Description

Conway Mariitme Press [Published Date: 1992]. Hardcover, 192 pp. First Edition. #11 out of a limited edition of 2000. Very good in very good dust jacket. Red and black cloth covered boards have light bumping and scuffing to edges and corners. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Dust jacket has a few small nicks and tears and light creasing along edges. Now in an archival-quality (removable) Brodart Cover. Black and white illustrations. [From back cover] After three hundred years of dependence upon the broadside-armed sailing man-of-war, the world's battlefleets were to change out of all recognition in the span of a single lifetime. Between 1840 and 1905, sail was replaced by steam, wooden hull construction with iron and then steel, and the shell-firing gun encouraged the adoption of armour plate. As the pace of technology accelerated, entirely new underwater weapons in the form of the mine, torpedo and the submarine evolved to threaten the traditional pre-eminence of the surface warship. Earlier historians felt that navies were slow to respond to these technical changes, but with the benefit of much recent research this volume reveals the old view to be untenable. The interaction of politics, economics and technology needs to be considered in any coherent history of naval development and for the first time Steel, Steam and Shellfire offers the general reader a proper understanding of this neglected, misunderstood but fascinating period. This volume includes: The Introduction of Steam; The Screw Propeller Warship; Iron Hulls and Armour Plate; The American Civil War; The Era of Uncertainty, 1863 - 1880; Warships of Steel 1879 - 1889; The Pre-dreadnought Age 1890 - 1905; Underwater Weapons and the Torpedo Boat; Early Submarines; Naval Armaments and Armour; Warship Machinery; Bibliography; Glossary; Index