ReviewsTo add a review of the 20th Century Ships, email info@ayrshirescotland.com. Brown, Son & Ferguson, LTD As noted in the Brown, Son & Ferguson Nautical
Magazine (their monthly magazine): One question is, could the reader or viewer obtain as much material from a new book at the price marked. Doubtful. CDs, the World Wide Web, the video and the DVD are here to stay, and surely have a place on the expert's and enthusiasts' shelves alongside the book, the journal, the folio of pictures, and other tangible items of reference and research. Ross's work is a good example of the medium of the CD for imparting information. Review April 2005. Henrik Ljungström '20th Century Ships' is a very good achievement, making for a very nice collection of ship biographies and photographs. It should be noted that this review has only been written regarding the passenger ship section of the e-book, since I consider this to be the only field in which I am somewhat qualified to make a judgment. To begin with, the e-book's main menu is quite well organized. A nice touch would have been if the menus were a bit more dynamic, so that the reader could choose different ways in which to list the content, e.g. by name, year of construction or perhaps even owner. However, knowing how limited HTML code is, this is a rather unfair request. Some sort of search function would not have been too difficult to implement, though, and I think it would be a useful tool when using the e-book for quick reference. As it stands, the menus provide a good starting point, and shouldn't cause too much confusion. A very nice touch is the introduction section of the e-book; it's first chapter, if you will. Not only does it go through the history of 19th and 20th century shipping in short, but it also explains a few technical details - such as definitions of ship tonnage, different abbreviations, engine power etc - that the reader might benefit from during continued reading. This is something that I think is lacking in other publications. The ship biographies themselves are well laid-out and presented in both words and photographs. Each ship's technical details are listed, followed by a text describing her career along with one or several photographs. The photographic material is of a high standard, although sometimes one misses the possibility of enlarging the pictures. Higher resolution would mean that the reader could really examine the ships up close; not to mention the option of placing your favorite ship as a desktop background on your computer. There are a few details that annoyes me. The misspelling of the ship 'Justicia' (originally 'Statendam II') as 'Justica' is striking, but my main opposition is against the use of Arabic numerals where Roman numerals should be used. For instance, the Arabic designation 11 does not equal the Roman II! Whereas the former means 'eleven', the latter means 'two'. It has always been common practice to use Roman numerals when ordering ships (with a few exceptions), and it becomes quite apparent when one can come across a ship listed as 'Britannic 111'. Certainly, it would seem improbable that the White Star Line had as many as onehundred-and-eleven different Britannics during its history... Similarly, I doubt the world would have survived a 'World War 11'. Two world wars were quite enough; we don't need nine more. Then again, these errors would have been far more devastating had this been published as a regular book, on paper. Hopefully, they can be rectified with little effort before the next download! To sum things up, '20th Century Ships' makes for a
nice publication. It
may be more useful as a work of reference rather than
something to read
in one stretch (spending that much time in front of the
computer may be
bad for both eyes and back), but as such I think it does
quite well. At
a very reasonable cost, it does give a lot of material
for your money! |