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Mellefont, Jeffrey --- "Book Review: Ships worldwide - What ship is that?" [2008] MarStudies 6; (2008) 158 Maritime Studies 29

• BOOK REVIEWS
• Ships worldwide – What ship is that?

BOOK REVIEWS

Ship Spotter’s Guide^[1]

Ships worldwide – What ship is that? by Robert Fildes. Shipsworldwide Pty Ltd, Sydney 2007. Hardcover, colour illustrations, 205 pages. $79.50 (Members $71.95); CD $35/$31.50 at The Store.

When author Bob Fildes walked in with his brand-new, self-published, self-designed-and-laid-out hardcover emitting that glorious, fresh-off-the-printing-press smell, my first thought was, ‘Now where have I seen something like this before?’ The answer took a moment to percolate as I leafed through the neatly laid out pages of colour-postcard ship mugshots with their neat, concise descriptions.

The answer was, in fact, ‘Nowhere!’ What had initially tickled my memory cells were half-recalled books from childhood five decades ago, of the ‘Boys Book of Ships and the Sea’ genre. But those were simple black, white and grey collations of drawings or muddy photographic half-tones, pulled together by children’s editors rather than marine authorities. I can’t recall a ship-spotters guide quite like this one – global in scope, with virtually every one of hundreds of photos taken by the indefatigable Mr Fildes himself during a lifelong fascination with shipping (including a stint as editor of Australian Sea Heritage, the long-established ship-lover’s journal of Sydney Heritage Fleet).

It’s a book that answers shipping questions from the basic – ‘What IS that thing with the four giant igloos, and LNG writ large on side?’ – to the intermediate – ‘How do you tell the difference between a geared and a gearless container ship?’ – and it includes more commercial vessel types than you might have thought possible. Cable layers, bulkers, tankers, tenders, tugs, trawlers, purseiners and pilot boats, surveyors, hopper-dredgers, car carriers, cruise ships and ferries … plus their ensigns and houseflags, markings, numbers and registers. As well there’s a brief reference to the types of sailing rig from skiffs to sail trainers, and a quick guide to naval craft spanning patrol boats to aircraft carriers. All in a book that comes in at a fraction of the tonnage of Jane’s Fighting Ships. It’s available too as a CD, but many will prefer to own this glossy hardcover which the author has issued in a limited, numbered and signed edition of 650.

For some folks there’s a huge fascination – verging at times on fixation – with the artefacts that we, the human race, produce with such ingenuity. It doesn’t strike everyone, but it often strikes hard, producing dedicated train spotters, car buffs, ship afficionados and the like. In this book the fascination extends with no evident bias across the whole spectrum of ships and boats, and it has produced a useful guide for anyone who needs (or would just like) to know one of them from another.

Jeffrey Mellefont

^[1] This book review by Jeffrey Mellefont was first published in SIGNALS magazine (Vol 81) published by the Australian National Maritime Museum. It is reproduced here with permission.