ALL THE WORLD'S FIGHTING SHIPS 1860—1905

The period 1860-1905 witnessed an unprecedented advance in warship design, but the interest in this development has always been hampered by the lack of a reliable single source. In fact there is very little information in print, and not even an accessible class list before the advent of the famous yearbooks towards the end of the period.

Even these are often inaccurate and, of course, cannot benefit from hindsight in their evaluation of ship designs. All the World's Fighting Ships was originally designed to fill this need for a very basic list of classes and their particulars, but it soon became obvious that far more information could be uncovered. With the documentary material now available it has been possible to give accurate assessments of many ship designs for the first time and to put the rapidly-changing technology into a proper historical context.

Unlike the contemporary naval annuals, the treatment of each class in this book is related to the size of ship and the importance of the navy, rather than taking the form of a similar and sketchy reference for every vessel. The result, we feel, is a substantial reference work. There are three more books in this series covering the periods 1906-1921, 1922-1946 and 1947-1995.