Westcountry Coasting Ketches

Conway Maritime Press, Greenwich, 1974, good condition with dustwrapper

A detailed study of a type of vessel and the style of life that surrounded it. The book has three sections: Part 1 is an autobiographical account of the ketches' coasting trade that Captain Slade knew so well. Part II is a pictorial record of the ketches themselves, using a large number of photographs taken betweem 1850 and 1952, many of which show deck and rigging arrangements in considerable detail; Part III consists of drawings of the more prominent vessels mentioned in the narrative. As a collaboration between a practical ship-master and a maritime historian, it is unusually authoritative both as a social record and as a technical history of a fascinating ship type, the most important publication in its field since Greenhill's classic `The Merchant Schooners'...