“Warships and Naval Battles of the Civil War” By Tony Gibbons. Gallery Books, 1989. ISBN 0-8317-9301-5 176 pages; illustrated with over 250 full-color illustrations By Ward Shrake

I can still vividly remember a day in grade school, when I was flipping through a small catalog of Scholastic Books our teacher had passed out, to encourage the class to use and improve their reading skills. I saw the cover of a small book about World War I aircraft. It had a painting of a dogfight between brightly-painted, multi-winged aircraft. I was stunned. Intrigued. Totally amazed that such crazy-looking vehicular designs were ever dreamed up, in a fictional sense – let alone that they once really existed, and were common enough to have filled the skies! I bought the book, and wasn’t disappointed. (I soon built more than my fair share of inexpensive 1/72 scale biplane models, too!)

I had much the same reaction to this book. I had no idea that so many wild, crazy-looking inventions were tried out, in just a few years. Looking at the illustrations, it’s hard to believe that even imaginative authors or artists could dream such things up.

On the one hand, these vessels make perfectly plausible mechanical sense: the technology was all based on relatively simple concepts. On the other, these ships and boats just look so darned impossible. Truth, as they say, is often stranger than fiction.

The book’s jacket claims there are over 250 (full color) illustrations. I don’t doubt it. Nor do I doubt the claim that the author spent more than 30 years researching the various nautical subjects he talks about, and illustrated.

Do I think the book is perfect? No, I don’t. But I think it was well worth the handful of dollars I spent to obtain one, in good used condition, on Amazon dot com.

The two nits I’d pick about the book are that the illustrations don’t necessarily pass a self-consistency test; and in places, the research appears to be out-of-date.

The latter, I think, is easily forgivable: I just don’t take it all as absolute gospel. As a starting point, there’s more than enough value here to make purchasing a copy of the book worthwhile; and then some. (The state of research into some areas – submarines, especially – is advancing pretty rapidly, due to the efforts of folks like Mark Ragan.) I don’t think the book’s research is bad, mind you: I just think it’s typical of years past.

What I mean about the illustrations is that, orthographically speaking, what’s stated in one view won’t necessarily match up well, in another view of the same craft. So, you will have to be aware of that, and correct for it as best you can if you’re treating the images as blueprints for scratch-built scale modeling efforts. Still, cool-looking scale models can be built from these illustrations. Jim Gordon has an interesting web page up, showing five 1/600 scale models he built, using this book as a primary reference.

I originally bought this book, mostly to see what it said about the CSS Manassas. While I was a bit disappointed, there – the state of research into that boat, in my opinion, still needs some serious work: even today! – I’m still quite glad I bought this book. There is more than enough inspiration here, for folks who love unusual vehicular subjects; or just love to see cool shapes and colors, and evidence of lateral (outside the box) thinking.

Highly recommended. Thanks to my wallet for the review sample.