the playing and, if the curtain rang down long ago, while they were onstage, the actors knew no class distinctions, but lay in dock or made sail together on equal terms, each demanding a common seamanship, now all but forgotten, that bred mutual respect. Historians - not the ships or their men - created the distinctions that have taken root in peoples' minds! Click here to order $60

208481 James, William Naval Occurrences of the War of 1812 A Full and Correct Account of the Naval War Between Great Britain and the United States of America, 1812-1815 Conway Maritime Press, London, 2004. Octavo hardcover; brown boards with gilt spine titling; 408pp. Mild toning and faint spotting to text block edges; a few superficial scratches to dustwrapper. Otherwise very good to near fine. Wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Click here to order $35

208482 James, William (intro. Andrew Lambert) Naval History of Great Britain During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars - Six Volumes 1793-1796; 1797-1799; 1800-1805; 1805-1807; 1808-1811; & 1811-1827 Conway Maritime Press, London, 2004. Six volumes: octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine titling; 2,591pp. [420pp. + 411pp.+ 397pp. +390pp. + 424pp. + 549pp.], with many maps. Mild wear; spotting to text block edges and small mark to the fore-edge of Volume 2. Mild sunning to the dustwrapper spine panels of Volumes 4, 5 and 6; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good to near fine. William James was a lawyer by profession before turning his hand to naval history in reaction to the 'vaporising' and suspect accounts of the 'famous' victories of the US Navy over Royal Navy ships during the War of 1812. Implementing rigorous research methods he produced The Naval History of Great Britain 1793-1827. James concluded that no Royal Navy ship was ever captured by an American vessel of equal force. The contemporary American press, unable to criticise his methodology, reacted not with informed debate but with personal abuse trying to defame his character but in Britain his work attracted praise from naval officers and politicians. He is now regarded as the father of modern naval history thanks to his masterpiece The Naval History of Great Britain. Click here to order $175

71204 Jellicoe of Scapa, Admiral Viscount, GCB, OM, GCVO The Grand Fleet, 1914-1916 Its Creation, Development and Work Ad Hoc Publications. Ringshall, Suffolk UK, 2006. Octavo; hardcover with gilt titling on spine; 320pp. with maps and line illustrations and 16pp. of photographic plates. Slightly bumped at the spine head; otherwise near fine in like dustwrapper. Admiral Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa held the position as leader of the British Fleet during the first two and a half years of the First World War; this book, first published in 1919, is his account of how he went about marshalling the resources and opportunities over which he held sway. Throughout this meticulous re-telling, there is a strong sense of the pressure which he was under to preserve lives and equipment and above all to see Britain win free of the German threat. This account has a particularly detailed section covering the Battle of Jutland - a pivotal naval conflict in the War - and is the primary source for all later accounts of that engagement. An important work of the Great War. Click here to order $40

76178 Jolly, Roslyn The Cruise of the Janet Nichol Among the South Sea Islands: A Diary by Mrs Robert Louis Stevenson University of New South Wales Press Ltd., Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2004. Octavo; hardcover, decorated endpapers, ribbon marker; 205pp., with monochrome illustrations. Dustwrapper. Remainder. New. In April 1890 the steamer Janet Nicoll set off from Sydney for a three-month trading voyage through the central and western Pacific. Aboard were seven white men, a crew of forty islanders, and one woman: a short-haired, barefoot, cigarette-smoking American, Fanny van de Grift Stevenson, wife of the famous novelist Robert Louis Stevenson. The Cruise of the Janet Nichol is her account of her journey with her husband and grown son through the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands. Fanny Stevenson's spirited personality led her into scenes and situations few Europeans, and even fewer European women, had experienced. Her diary and its accompanying photographs offer unique glimpses of life in some of the last independent Pacific kingdoms and those just coming under colonial rule at the end of the nineteenth century. Click here to order $17

208581 Kahre, Georg (Basil Greenhill, ed.; Foreword by Edgar Erikson; Introduction by HRH the Duke of Edinburgh; Louis Mackay, trans.) The Last Tall Ships Gustaf Erikson and the Aland Sailing Fleets, 1872-1947 Mayflower Books Inc., New York NY, nd. (1977). Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine-titling; 208pp., with many monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; spine extremities softened; board edges sunned; some mild spotting to the preliminaries. Price-clipped dustwrapper a little edgeworn; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. In 1872 when Gustaf Erikson was born, the world's sailing fleet was greater than it had ever been, yet when he died in 1947 it had virtually disappeared. Thus in this man's remarkable lifetime was encompassed the zenith, decline and demise of the commercial deep-water sailing ship. Appropriately, Erikson himself was singularly responsible for prolonging its active life - in the 1920s and '30s, against all the odds, he built up and successfully operated the world's last sailing fleet. Many of the great square-riggers had been sunk during the First World War and in the years which followed the few survivors were relentlessly sold off by companies which could see no economic future in sailing vessels. There was one major exception to this trend - the Finnish ship-owners of the Aland Islands, the most important of whom was Gustaf Erikson. So one by one the famous names of the American, British and European sailing fleets came to be registered in the tiny town of Mariehamn, capital of this remote Finnish archipelago. However, although Aland is far from the world's great trade routes, this development is not as quixotic as it seems. In this book, Georg Kahre, an Alander himself, explains the economic and social background that produced this unexpected Indian summer of commercial sail and chronicles the history - including the much publicised 'Grain Races' between the Wars - of the last tall ships. Click here to order $35

