The Way of a Ship (Hudson River Edition)

Hardcover Cloth 429 pages. Condition Very Good Dust Jacket Very Good. Hudson River Reprint edition first printing 1981. Elegant blue boards and silver embossing shows off this Clean, tight, square copy with no marks, highlights or bookplates. Book Well kept and carefully stored in unread condition. Slight shelf wear. Top edge spotted. An unclipped dust jacket smooth and clean is discolored with age showing slight shelf wear - a few wrinkles and chips. Not an ex-library, book club or remainder copy.

Magnificent book about the square-rigged sailing ships that once plied the oceans with their cargos of tea, timber, pianos, guano, salpeter, and whatnot. The sails and rigging are given a detailed look, with excellent diagrams showing the names and positions of the various pieces and discussion of how the parts worked together to form a superior sailing machine.

Apart from the technical aspects, Villiers also examines the economical side - value of cargos, wages of the hands, and so on. Coal replaced sail because it became cheaper and more reliable than sail by gradual but relentless progress.

The book also contains many an anecdote of life on board, of life in the days "when the ships were made of wood and the men were made of steel"

Alan Villiers was an Australian who had won considerable fame for himself as a result of his voyages in sailing-ships. Mr. Villiers preferred the excitement and the danger of small sailing-ships to the comfort and the safety of the modern ship.