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End of Voyages by Michael Stammers Boats and Shipwrecks of Ireland by Colin Breen and Wes Forsythe
End of Voyages by Michael Stammers Boats and Shipwrecks of Ireland by Colin Breen and Wes Forsythe
Few of us will have thought much about what author Michael Stammers calls the 'afterlife' of ships in his book End Of Voyages. But he has, and the result is the first book to tackle the question: what happens to a ship when it is no longer needed for its original purpose?
He has travelled widely to discover ships which have been in accidents; others left to rot; others broken up for scrap; those that have been preserved as historic; and others converted to new lives as floating warehouses, hotels, training ships or even prison hulks (or more modern floating prisons).
Heavily illustrated and well written, this is a fascinating wander though the shipping of the past 2000 years. Divers will keep bumping into names of vessels they know well, as well as many they don't.
Another good read from Tempus is Boats and Shipwrecks of Ireland by Colin Breen and Wes Forsythe, though you might be put off by the back-cover description of it as a 'broad introduction to the archaeology of vessels in these waters by reviewing the types of evidence available and presenting a survey of past work in this field'.
Don't be alarmed. It's true that there are some crashingly boring writers among maritime archaeologists, but Colin and Wes, both divers, are not among them. They work at the Centre for Coastal and Marine Research at the University of Ulster and have produced an excellent, well-pictured book that all wreck-divers should enjoy.
Kendall McDonald
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End of Voyages by Michael Stammers (Tempus Publishing, ISBN: 075242999X). Softback,189pp, £17.99.
Boats and Shipwrecks of Ireland by Colin Breen and Wes Forsythe (Tempus Publishing, ISBN: 0752431226). Softback, 192pp,£17.99.
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