99018 Kipling, Rudyard Sea Warfare "The Fringes of the Fleet" (1915); "Tales of 'The Trade'" (1916); & "Destroyers at Jutland" (1916) Macmillan, London, 1916. First edition: Hardcover, octavo; blue cloth boards with gilt upper board and spine titling; 221pp., all unopened. Board corners frayed; offsetting and mild foxing to endpapers and prelims; browned text block edges. Very good. No dustwrapper. A compilation of later works by Kipling focussing upon the - then - current state of the imperial navy, both military and merchant. This is a handsome volume of these chatty collected works, completely unopened and unread. Click here to order $45

208549 Lavery, Brian (Foreword by Patrick O'Brian) Nelson's Navy The Ships, Men and Organisation, 1793-1815 Conway Maritime Press/Chrysalis Books Ltd., London, 2000. Reprint. Square quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 352pp., with many monochrome maps, schematics and illustrations. Minor wear; text block top edge lightly dusted. Dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Near fine. Patrick O'Brien provides the forward to this edition of the most successful Conway Maritime title. The book is eminently readable and is the first single-volume work to cover in such depth this vast and complex subject. Written by one of the world's leading authorities on the sailing navy the book contains considerable original research to give a clear and authentic picture of the Senior Service as a whole. Click here to order $75

85118 Lubbock, Basil The Arctic Whalers Brown, Son & Ferguson, Glasgow, 1968. Reprint. Quarto hardcover; blue boards with gilt spine titling and upper board blind-stamped titling; blue map endpapers; 483pp., monochrome frontispiece, plates and illustrations. Minor wear; mildly toned text block edges with a few faint spots on upper edges; lightly rubbed white illustrated dustwrapper with a few tiny marks and minimal wear to edges. Near fine otherwise and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. 'I had intended when planning this work to make it a complete history of all British whalers, both in the Arctic and in the South Seas, but so great has been the ground to be covered that I have been forced to leave out the South Sea side of British whaling... The day of the Arctic whaleman, known amongst seamen as the Greenlander, and considered the toughest specimen of all the men who followed the sea for a living, has long since passed, but his memory deserves to be preserved, and I feel sure that the reader of this book will find his admiration roused for as gallant a seafarer as ever trod the planks of a stout ship.' - Basil Lubbock Click here to order $70

86985 Lubbock, Basil The Colonial Clippers Brown, Son & Ferguson, Glasgow, 1948. Reprint: quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine and upper board titling; 384pp., with a monochrome photolithographic frontispiece, and 29pp. of plates likewise, with 3pp. of diagrams. Slightly shaken; softening to the spine extremities with bumping to the lower corners; mild insect damage to the upper board; retailer's bookplate to the front pastedown; faint offset to the endpapers. Price-clipped dustwrapper is well-rubbed and edgeworn with large chips from the spine panel extremities (with some loss of text); a mark from an old price sticker to the upper panel; now backed by archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive film. Bound in: two pages of full-colour illustration of ships' ensigns. Very good. "To sail and the sail-trained seaman more than to any other cause do we our nation's greatness. By sail were our homesteads kept safe from the enemy; by sail were our coasts charted; sail took adventurous pioneers to the new land, and sail brought home the products of these new lands to the Old Country and made her the Market of the World. This book is an attempt to preserve in written form what the fading memory is fast forgetting - the Glorious History of the Sailing Ship." - Basil Lubbock. Click here to order $60

