Wooden Ship: the art, history, and revival of wooden boatbuilding

by Peter H. Spectre, David Larkin, Paul Rocheleau

A spectacular volume of 200 full-color photographs and accompanying text tells the story of the shipbuilder's art, from ancient times to the present. From dugouts and dinghys to warships and workboats, this book celebrates the illustrious art, craft, and history of wooden boatbuilding.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rather a beautiful book with superb photographs. Many of the photos seem to be of incredible model ships but in many cases it was not clear to me whether the pictures were from exquisitely detailed drawing/paintings. I guess, in most cases the photos are of models. But the authors take us from dug-out canoes to the viking longboats and treasure galleons and fighting ships around the time of the Spanish armada .....through to modern luxury wooden motor yachts. A nice sweep of history but some segments completely missed such as the Greek/Roman triemes, quinqueremes.
The authors have benefited immensely from a couple of reconstructions: The Susan Constant, and the Batavia where they have been able to photographically record the whole construction process. Though I did miss the kind of analysis I remember seeing at the Viking Museum in Roskilde, Denmark. Here, in a little vignette they set out what was actually required of a community in terms of person hours of work and other resources to build a typical longboat. It was an immense community effort and I imagine that many of the ships featured in this book also required immense community efforts and/or significant taxation.
I was also rather taken by the luxury wooden motor yachts that took their wealthy owners from their estates in Long Island New York to downtown Manhattan around the 1920's. (Shades of the Great Gatsby).
Overall, quite a lovely book which would probably mean more to a boating aficionado. I give it five stars.

[Michael Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Except for the first few and last few pages, the water-going vessels depicted and analyzed in this fascinating book aren’t “boats” -- they’re definitely ships. Ships made of wood, developed by tradition and experiment, hand-shaped, pegged together, and amazingly seaworthy. Moreover, what you see here is not merely technical drawings or models -- though those are lovely -- but recreations and reconstructions of the real thing, from a Viking longship and the Susan Constant (which made the 1607 voyage to Jamestown) to the Batavia and the Amsterdam, both Dutch East Indiamen. Also included in the analysis are several musuem ships, like the Charles W. Morgan, and purpose-built modern wooden vessels, like the Pride of Baltimore. This is a book all those intrigued by the history of sail power will want to own.