On a blustery, West Highland summer's day in the early 1950s, a black-hulled mail steamer ploughed its way northwards from Mallaig up through the Sound of Sleat between the mainland of Scotland and the Isle of Skye.
Formed on Merseyside in 1913, Coast Lines grew from a small fleet of sixteen coastal ships operating in the Irish Sea to the world's largest coastal fleet.
Light in the Darkness examines the origins of the lightship service, the obstacles and prejudices that faced originators of the idea and the subsequent development of the vessels and working practices over the years.
For more than 150 years it was the world's most powerful force: between victory at Trafalgar in 1805 and the withdrawal from 'east of Suez' in the 1960s, the ships of the Royal Navy were ubiquitous.
For many years in Yachts and Yachting magazine, these very practical, workable sketches by yacht designer Ian Nicolson appeared regularly and they apply to every part of a boat.
This is the story of how the Second World War affected leisure boating: of the people who managed to overcome huge difficulties to go sailing during the war itself and the difficulties of re-establishing the sport in post-war years; of the sailing and yacht clubs which survived bombings, requisitioning, shortages and a host of other problems, and still thrive today.
Cold-moulded wood boatbuilding predates fibreglass and has been used successfully for sailing dinghies, offshore racing yachts, fast multihulls and powerboats, and even rowing shells.
Smuggling in Cornwall: An Illustrated History tells the story of the smuggling trade that flourished in Cornwall during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The merchants of Manchester were concerned about the high tariffs charged at Liverpool Docks and the excessive rates for transhipment of goods to Manchester.
This trilogy tells how Ian Nicolson, yachtsman, naval architect and author, joined a Canadian and a Norwegian to sail the 45-foot ketch Maken from England via the Panama Canal to Vancouver, Canada.
For generations of Londoners, a trip to the seaside aboard a pleasure steamer such as the Royal Eagle, Golden Eagle or Royal Daffodil was the highlight of the year and these 'Poor Man's Liners' were part of childhood and family life for huge numbers of people.
With a foreword by the Duke of Edinburgh, who travelled to the Antarctic on the maiden voyage of the RRS John Biscoe, this is the story of the ship's final voyage in the Antarctic to the British Antarctic Survey bases.
The Georgian town of Whitehaven, located on the West coast of Cumbria, was once the third most important port in Britain but today is only used by a handful of fishing vessels.
On 17 September 1921, the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton left London aboard his ship Quest, bound for the Antarctic on what would prove to be his final voyage.
Founded in 1838 in Liverpool, the Pacific Steam Navigation Company was the first to operate steamships in the Pacific and primarily traded from the UK to the Pacific coasts of South America.
The advent of the jet airliner all but killed the liner on the Atlantic route but the ships to Australia survived into the 1970s, not just on the liner trade but also carrying emigrants from the UK and Europe to Australia.
The islands surrounding Scapa Flow made one of Britain's best natural harbours, while the location at the north of Scotland protected the approaches to the North Sea and Atlantic.
Services from mainland Scotland to Orkney and Shetland were, from the dawn of steam navigation right up until 2002, in the hands of the North of Scotland, Orkney & Shetland Shipping Company, known as the North Company, whose predecessors dated back to 1790 and which became part of P&O Ferries in 1975.
Built at the end of the Depression and launched on the weekend of the Munich Crisis, the Queen Elizabeth's maiden voyage was a wartime dash to New York to escape the Luftwaffe's bombs.
In the 1950s, Britain's waterways were still full of commercial traffic and lined with the mills, factories and ports of a then-leading industrial nation.