85119 Lubbock, Basil The Last of the Windjammers - Two Volumes With Illustrations and Plans Brown, Son & Ferguson Nautical Publishers, Glasgow Scotland UK, 1969 and 1970. Reprint: two volumes, quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titling, blind-stamped upper board titles and endpaper maps; 966pp. [518pp. + 448pp.], with two monochrome frontispieces, 167 plates likewise and many monochrome schematics, many folding. Minor wear; text block edges spotted, especially the top edges; previous owner's ink inscription to the half-title page of Volume 2. No dustwrappers. Near fine else. The publishers describe this book as 'a real book of the sea'; with its broad scope geographically, economically and technically. In his usual style Lubbock combines anecdotes, ships log extracts, newspaper reports, personal interviews, photographs and clear general arrangement drawings and rigging plans of the sailing ships dating from the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 to the early 1920s. Chapters are included on the life and personnel in Sail; the History of Cape Horn, vessels in the big Sailing Ship Trades such as Jute Clippers and Grain Carriers; Small Fry - Swansea Copper-ore-men, Clipper Barques; intercolonial and South Sea Traders, Fruit Schooners and Fish Carriers. The second volume tackles the Last Boom in Sail - the Lime-juicers of 1888-9 - The Carriers of the Nineties and the Square Riggers of the Twentieth Century. Inimitably, Lubbock writes: 'Under the stimulus of steam competition sail came to its perfection. No more beautiful ships were ever launched than the iron clippers of the seventies and the medium clippers of the eighties. Probably the most perfect of composite clippers was the Adelaide passenger ship Torrens, which was not launched until 1875, whilst the American Cape Horners, which were turned out by Down East shipwrights throughout the eighties, were the very last word in wooden ship construction. ...By 1880.. steamships had passed the sailing ships' total with 408 ships built and a tonnage of 485,661 tons as against sail's 59,845. There were, of course, many other factors in this eclipse, but undoubtedly the Suez Canal was a knock-out blow for sail... When the Suez Canal was opened in the autumn of 1869, the Seven Seas were covered with sailing ships of every description, and deep water voyages to the other side of the world were being made by vessels which were no larger than the familiar coasting schooner. It was no unusual thing to see 300 sail held up in the Downs or the chops of the Channel by a long continuance of head winds and there are still many living who can remember the forest of masts and yards from ships in the docks and Pool of London showing like delicate spiders' webs against the hazy city sky... Coasting craft, brigs, snows, brigantines, schooners, ketches and cutters abounded in every port, however small. Large fleets of magnificent sailing trawlers and drifters worked the Channel and the North Sea, whilst smaller smacks, such as the Cornish luggers and Fifeshire scaiths, dotted the British seas with their tanned sails. Even the highest powered steamers were not the unsightly objects they have since become, for they had clipper lines, fiddle bows and rounded sterns, were mostly barque rigged and set their canvas at every opportunity. In those days the holiday-maker at the seaside had every variety of rig to feast his eyes upon, and the marine artist had a difficulty in choosing a subject from the mass of material presented wherever he went." - the author Click here to order $150

208548 McLaughlan, Ian The Sloop of War 1650-1763 Seaforth Publishing/Pen & Sword Books Ltd., Barnsley South Yorkshire UK, 2014. Square quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 288pp., with many monochrome illustrations. Mild wear; a little shaken; spine extremities lightly softened. Dustwrapper a little rubbed (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film). Very good. This is the first study in depth of the Royal Navy's vital, but largely ignored small craft. In the age of sail they were built in huge numbers and in far greater variety than the more regulated major warships, so they present a particular challenge to any historian attempting a coherent design history. However, this book charts the development of the ancillary types, variously described in the 17th century as sloops, ketches, brigantines, advice boats and even yachts, as they coalesce into the single 18th-century category of Sloop of War. In this era they were generally two-masted, although they set a bewildering variety of sail plans from them. The author traces their origins to open boats, like those carried by Basque whalers, shows how developments in Europe influenced English craft, and homes in on the relationship between rigs, hull-form and the duties they were designed to undertake. Visual documentation is scanty, but this book draws together a unique collection of rare images, coupled with the author's own reconstructions in line drawings and watercolour sketches to provide the most convincing depictions of the appearance of these vessels. Click here to order $60

208547 Marquardt, Karl Heinz The Global Schooner Origins, Development, Design and Construction; 1695-1845 Conway Maritime Press/Chrysalis Books Plc., London, 2003. First edition. Square quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 239pp., with many monochrome illustrations and schematics. Mild wear; light softening to the spine extremities; text block top edge lightly dusted. Dustwrapper lightly rubbed (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film). Very good. Karl Heinz Marquardt here presents the results of some twenty years of research into schooners and re-evaluates the longstanding perceptions about their origins and history. In doing so he answers the essential questions of genesis and, through his comprehensive exploration of the construction and fitting of a significant range of European, American and Australian schooner vessels, provides a complete history of the development of the schooner. In the first part of the book Marquardt puts forward a new explanation, based on primary source material, of the origins of the schooner, tracing the term and its practical application back to Peregrine Osborne, the Marquis of Carmarthen in England in 1697. The evolution of the rig is then traced through its various guises as its application spread through Europe and the United States in the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In unprecedented detail the author isolates and examines the main types of schooner to play important roles in the schooner story and each type is illustrated by the explanation of a particular vessel, complete with full specifications, contemporary illustrations or model photographs and a full set of detailed line drawings. The vessels thus covered are the armed schooner and privateer Berbice, and coast-guard vessel Elgen, and gunboat Axel Thorsen and the merchant schooners, The Schooner for Port Jackson and Enterprize. The second part of the volume details the construction and fitting, the masting and rigging (both standing and running), as well as the armament and furniture of both merchant and naval schooners. Each of these sections is fully illustrated with detailed plates drawn by the author based on original research. Four tabulated appendices detail contemporary timber, mast and spar dimensions together with measurements for standing and running rigging, anchors, oars and boats. Click here to order $60

