BookPick: Conquest of the Ocean
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Brian Lavery certainly brings impeccable credentials to this work having held posts at Chatham Historic Dockyard and the National Maritime Museum, where he is currently a Curator Emeritus.
He has the ability to both focus in tightly on a subject and also tackle subjects with a very broad canvas. It’s the latter that his latest book The Conquest of the Ocean deals with. It’s no mean feat to take 5000 years of seafaring history and do it justice in some 400 pages but this is just what Lavery has accomplished.
Lavery brings the book to life with excerpts from first person narratives, diaries and logbooks. The illustrations in this book are also first-rate – paintings, early maps, sketches and modern photography.
The Conquest of the Ocean is a fascinating narrative of a subject dear to my heart.
Julian Stockwin 