E. C. Talbot-BoothBesprekingen

This is a wonderful little book crammed with information, diagrams, photographs and colour plates. The endpapers are the same but the message does really need repeating - 'The Life Blood of an Empire' includes a black-and-white map of the British Empire, each one of the small black dots on the map representing one British ocean-going merchant vessel at sea on any given day - an estimated 1,850 ships (and, in addition, there are 1,650 smaller ships and coastal vessels). This sets the scene - why Britain needs the Royal Navy to protect its trade worldwide and protect the ships that bring oil, not much of it coming from within the British Empire. What we today would call a certain sea-blindness, this map tries to counter with its showing "the incessant procession [of ships] passing upon its lawful occasion".

Chapter IX is 'Parts of a Warship' and it includes a fold-out drawing of the battleship HMS Barham, showing the armament and the outstanding features of the upper deck, as seen from the starboard side. This includes some 19 features of the 'forebridge and foremast' as well as 44 other features and this is not something I have seem elsewhere. The text includes a detailed explanation of these many features and fittings.

There is so much information herein that one could spend hours just browsing, let alone reading every word. In the chapter about Naval Barracks, I did rather enjoy this note "German propaganda overstepped itself when, during the early days of the present war it announced that HMS Kestrel had been sunk." HMS Kestrel was the commissioned name of the RN Air Station at Worthy Down, near Winchester!

A delightful booklet - thirty pages of full colour drawings of badges and rank/rating markings that gives an instant flavour of the organisation of the fighting services, auxiliary services and civilian services in the Second World War in the UK (and including the badges of children's organisations such as the Navy League Sea Cadet Corps, Air Training Corps, Boy Scouts, Boys' Brigade and the Girl Guides).

Some 2,209 merchant ship silhouettes (well, twice that number as both port side and starboard side silhouettes are shown for each vessel) and 532 warship and auxiliary ship silhouettes (ditto) x make up by far the largest part of this dumpy book. About the first fifth of the book, the pages of which are not numbered) is taken up with notes and advice about ship recognition. Thank goodness there is an index of Merchant Ships and Warships! I hope that the book was of some use to allied navies during the Second World War.

This book has a most inappropriate title for the modern understanding of the word 'calendar'. Essentially, it's a 'pocket-book' of the world's warships.½

This is a classic work of Paymaster Lieutenant Commander Eric Talbot-Booth (1903-1989). Unashamedly focused on the greatest maritime power of the day, the book gives the reader a basic understanding of the sea but the main focus is on ships of all types - merchant ships and warships of the United Kingdom and, to a lesser extent, of other nations. A number of pull-outs complement the large number of drawings by the author himself or by Pelham Jones, the author was a proponent of ship recognition and this book was, I hope, on the bridge of every allied ship in the Second World War. I am sure this book was both useful and one to give pleasure in its day but it is certainly a gem today, providing much historical information and, unlike today, harks back to a day when shipping mattered and people took an interest and pride in the merchant fleet and the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. Today, shipping matters very much but most of it is not British-flagged and most British people, I expect, know almost nothing about it and care even less. If you can find a second-hand copy of this 1,112-page "Dumpy" book, buy it!

The plans printed in this book are not only without hull lines, but also without any reasonable curves at all. The straight lines the author has drawn with the help of a ruler, but the curved lines he all drew freehand, and without much success. The deck arrangement outlines are therefore, for nearly the whole of a ships length, merely two parallel lines, ending with shakily drawn sharp or round indication of bow and stern. The drawings, which one must suppose would be the primary reason for anyone buying this book, is the worst of the type I have ever seen, and most likely the average reader could make better plans from a single photograph himself. The colours of the different ship-owner liveries listed in the text are useful though, and there are some good photographs.

I bought this book on a visit to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich on a school trip in 1977. It became my bible, my font of knowledge for all things naval in a world before the Internet.

The presented system of ship identification was practiced assiduously out of my bedroom window overlooking the Firth of Forth and thus the passageway for everything going to and from the Rosyth Royal Navy base. The bottom line is, it works, hull-up or hull-down.

Although the dust jacket is long gone, the book retains my youthful colour coded markings of all the ships and boats I'd seen and been aboard. Looking back now I can still recall the sightings that caused more than a few of those dots. I am almost tempted to go back and make some more after my visit to Norfolk Naval Base a couple of summers ago!

Someone has apparently given this book two stars, I can only surmise that they've acquired it recently and judged it against Wikipedia, there can be no other explanation. This book was, maybe still is, simply superb.