86492 Moore, Warren (ed.) (Introduction by Frank G.G. Carr) Spurling Sail and Steam Paintings by Jack Spurling Grosset & Dunlap, New York NY, 1980. Quarto hardcover; blue boards with gilt upper board and spine titling and ship decoration with blind-stamped border on front, blue illustrated endpapers; 175pp., colour and monochrome illustrations and plates. Minor wear; mildly toned text block edges with faint spotting on top edge and some small marks; mild scuffing and wear to dustwrapper edges with some chipping at spine extremities (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film). Very good to near fine. Born John Robert Charles Spurling on 12 December 1870, he preferred to be known simply as "Jack". As a youngster he haunted the London's East India Docks at Blackwall near his parent's home where he sketched the ships he saw there. His paintings came to the attention of the editor of the shipping journal "Blue Peter", Frederick Hook, who placed several in the magazine where they attracted a great deal of favourable reaction from readers. Hook then commissioned Spurling to contribute more paintings for the journal, which also proved extremely popular, so that the journal in the 1930s offered 77 of Spurling's paintings as "artistically mounted, ready for framing" colour prints at two shillings each. The most famous and popular of the tall ships were the tea and wool clippers which Spurling painted with unparalleled skill. Indeed he was renowned for being exceedingly accurate in his depictions of the riggings of these ships. The editor of the "Blue Peter" offered a reward to anyone who could fault the rigging on one of Spurling's paintings - the reward was never paid. Spurling, apart from the accuracy with which he painted the rigging of the tall ships, was also able to create a sense of drama in his paintings, especially in his treatment of the sea in various conditions. Apart from his treatment of the sea, which is always superb, his paintings usually have some intriguing details like the clothing of the sailors or a flock of seagulls whirling around the stern of a tall ship at full speed with all sails set. By the time he died on the last day of May 1933 - or as "Redgum" put it rather poetically in his Sydney Morning Herald obituary, "dropped below the horizon a little before nightfall" - Spurling had a solid reputation among people who love ships and the sea. Click here to order $60

92239 Moorhouse, Geoffrey Great Harry 's Navy How Henry VIII Gave England Seapower Wiedenfeld & Nicolson/The Orion Publishing Group, London, 2005. Octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine-titles and speckled endpapers; 372pp., with maps and 16pp. of monochrome and full-colour plates. Minor wear; remainder mark on the text block lower edge; spotting to the text block top edge. Dustwrapper well rubbed. Very good to near fine. It was Henry VIII who began the process of making England a first-rate sea-power. He inherited no more than seven warships from Henry VII, yet at his own death the King's Navy had 53 seaworthy ships afloat (much the same size as the Royal Navy today) manned by almost 8,000 sailors. Henry VIII originally needed a navy to hold the English Channel and blockade the enemy while he invaded France. Later when invasion from the continent grew serious Henry's navy fought in many actions. Moorhouse doesn't only deal with seagoing exploits. Thanks to Henry VIII dockyards were built (Greenwich and Deptford), timber had to be felled in quantities previously unknown (from land seized during the dissolution of the monasteries), and hemp (for rope) was harvested; new skills were developed, not least the gun-founders and the master shipwrights. Click here to order $25

87217 Mundle, Rob Cook From Sailor to Legend ABC Books/HarperCollins Publishers Aust. Pty. Ltd., Sydney NSW, 2013. First edition. Hardcover, octavo; white decorated boards with black upper board and spine tiling, red endpapers; 469pp., colour plates; glossary, sources, acknowledgements and index. Minor wear; toned text block edges with small scrape on side edge; one or two small marks on rear dustwrapper panel. Very good with wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Captain James Cook is one of the greatest maritime explorers of all time -- only the acclaimed fifteenth-century explorers, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama, can stand with him. Bestselling author of "Fatal Storm", "Bligh" and "Flinders", Rob Mundle explores the life and travels of James Cook in a major new biography for lovers of adventure and the romance of sail. Over three remarkable voyages of discovery into the Pacific in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Cook unravelled the centuries-old mystery surrounding the existence of the great south land, Terra Australis Incognita; became the first explorer to circumnavigate New Zealand and prove it comprised two main islands; discovered the Hawaiian Islands; and much more. Cook was a man who pursued a teenager's dream that evolved from a chance encounter in a small seafront village on the east coast of England. It was a dream that became a reality and transported him to legendary status among all who mapped the world, on land and sea. Through the combination of hard-won skills as a seafarer, the talents of a self-taught navigator and surveyor, and an exceptional ability to lead and care for his men, Cook contributed to changing the shape of the world map more than anyone else. Click here to order $25

