The Sailing Frigate

A technical history of the ship from 1600 to 1850 through models, with informative illustrations and text, by the author of Warships of the Napoleonic Era.

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, houses the largest collection of scale ship models in the world. Many of the models are official, contemporary artifacts made by the craftsmen of the Royal Navy or the shipbuilders themselves, ranging from the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. As such they represent a three-dimensional archive of unique importance and authority. Treated as historical evidence, they offer more detail than even the best plans, and demonstrate exactly what the ships looked like in a way that even the finest marine painter could not achieve. This book tells the story of the evolution of the cruising ship under sail. It includes many model photos, all in full color, as well as close-up and detail views. These are captioned in depth, but many are also annotated to focus attention on interesting or unusual features.


Although pictorial in emphasis, The Sailing Frigate weaves the pictures into an authoritative text, producing an unusual and attractive form of technical history. While the series will be of particular interest to ship modelers, all those with an interest in ship design and development will be attracted to the in-depth analysis of these beautifully presented books.