The paddle steamer holds a unique place in the history of maritime engineering. When the engineers of the early nineteenth century experimented with steamboats they chose the paddle wheel as the form of propulsion. Within twenty years the paddle steamers were at work on inland waters and short sea passages. They were graceful, elegant ships, but in the jet age too slow and uneconomical. In the 1950s they went to the breaker’s yards in droves, and now there are only a few left. This book te...

Few men have rightly earned the title of genius, but one must surely be Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In his short lifetime he pioneered the railways, built bridges, tunnels and termini. He also built three ships - theGreat Western, Great Britain and Great Eastern. Each one contributed more to the development of maritime engineering than any other vessel built before or since. This book tells the story of Brunel and his three ships, from the time that the Great Western developed from a dream to...

How the mighty clipper ships transformed Australia from convict outpost to a nation.More than one million Australians can trace their heritage to the migrant ships of the mid-to-late 19th century...The story of the Clipper ships, and the tens of thousands of migrants they bought to the Australian colony of the nineteenth century, is one of the world's great migration stories. For anyone who travelled to Australia before 1850, it was a long and arduous journey that could tak...

Commander Edward John Smith's career had been a remarkable example of how a man from a humble background could get far in the world. Born to a working-class family in the landlocked Staffordshire Potteries, he went to sea at the age of 17 and rose rapidly through the ranks of the merchant navy, serving first in sailing vessels and later in the new steamships of the White Star Line. By 1912, he as White Star's senior commander and regarded by many in the shipping world as t...

From Leigh to Lynn – the Thames to the Wash – the coastlines of East Anglia are the most diverse in Great Britain. Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex are communities shaped by their close relationship with the sea and seafaring, from Viking raiders to modern container ships, and hard-working trawlers to elegant racing yachts.In this book, long-time resident David Fairhall explores a landscape that has inspired some of the greatest English painters. He follows gentle rivers that reach far i...

'The inventions, the innovations, the stories, the surprises. A combination of history, reference and entertainment – something for every seafarer and many others too.' - Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence.People have been sailing for thousands of years, but we've come some distance from longboats and clippers. How did we arrive here?In fifty tales of inventors and innovations, Sails, Skippers and Sextants looks at the history ...

The Port of Liverpool handles more container trade with the United States than any other port in the UK and now also serves more than 100 other non-EU destinations, from China to Africa and the Middle East, and from Australia to South America. Liverpool has been an important port since the seventeenth century, when the city began to import West Indian sugar and Virginian tobacco, exporting Lancashire textiles in return.In Liverpool Docks Through Time, a wide collection of photographs guide...

The Golden Age of liner travel was from the early 1900s to the 1950s, a period dominated by black-and-white photography, with few colour views. William H. Miller and Anton Logvinenko show off colour views of the magnificent ships, from the Mauretania and Lusitania to the Queen Mary, as well as the A Class liners of the 1920s and the sublime Deco Mauretania (2) of 1939. Experience the glamour of liner travel as it was for the Edwardians and through the 1920s and 1930s, in colour, as never s...

An epic social history of steamship travel from the 19th-century to the ‘Lusitania’, the ‘Mauretania’ and the ‘Titanic’.The great transatlantic steamships became emblems of an age, of a Victorian audacity of spirit-cathedrals to man's harnessing of new technology. Through the innovations and designs of key engineers and shipping magnates – Samuel Cunard, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Edward Knights Collins – ‘the largest movable objects in human history' were created. To the wealthy,...

Light in the Darkness examines the origins of the lightship service, the obstacles and prejudices that faced originators of the idea and the subsequent development of the vessels and working practices over the years. Throughout the centuries, this dangerous occupation has claimed the lives of a number of lightship crews and those who tried to save them. The lives and working conditions of the brave men, who for over 260 years put their lives at risk guiding ships safely to their destinatio...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.The sinking of the Titanic 100 years ago in 1912, and the subsequent deaths of over 1,500 passengers, sent shock waves around the world. Never before or since has a maritime disaster in a time of peace had such an impact.TITANIC: HISTORY IN AN HOUR is an entertaining and well researched account of the events leading up to the sinking of this ‘unsinkable’ ship, providing an fascinating commentary on the pressures of the W...

With the gradual phasing out of wooden fishing boats of Scotland it is timely to record some of these handsome vessels. In the years from 1960–80 boat builders produced some of their most shapely and graceful craft, a testament to the skill of both the builders and designers. Initially the designs were a collaboration of builders and skippers, but later the implementation of statutory rules demanded a more structured approach by qualified naval architects, which inevitably...