See my review dated 23 Jul 2009 on the Amazon website. This is a beautifully-produced book, with some 120 black and white plates (photographs!), most either full-page or half-page and a half a dozen or so over two pages. Not one of the photographs is cropped, such that a part of the bow or stern of a ship is missing (not uncommon in books about ships, sadly). Throughout the book, the author pleases the 'reader' with photographs opposite each other, on two pages, that are a beautiful compliment in themselves - both author and publisher are indeed to be complimented. Peter Stewart provokes thought about 'the beauty of ships' in his introduction and I particularly enjoyed his describing the new Royal Yacht - HMY Britannia - as she is escorted by ships of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean, while a French liner comes perhaps too close so as to give a great view to his passengers of this maritime spectacle.

I am not so sure that the two photographs of the Italian Cosulich liner "Vulcania" (1926) merit inclusion for, while certainly not ugly, the ship is bulky and not really beautiful (but, eye of the beholder and all that!). I'd have preferred to see some of the thirteen photographs of ocean liners underway replaced with those of freighters and cargo liners, many of those of the post war years are indeed very handsome ships, just as handsome as many transatlantic liners and cruise ships. A 'dirty British coaster' deserved more prominence, too - those of Coast Lines, F T Everard, General Steam Navigation and Stephenson Clarke, for example. I would also like to have seen a handsome British Railways steamer (ferry) and a couple of tugs, one of an ocean-going tug like the famous Admiralty tug Turmoil (Bustler class) and a couple of harbour tugs, such as those owned by Alexandra Towing, W H J Alexander (Sun Tugs) or William Watkins (Ship Towage Ltd). A page should have been found for one collier - say, one of those of the Central Electricity Generating Board - and for a narrowboat underway on the canal system of British Waterways.

It's good that naval aviation was represented with pictures of fixed wing aircraft, although helicopters are much under-represented. No landing craft or other boats of the inestimable Royal Marines either, no Royal Marines Band playing on the quayside for a returning ship. No flag officer on his flagship, no semaphore or colourful flag hoists or ships dressed overall - flags look good in black and white, too! Little of the ceremonial of the sea is covered.

The book does include one of my favourite ship photographs, though, that of HMS Barrosa - HM Destroyer Barrosa, as the photograph's caption has it. The aerial photograph shows the Battle class destroyer passing through the shamrock of foam from her Squid anti-submarine weapon.

Notwithstanding these quibbles, this is one of my favourite books, one I have owned since the 1960s. It is worth seeking out this book some sixty years after publication. ( )