General Description: Pictorial History with the only text consisting of captions accompanying the photos.

The Book: This book covers a lot of material in a small amount of space. It has a total of 112 pages and has one photo per page. The captions give a general description and relevant information pertaining to the ship pictured. The ships covered include Aircraft Carriers, Battleships & Battlecruisers, Cruisers & Fast Minelayers, Destroyers, Escort Vessels & Minesweepers, Submarines, Depot, Repair, and Maintenance Ships, and Miscellaneous. Needless to say there is no way one volume could contain a picture of every vessel used by the Royal Navy. On the other hand, I was quite surprised at the variety offered.

I can't list all the pictures in the book, but I need to give you some idea of what is in it. Let me say that these are not the "standard" pictures we have all seen a hundred times. These pictures are from the collection of Sydney Goodman, with captions by Ben Warlow. You get pictures of:

Anson, Malaya, Ramilles (BB's); Avenger, Indefatigable, Tracker (CV's); Ariadne, Delhi, Dido, Trinidad, (CA/CL's); Caesar, Jervis, Mistral, Onslow, Wolverine (DD's); Foxtrot, Gardenia, Rattlesnake (Escorts & Sweepers), Shalimar, Sokol, Strongbow, Torbay (Sub's); Adamant, Hecla (Repair/Maint.); and Abercrombie, Erebus Menelaus, Olna, Westlyn (Misc). Remember, this is just a few of the ships depicted in the book. I counted a total of 111 photos!

As I stated earlier, 1 photo per page.

Summary: I found this to be a very useful book as a lot of the photos are very clear and useful for finding details. The photos are also quite useful for determining camouflage patterns worn by the ships. Again, this is due to the clarity of the photos.