Books on Sail - An opinion from a bumbling landlubber

You can say that !

  Now, question .Do you have any " Blue-Jackets manuals?" They would help you too . Especially the really old ones . Being a retired professional in the line of shipbuilding and design there are many books I have had that relate to sail.

 I only got them because I did build four different yawls in my shop and one Powerboat . The information in some helped me singularly build from the keel to the truck and do it right !

  Now if I build either it will be kits and corrections to said kits ( If I want to , that is ). Funny , one year I was the Commodore of my life and now I am just a Focs'le man . Oh Well .

   Because I love model-building and talking about them I will never grow old ,even at seventy-one . Why? model building to me is still a whale of a lot of fun !         T.B.

Jim,

This forum, as well as others, have given me lots of interesting recommendations for building sailing ships (my primary interest). My small library consists of the following books among which, I agree with you, Harland's "Seamanship in the Age Of Sail" seems, so far, to be my most valuable reference. In no particular order here's what I have to date:

1. Seamanship in the Age Of Sail by John Harland

2. Masting & Rigging the Sclipper Ship & Ocean Carrier by Harold A. Underhill

3. The Ship by Björn Landström

4. The History of American Sailing Ships by Howard I. Chapelle

5. The American Fishing Schooners by Howard I. Chapelle

6. Windjammer Modelling by Monk

7. Whale Ships and Whaling by Albert Cook Church

8. The Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor by Darry Lever

9. Historic Ship Models by Wolfram zu Mondfeld

10. The Anatomy of Nelson's Ships by C. Nepean Longridge

I also have The Battleship Dreadnought by John Roberts and should be getting soon The Battleship HMS Dreadnought (Super Drawings in 3D) by Stefan Draminski for my current WIP.

I sincerely hope I live long enough to use and enjoy reading several of these reference books .

Mike

T.B.
The only Bluejacket Manual (I think that is what it was) I ever had was from my father in law and it was from when he was in the U.S. Navy in WWII. I gave that years ago to my son, who had been in the Navy, as a remembrance of him.

Mike,
I have a few of the books you have listed. I'd rate the "...Sheet Anchor" right up there along with one that you haven't mentioned, "Rigging Period Ship Models" by Petersson (No text - All very good drawings).

While still of use, but low on my pole, is Longridge's books (including "Cutty Sark"). They get really bogged down with all of his telling of how to build a wooden model. I was in the process of trying to wade through "Nelson's Ships" when "Seamanship..." arrived. "Nelson" quickly got dropped like a ton of lead.

Another concern for those of us just entering into the realm of sailing ship modeling is finding good information at a reasonable price. A lot of these books are getting hard to find for one thing and then there is how much they are being sold for if you can find them. With the exception of "Seamanship...", I have been fortunate to find the books that I do have at a reasonable price. Despite the higher cost that I paid for "Seamanship", it was worth the money. There were many more copies out there that were approaching stratospheric prices. This makes things hard for anyone that simply can't afford these high prices. This relates to all forms of modeling as well as the would be historian too.

Of course, a good Library is one answer, but, how many of you build your models at the Library?  I am one who likes to have the information that I need right there on the table in front of me.

I agree completely with everything that's been said in this thread. The Harland book is a masterpiece. A good-sized chunk of the credit for it should also go to Mark Meyers, who made all those wonderful drawings.

One thing a newcomer should keep in mind is that there are several different kinds of sources.  Books like D'Arcy Lever's Young Officer's Sheet Anchor and the various editions of the Bluejacket's Manual are primary sources - that is, they date from the period of the ships they talk about. The Harland, Longridge, and zu Monfeldt books are secondary sources. They're works of relatively modern research about ships of earlier periods.

A good researcher uses both - and carefully makes the distinction between them. Primary sources are the backbone of research, but they have limitations. Lever, for instance, is great for models of the Constitution and the Victory, but just about useless for a model of the Cutty Sark. And a 1918 Bluejacket's Manual would be great for a WWI U.S. battleship, but not much help for a modern carrier. Maybe that's obvious, but some modelers sometimes forget it.

If you can't find - or afford - a book that's important for your project, there are a couple of possible solutions. One is to look for used copies on the web. (I've seen used copies of the same used book priced between $5.00 and $400.00. I kid you not.) Another approach is to see if your local library participates in the Inter-library Loan Service. If so, it can borrow books from any other library in the system.

Another solution: join the Nautical Research Guild. It operates a free lending library of excellent ship books.

Alibris is a good source. Do be aware that booksellers have internet trolling programs- when interest heats up on a forum about a tiltle, the price goes up!

We saw this several years ago during a spirited discussion about Arizona by Stillwell.

Currently there are several copies of Harland out there listed on Amazon, Barnes, and Alibris for $ 123.00.

We'll see how this goes.

There are some really nice sites online if you do a proper Google search.  I was looking for info on rigging of Viking ships and really found some good stuff.  Saw a lot of stuff from other places and eras as I was refining my search strategy.

THese 2 are pretty good!      

I just got a flyer from Model Expo.  The flyer has about half a page of books, many of the "sails and rigging" type, at reasonable prices.  Try their web site.