Steam Tugs: A Colour Portfolio

by David L . Williams (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $3.27

  Although the great passenger liners such as Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary epitomised the height of luxurious sea travel, they never would have been able to function properly without assistance of the more mundane tug and pilot ships that used to be such a familiar sight in British waters. From the end of the 1950s onwards, the late Kenneth Wightman travelled widely around coastal Britain making a colour record of maritime operations. His unique archive of transparencies, allied to his comprehensive records of the period, reveal a fascinating snapshot of a period when steam tugs were still plentiful and formed an essential part of the marine economy. By the 1960s much of the traditional trade that they served was living on borrowed time to be replaced by jet airliners and container ships, and so the steam tug became increasingly uneconomic, and many of the scenes that Wightman recorded are now but distant memories. Based around some stunning colour photographs, allied to David Williams well-informed and detailed text, the book provides readers with a nostalgic trip back in time, to an era when the country's ports and harbours resounded to the bustle of cargo and passenger ships.