Online Catalogue last updated 15th of September 2008
Back in print after 96 years! The full title is Reed's Guide to the Use and Management of Yacht, Trawler & Launch Engines, Including Deck and Auxiliary Machinery. This was the only text published specifically about small scale marine steam. Big ship operation texts are plentiful, but Reed's ... is the sole surviving primary source on tools, materials, techniques, hulls, boilers, engines, pumps, selection criteria, etc. for small steam vessels.
Tantalizing fragments from Reed's ... were published in Steamboats & Modern Steam Launches thirty-eight years ago, with the result that the book became a hunted rarity, not available from libraries nor the original publisher's archives. Finally, two copies were discovered making this facsimile reprint possible. Complete with photos, line drawings, and foldout plates, Reed's ... is an historical gem and a virtual recipe book for designing and operating small paddle wheels and propeller driven steam boats.
In engineers' language steeped in coal smoke, iron, sweating men working at low wages, and the demand of empire, Reed's ... portrays a crowning achievement of technology - the successful rendering if big ship steam technology into small boat propulsion - at the very moment before that technology died. Written from the historical context, final chapters introduce internal combustion engines and give technical details of the first turbine drive vessels.
Code No. 009419, 362 pages, ISBN 0964120461, $155.00