62706 Parker, Mary Ann A Voyage Round the World Hordern House, Potts Point, 1991. Hardcover facsimile of the 1795 edition. Limited edition of 750, hand bound in half maroon Scottish calf with marbled papered sides, octavo, 149pp., and dedicated to Diana, Princess of Wales; this the first of the Australian National Maritime Museum's Historical Facsimile Series. Marbled boards with insect damage along front side and top edge with less pronounced wear in small spots on rear board. Text block edges lightly toned and faintly spotted on upper edge. Printed on Ivory Kilmory Text. Very good to near fine. No slipcase. Three years after the landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove, Mary Ann Parker became Australia's first tourist. Her journal of the voyage out and back, 'A Voyage Around the World in the Gorgon Man of War', is the first account of the new colony to be published by a woman. Mary Ann Parker made the voyage for her own interest and her husband's company. Her account provides important insight into the life and interests of a woman undertaking what was then the longest and most dangerous voyage on earth. Click here to order $100

208448 Pietsch, Roland The Real Jim Hawkins: Ships' Boys in the Georgian Navy Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley, 2010. First edition. Octavo hardcover; red boards with gilt spine titling; 240pp., b&w illustrations. Very minor wear only; near fine in like dustwrapper. Generations of readers have enjoyed the adventures of Jim Hawkins, the young protagonist and narrator in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, but little is known of the real Jim Hawkins and the thousands of poor boys who went to sea in the eighteenth century to man the ships of the Royal Navy. This work is a study of the origins, life and culture of the boys of the Georgian navy, not of the upper-class children training to become officers, but of the orphaned, delinquent or just plain adventurous youths whose prospects on land were bleak and miserable. Many had no adult at all taking care of them; others were failed apprentices; many were troublesome youths for whom communities could not provide so that the Navy represented a form of floating workhouse. Some, with restless and roving minds, like Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, saw deep sea life as one of adventure, interspersed with raucous periods ashore drinking, singing and womanizing. The author explains how they were recruited; describes the distinctive subculture of the young sailor the dress, hair, tattoos and language and their life and training as servants of captains and officers. More than 5,000 boys were recruited during the Seven Years War alone and without them the Royal Navy could not have fought its wars. This is a fascinating tribute to a forgotten band of sailors. Click here to order $30

51674 Quinn, David & Alison (eds.) The English New England Voyages, 1602-1608 Hakluyt Society, Cambridge UK, 1983. Second series. Hardcover, octavo, 580 pp, monochrome illustrations. Lightly scuffed dustwrapper with edge and corner wear; professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. The publication of the narrative accounts of the voyages of Gosnold (1602) and Waymouth (1605) opened up for English readers what was known as Norumbega, the later New England. They are the first documents of the exploration of that region to have been published since that of Verrazzano's voyage (1524) in 1556. To the accounts of these voyages by John Brereton and James Rosier there was added by Purchas in 1625 the material of Martin Pring's voyage of 1603 and some scraps of information on the attempted colony by the Virginia Company of Plymouth at Sagadahoc on the Kennebec River in 1607-8. These and ancillary documents have been collected here and give a fuller understanding of the New England colony at its inception. Click here to order $30

79783 Ralfe, J. The Naval Biography of Great Britain - in Four Volumes Consisting of Historical Memoirs of Those Officers of the British Navy Who Distinguished Themselves during the Reign of His Majesty George III Whitmore & Fenn, London, 1828. Four volumes quarto; full calf, with raised bands and gilt spine titles and decorations in compartments, gilt board decorations and marbled endpapers; 1,917pp. [vipp. + 428pp. + 528pp. + 400pp. + 542pp. + xiiipp.], with marbled edges and wide margins, two engraved frontispieces and 11 plates likewise, 8 folding. Rebacked: A and A2 signatures are missing; boards lightly scuffed and edges mildly cracked; text offset; mild scattered foxing throughout; previous owner's contemporary ink inscriptions on all title pages; retailer's bookplate on the front pastedown of Volume I; a small hole in the front free endpaper of Volume III. Withal, a very good set. Printed for a subscription list, as was the nature of these types of publications, this set of splendidly-bound volumes contains potted histories of all the leading ship's captains and naval officers serving under King George III and IV, with specific details of their engagements during the wars that buffeted those reigns. A wonderful feature of these books are the folding charts that outline various tactical confrontations which highlighted the careers of some of these officers. The volumes have all been sympathetically re-backed in order to restore them to their original lustre, meaning that their task as a pleasing shelf adornment for a private study - not to mention as the guardians of the information which they contain - is assured into the future. Click here to order $1500

