Atlantic Sail - Ten Centuries of Ships in the North Atlantic

David Bateman, Auckland, 1992, 184 pages. Ex-parliamentary library (sticker inside front cover, pocket stuck to inside of back cover), fade marks to dusjacket, small tears at spine extremities (repaired internally and dustjacket covered with plastic), foxing to inside covers.

The representative selection of the main types of sailing ships follows the developments in ship design and function, from the tiny, crafted knorrs of the Norse seafarers to the Cape Verde packets that kept the tradition of commercial sailing ships in the Atlantic alive well into this century. In between we explore the highly successful Dutch fluyt design that was adapted to fishing, whaling and piracy, a wide variety of eighteenth century merchant vessels, the Spanish treasure ships, the Grand Banks fishing fleets, and the competition between the American transatlantic packet companies, whose search for speed and performance culminated in the magnificent Atlantic packet clippers of the mid nineteenth century.