Historic Sail: The Glory of the Sailing Ship from the 13th to the 19th Century - Hardcover

Howarth, Stephen; Wheatley, Joseph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1853673994 ISBN 13: 9781853673993

Publisher: Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal, 2000

Synopsis

This special, large format, illustrated book is a panorama of some of the most elegant ships ever built and an addition to literature on this subject.
Historic Sail presents colour artwork by Joseph Wheatley and text by the leading naval historian Stephen Howarth. This book covers the period from the Middle Ages to the near demise of the sailing ship towards the end of the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the golden age of sail - the years of exploration and discovery from 1450 to 1700.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Howarth and Wheatley's spectacular collaboration isn't exactly a history of sailing ships. It's a beautiful and informative picture book aimed at nautically minded grownups--a set of splendid, full-page, high-contrast illustrations depicting 91 ships, from the medieval Danish vessel called a "cog" to a Scottish tea-carrying ship of 1869. Obscure striped flags dangle from looming diagonal spars, and intricate webs of rigging give space and position to sails actual and potential, as each of Wheatley's meticulously drawn crafts catches the wind from off the page. British naval historian Howarth (Nelson) provides a fact-filled paragraph to accompany each plate, and also supplies a long glossary at the end, defining such terms as "galleass" ("hybrid between an oar-powered galley and a sailing ship") and "jib-boom" ("extension to the bowsprit for mounting a flying jib"). Howarth and Wheatley's volume is the first book of reconstructed sailing-ship illustrations since the '60s, and incorporates new research on how medieval and Renaissance ships, in particular, must have looked and functioned. Maritime duffers will admire the drawings' elegance, while nautical experts will thrill to Howarth and Wheatley's grasp of technical detail. German cogs, Howarth writes, "were characterized by an angular straight stem-post," while English and Danish cogs kept their stem-posts curved--those stem posts "prevented the use of a tiller; instead the rudder was fitted with a crossbar equipped with rope tackles to work it." BOMC alternate. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1853673994
• ISBN 13: 9781853673993
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 206