208456 Robins, Nick The Coming of the Comet: The Rise and Fall of the Paddle Steamer Seaforth, Barnsley, 2012. First edition. Quarto hardcover; red boards with gilt spine titling, illustrated endpapers; 186pp., b&w illustrations. Minor wear only; near fine in like dustwrapper. Robert Fulton commissioned his Steam Boat on the Hudson River at New York in September 1807, and Henry Bell had Comet running on the Clyde in Scotland in August 1812. More than two hundred years on the paddle steamer is a maritime curiosity with enthusiast groups keen on preserving those few steamers that remain. Fulton and Bell led the world towards steam navigation, as wooden-hulled paddle steamers soon crossed the Atlantic and in due course also the Pacific. The paddle steamer provided the opportunity for commerce and trade following the Industrial Revolution, but in those early days it was generally the merchants who took the profit, not the shipowner. Paddle steamers and sternwheel river steamers were also critical to the development of the western states of the USA and developing the cotton exports from the Mississippi and Ohio catchments. This is the story of the evolution of the paddle steamer, merchant and military, the naval architects who designed the steamers, the men who operated them, the machinery with which they had to cope, the social aspects of the paddle steamer and even the economics of its operation. Click here to order $30

204763 Robson, John Captain Cook's War & Peace The Royal Navy Years, 1755-1768 Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD, 2009. Octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 216pp., with maps, many monochrome illustrations and 12pp. of colour and monochrome plates. Dustwrapper. Remainder. New. The author of two critically acclaimed books on Captain Cook, John Robson has now turned his attention to the decade leading up to Cook's famous 1768 expedition to the Pacific. This new book investigates why Cook was chosen to captain Endeavour and how he became uniquely qualified for the exacting tasks of exploration. Displaying much new research, it examines Cook's remarkable seamanship qualities and his surveying, astronomical, and cartographic skills, as well as his actions at the siege of Quebec. Click here to order $23

99222 Ronald, D.A.B. Young Nelsons: Boy Sailors During the Napoleonic Wars 1793-1815 Osprey Publishing, Oxford, 2009. Octavo hardcover; black boards with gilt spine titling, pale yellow endpapers; 305pp., colour and monochrome plates and illustrations. Toned text block edges. Very good to near fine in like dustwrapper with mild wear to edges. They 'fought like young Nelsons.' The words of a schoolmaster, writing from aboard the Mars after the battle of Trafalgar, describing the valour of his pupils in the heat of battle. Made immortal by the novels of Patrick O'Brian, C. S. Forester and Alexander Kent, these boy sailors, alongside those of every other Royal Navy ship, had entered the British Navy to fight the French across every ocean of the world. There was a long-standing British tradition of children going to sea, and along the way found adventure, glory, wealth and fame. During the Napoleonic Wars, these children, some as young as eight or nine, were also fighting for the very survival of Britain. Drawing on many first-hand accounts, letters, poems and writings, this book tells the dramatic story of Britain's boy sailors during the Napoleonic Wars. Click here to order $25

208660 Rule, Margaret (Foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales) The Mary Rose The Excavation and Raising of Henry VIII's Flagship Conway Maritime Press, London, 1982. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles and decorated endpapers; 224pp., with a full-colour frontispiece, maps and diagrams and many full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; slightly rolled; text block top edge lightly spotted; light spotting to the preliminaries. Dustwrapper mildly rubbed and edgeworn; sunned along the spine panel; spotting and rubbing to the flaps; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Click here to order $30

85903 Seal, Jeremy Treachery at Sharpnose Point Unraveling the Mystery of the Caledonia's Final Voyage Harcourt, Orlando FL, 2001. First edition. Hardcover, octavo; black boards with red gilt spine titling, map endpapers; 316pp., monochrome illustrations. A few tiny spots/marks on upper text block edge and small blemish on upper front corner of dustwrapper where laminate has lifted. Otherwise near fine and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. While walking through a cliff-top graveyard in the village of Morwenstow on the coast of Cornwall, the author encounters a wooden Scottish maiden trimmed with emblems and a shield. At first, Seal presumes the maiden is merely an elaborate headstone. But upon closer inspection, he realizes that the maiden, now a guardian for the graves she overlooks, was once the figurehead of a merchant ship. He learns that she adorned the Caledonia, a ship wrecked on the English coast in 1842, and that the crew had been benevolently buried there by the villagers. Further investigation leads Seal to suspect those villagers, and chiefly the village's parson, Robert Hawker, for the Caledonia's sudden demise. Though no one has ever been brought to court for 'wrecking' - luring ships ashore to loot the cargo - it's a commonly held belief that this did take place. But, is that what happened in Morwenstow, a village cruelly perched above a jagged, inhospitable shore? Having meticulously researched maritime logs and burial registers, broadsides of the day, diary entries, and other first-hand documents, Seal weaves history, travelogue, and imaginative narrative into this marvellous piece of detective work, bringing us a mystery of the best kind - the sort that really did happen. Click here to order $22

