Sailing into the Past: Replica Ships and Seamanship

Lots of information, well written, and good photos. High quality paper and binding. The photo captions are in a slightly small font, probably to get so much information in, but is easily readable as it is on glossy high quality paper.I bought this to read about the Japanese ship which I had seen in Sado Island but the whole book is interesting.I am not particularly a sailor but all the information is fascinating. Lots of detail, drawings, and personal information about the builders and ships' designs.Great book.

The last 60 years have seen the construction of many replica ships, but this is the first book to consider what we have learnt from all this effort. Wisely the editor has restricted the number of vessels being considered, but even so there is a mass of useful information. One particular point that comes out is that we should never under-estimate the skills and ability of shipbuilders and seamen of the past. Highly recommended.

Excellent in content but the print is too small for long study which this subject needs. Aome of the insets were in as smalla font as I have ever seen. This also affects diagrams.An oversize book would have been better.

There have been so many replica ships built over the previous hundred years - many of them more the product of a highly imaginative mind rather than careful research - that a book describing some of the best and explaining how they were researched and built was overdue. This book certainly achieves this. A number of authors, all connected in some way with the particular replicas they describe, explain the sources of information - often archaeological -, how the vessels were built, and how they performed at sea. And there are two very interesting general chapters at the beginning defining what we mean by 'replica ship' and the problems associated with measuring performance at sea. The illustration is wonderful and I came away from the book with a real understanding of the seamanship of our forebears.