Ships Shipbuilding category: 835 books

The great lakes have seen many ships meet their end, but none so much as Lake Erie. As the shallowest of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie is prone to sudden waves and wildly shifting sandbars. The steamer Atlantic succumbed to these conditions when, in 1852, a late night collision brought 68 of its weary immigrant...

Leith has been Edinburgh’s main port since the Middle Ages. It is one of the oldest harbours in the country, dating back to the twelfth century. Modern Leith docks took shape in the nineteenth century with the construction of stone quays and breakwaters. The late 1930s saw a further major expansion...

The 21st century saw the naval power of Great Britain rise from that of an obscure island to that of a worldwide empire. British shipping and seamen dominated the globe for four centuries and the ships that explored the world and those which guarded them represent a unique treasure-trove of maritime...

There have been millions of shipwrecks, but just a few have been remembered. A ship can disappear suddenly without a trace. Or a loss may involve a fascinating web of intrigue and drama. Exploration, the aftermath of wrecking in remote regions of the world and the interaction of survivors with local...

Canadian Pacific was one of the great Atlantic liner companies, sailing out of Liverpool on the St Lawrence route to Montreal and Quebec. With crisp white hulls and their distinctive chequered funnels, they were the 'Empresses of the Atlantic', a great part of the last grand era of the Atlantic liners....

The tramp ship was the taxi of the seas. With no regular schedules, it voyaged anywhere and everywhere, picking up and dropping off cargoes, mainly bulk cargoes such as coal, grain, timber, china clay and oil. It was the older and slower vessels that tended to find their way into this trade, hence...

Under Canadian Pacific's red-and-white-checkered flag, the company's founders, George Stephen and William C. Van Horne, created a rail-sea service from Liverpool to Hong Kong. Boasting sternwheelers, Great Lakes bulk carriers, ferries, and luxurious ocean-going liner leviathans, the Canadian Pacific...

On a blustery, West Highland summer’s day in the early 1950s, a black-hulled mail steamer ploughed its way northwards from Mallaig up through the Sound of Sleat between the mainland of Scotland and the Isle of Skye. The spray from its bow wave flew high up her sides and dark smoke was tugged from...

It was one of the most important British liner routes of all - the express run from Southampton to the South African Cape. Carrying passengers as well as cargo, including the all-important mail, it was a byword in travel - 'every Thursday at 4', as one of the big Union-Castle liners set off for Cape...

Loving tribute to luxury liners documents more than 100 ships, including the Leviathan, the America, the Independence, the President Polk, and the United States. Detailed captions provide a wealth of information on tonnage, speed, size, and passenger load. Introduction. Preface by David Perry. Bibliography. Index. Approximately 200 photographs.

From the mid-1890s a race was on between the merchant navies of the recently unified Germany, Britain and France. That race was to make the most luxurious and fastest ocean liners and it started with the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, the first of fourteen four-stackers built between 1897 and 1921. The...

The untold history of the maritime branches of two giants of early-twentieth-century Canadian railroads. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and the Canadian Northern Railway, two giants of Canadian rail transportation, each operated maritime shipping ventures during the early twentieth century. Numerous...

The Port of Holyhead has a long history and is now operated by Stena Line Ports Ltd. The company took over ownership of the port from Sea Containers in 1990, which only six years previously assumed control of the harbour as part of the Sealink privatisation. Ranked as the United Kingdom's third-busiest...

The Royal Mail has, for over 500 years, provided a crucial service in keeping people connected by land, sea and air. As the British Empire grew, so too did the need for a fleet of liners to service it, and in 1839 Queen Victoria granted the initial Royal Charter incorporating the Royal Mail Steam...