45819 Smith, C. Fox Painted Ports Hollis & Carter Ltd., London, 1961. Octavo hardcover; green boards with black spine titling; 230pp., monochrome frontispiece and plates. Mild wear to board edges; toned text block edges. Well-rubbed illustrated dustwrapper with moderate wear and chipping to edges and corners with slightly toned spine panel. Very good. In the great days of sail, the painted ports of the Devitt & Moore shipping company's square-riggers were a familiar sight in all the ports on the Australian run. Captain Course, author of "The Deep Sea Tramp", who himself served in sail, here traces the history of the company from its beginnings in 1836 as the venture of two ambitious clerks to the present day when the traditions of seamanship which made Devitt & Moore ships so famous are continued at the Pangbourne Naval College. With its numerous illustrations and appendices listing all vessels owned by Devitt & Moore, together with their captains, "Painted Ports" is an important contribution in a relatively unexplored field of research which will have a wide appeal not only to nautical and social historians but to all interested in sailing, and is an important chapter in the story of Britain's greatness as a seafaring nation. Click here to order $25

40255 Spate, O.H.K. The Spanish Lake - signed, limited edition The Pacific since Magellan, Volume 1 Australian National University, Canberra ACT, 1979. Octavo; hardcover, with decorated boards and a black ribbon; 372pp., with many monochrome illustrations. Mild wear. Near fine in scuffed slipcase with worn and frayed edges. Strictly speaking, there was no such thing as the Pacific until in 1520-1 Fernao de Magalhais, better known as Magellan, traversed the huge expanse of waters, which then received its name. With these opening words, Oskar Spate launches his account of the process by which the greatest blank on the map became a focus of global relations. The Spanish Lake describes the essentially European and American achievement of turning this emptiness into a nexus of economic and military power. This work is a history of the Pacific, the ocean that became a theatre of power and conflict shaped by the politics of Europe and the economic background of Spanish America. There could only be a concept of the Pacific once the limits and lineaments of the ocean were set and this was undeniably the work of Europeans. Fifty years after the Conquista, Nueva Espana and Peru were the bases from which the ocean was turned into virtually a Spanish lake. This is number 212 of only 500 signed copies. Click here to order $180

208539 Steel, David (Foreword by Dr. Alan McGowan)) The Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship - two volumes illustrated with a series of ninety-five plates and numerous smaller engravings Sim Comfort Associates, London, 1978. Two volumes: quarto; hardcover, with gilt spie titles and decorations; 572pp. with ninety-five plates in a separate volume, including die-cut compasses and folding plates. Mild wear; spines sunned; boards lightly rubbed with some marks; text block edges spotted; binder's ink stamp to the front pastedowns of both volumes; previous owner's date in ink to the flyleaves; a stain to the first page of volume one. No dustwrappers as issued. Very good in two well-sunned and rubbed slipcases. Click here to order $750

51682 Taylor, E.G.R. (ed.) A Regiment for the Sea And Other Writings on Navigation Hakluyt Society, Cambridge UK, 1963. Second series. Hardcover, octavo, 459pp., monochrome illustrations. Text block edges foxed. Blue card dustwrapper with edge and corner wear, spine and edges browned; small segment missing on head of spine, and some minor chipping; professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. William Bourne, of Gravesend, by trade a gunner, was a successful writer of a new type of textbook. Neither a scholar nor of gentle birth, both of which were regarded as the prerequisites of authorship in the sixteenth century, when scientific books were expected to appear only in universities and to be read only by those fluent in Latin, Bourne nevertheless produced a whole series of technical manuals, written in English for the artisans and craftsmen of his own class. A Regiment for the Sea, which forms the core of the volume, is perhaps the earliest technical manual written by an Englishman. It is not simply his rules for navigation, for Bourne wrote much as he spoke, so that out of this instruction book for sailors a clear picture of the man himself emerges: serious, reliable, patriotic and with this inborn impulse to pass on his knowledge to others. Click here to order $35

