The Story of Sail; Veres László & Richard Woodman; Chatham Publishing, 1999; ISBN 1-86176-075-2; £35.00; CA 15632

Veres László is a technical illustrator with a passion for sailing ships. After a day spent producing medical and technical illustrations, he seeks relaxation in finely detailed drawings depicting the history of sailing ships from the earliest times. When a huge parcel of his work landed on Robert Gardiner’s desk at Chatham publishing, Richard Woodman was commissioned to arrange the drawings into a logical sequence, provide captions and suggest gaps that might be filled with further illustrations from László’s drawing board in Hungary. The result, reproducing more than 1000 images, is a feast for the eye and the imagination. The exquisite drawings chronicle man’s endless quest for improved efficiency under sail, while Woodman’s lucid captions explain the technical significance of such innovations as the bilander and split-lateen rigs and Seppings’ diagonal framing.

Beginning well before the Christian era, this survey is worldwide in its scope, and extends to the latest computer-controlled rigs in modern cruise ships. Scales for each drawing are helpfully included, as are all the artist’s sources listed in a comprehensive bibliography. I found but one mistake: the 1926 handbook “The Sailing Ship; 6000 Years of History” should be listed under “Anderson” not under “Romola”, the first name of the joint author’s wife.

Although less colourful than Landstrõm’s revered “The Ship” of 1961, this volume is nevertheless much wider in its scope, embracing ugly but interesting vessels such as the extraordinary rectangular sailing rafts extemporised by sailors defending British interests in Canada in 1776, and “once only” sailing vessels assembled a century later simply to convey large volumes of cheap Canadian timber across the Atlantic to shipyards in Britain before themselves being dismantled for their scantlings.

Yachts are extensively covered, as are the boats of men-of-war that so frequently escape the attentions of naval historians. Richard Woodman is already well-known to British readers for his mastery of maritime history. This concise but scholarly pictorial survey justifies a similar reputation for Veres László as an illustrator of more than 1000 types of sailing vessel. - JCR

Page prepared 26 January 2000

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