33092 Villiers, A.J. Voyage of the 'Parma': The great Grain Race of 1932 from Australia to Falmouth by way of Cape Horn Geoffrey Bles, London, 1947. Reprint. Hardcover, octavo; blue boards with silver gilt spine titling; 231pp., several monochrome plates. Minor wear; upper board edges and spine panel faded with some rubbing; bookseller's sticker and offsetting to endpapers; browned and spotted text block edges. Blue and white illustrated dustwrapper with missing segments on spine panel extremities; multiple tiny tears, chips and scrapes to edges and corners, some creasing; rubbing especially to rear panel. Very good in fair dustwrapper now protected in archival film with white paper backing. This book tells the story of a great race to deliver grain crops from Australia to Cornwall in Britain in the shortest space of time. Captaining the "Parma", a four-masted barque crewed by boys, Alan Villiers made the gruelling voyage from Port Broughton in West Australia - 15,000 miles (24,200 kms) - in 104days, delivering 5,200 tons of wheat. This is his account of a remarkable voyage. Click here to order $35

89017 Waine, C.V., & R.S. Fenton Steam Coasters and Short Sea Traders Waine Research Publications, Wolverhampton, 1994. Quarto hardcover; blue boards without titling, illustrated monochrome ship endpapers; 182pp., colour and monochrome illustrations and diagrams. Minor wear; small bump to upper front board edge. Illustrated grey card dustwrapper with mild wear and spotting to edges (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film). Near fine otherwise. A history of the British steam coaster covering building, repairing, early design, Clyde Puffers, and the various engine-aft types, up to the big east-coast colliers. Also covered are vessels with engines amidships and coastal tankers. Contains plans, colour profiles, and sketches that keep the model maker in mind. Click here to order $65

201128 Whiting, Brendan Ship of Courage The Epic Story of HMAS Perth and Her Crew Allen & Unwin, St Leonards NSW, 1994. Octavo hardcover; blue boards with gilt spine titling, map endpapers; 192pp., monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; near fine in like dustwrapper. In her last mission the Perth and her American companion, USS Houston, were destroyed in the Battle of the Sunda Strait, one of the greatest battles in the history of the sea. Over 350 men, most of Perth's crew, went down with the ship. Her survivors were captured by the Japanese. Spanning the entire period of the Second World War, Ship of Courage is the epic tale of the men who served in the ship. It follows their story from Perth's commissioning as an Australian Navy vessel through the prisoner of war camps of Asia to the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. This book explores the lives of people caught in the wake of a bloody war, not only those in action but those who waited at home. Click here to order $30

51684 Williamson, J.A. (ed.) The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery Under Henry VII With the Cartography of the Voyages. Hakluyt Society, Cambridge UK, 1962. Second series. Hardcover, octavo, 332pp, monochrome illustrations and pull-out maps. Text block edges foxed. Blue card dustwrapper with edge and corner wear, spine and edges browned; some minor chipping; professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. One of the Hakluyt Society's scholarly editions of primary records of voyages, it includes documents from English, Portuguese, and Spanish archives, transcribed or in translation, and from printed sources, relating to the Atlantic voyages out of Bristol; including the voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot. Click here to order $30

96313 Willis, Sam The Glorious First of June Fleet Battle in the Reign of Terror Quercus, London, 2011. Octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 434pp., with many monochrome illustrations and 16pp. of full-colour plates. Minor wear; text block top edge lightly toned. Dustwrapper lightly edgeworn. Very good to near fine. France, early summer, 1794. The French Revolution is in the grip of the Terror. While the guillotine relentlessly takes the heads of innocents, two vast French and British fleets meet in the mid-Atlantic. The French, in ships painted blood-red and bearing banners proclaiming 'La Republique ou la Mort!' are escorting an American grain convoy to Brest to feed their starving countrymen; the British, under the command of Lord Howe, a radical innovator and tactical genius, are bent on destroying it. The ensuing clash would swiftly become known as the hardest fought battle of its era. Click here to order $30

82794 Wolff, Geoffrey The Hard Way Around: signed copy The Passages of Joshua Slocum Alfred Knopf, New York, 2010. First edition. Hardcover, octavo, 218pp. Dustwrapper. Remainder. New. Signed in ink on title page. Born in 1860, Joshua Slocum signed aboard a boat headed from his Nova Scotia home to Dublin and became dedicated to the sea for the rest of his life. Rising from the lowest of the low on board ship, he eventually commanded eight vessels, owning four of them outright, and travelled the world with his wife, whom he met and married in Australia, along with the children they raised at sea. But all was not bliss in this maritime idyll: cyclones, pirates, cholera and shipwrecks took their toll and, in 1895, bereft of nearly all that he had attained, he set off solo around the world, becoming the first person to do so, a feat not matched until 1925. After publishing his memoirs and rubbing elbows with President Theodore Roosevelt, scandal overcame him and, facing financial ruin, he set off into the wild blue, never to be heard of again. This full-speed-ahead biography is outlined in masterful fashion by Geoffrey Wolff, who absolutely captures the derring-do of this intrepid, uncompromising mariner. Click here to order $25