The Tudor Warship Mary Rose (Anatomy of the Ship)

"Anatomy of the Ship" has long been one of my favorite book series, and I was quite pleasantly surprised to learn that the first new "Anatomy" in ten years was in the works. This book was originally intended for publication in 2008, but something must have fallen by the wayside. I was awfully disappointed in the "Bismarck" and "Constitution" anatomies, and was hoping that this book might breathe some new life into the series.How is it? I'd say "pretty good" on the whole. It's not as extraordinarily detailed as some of the better "Anatomies," but it's a step above many of the weaker ones. The inside of the front and back covers are put to good use, presenting fold-out interior and exterior profiles of the hull, and two very nice paintings by Geoff Hunt. The biggest formatting change is the consolidation of the Introduction and Photographs chapters, reducing the amount of cross-referencing required compared with the other anatomies. "The Tudor Warship Mary Rose" contains a great deal more photographs and period artworks of the ship than earlier anatomies, including a large number of photographs of artifacts recovered from the wreck. The quality of the drawings ranges from exceptional to decent. The section on hull construction is probably the most detailed, right down to exploded views of gunport construction, cross-sections of a summercastle knighthead, and structural plans of each deck. Throughout the book are other examples of close-up details, including the lacing of bonnets to the mainsails, the rigging of the masthead of the ship's boat, and three-view drawings of nine types of rigging blocks. The final chapter even includes a set of plans depicting the remains of the ship as currently seen on display in Portsmouth, England.As exciting as it may be to finally have a brand new "Anatomy," some of the plans are rather bleak looking and lack drawing keys. The plans of the standing and running rigging are probably this book's low point, consisting entirely of three unlabeled 1/192 scale profile views of the ship. The drawings of the ship's guns are very nicely done, but again, not a single one is labeled. I know that any seasoned maritime enthusiast should be able to identify parts of a ship's guns and rigging without any hand-holding, but I can't figure out why so many plans in this book are either completely unlabeled, or rather sparsely so.Although some of the omissions are rather frustrating, I'm happy to see one more book in this series. Doug McElvogue is the former Senior Research Fellow & Archaeologist of the Mary Rose Trust, so I'd imagine that these plans constitute an exceptionally accurate rendition of how the ship appeared in 1545. In fairness, I wish I could give this book 3 1/2 stars. As an "Anatomy," this is somewhat of a middle tier title. However, there's enough interesting supporting material here to bump up my rating from three to four stars.

I do love the Anatomy of the Ship series. This is the first I've gotten in Kindle format, and I'm reasonably happy with the display of the drawings. That being said, I do wish that there were more drawings and greater detail in this volume. I understand the difficulty in preparing material for the remains of a hull with little in the way of other documentation, but there was considerable material among the artifacts recovered that would have been of interest to the modeler. I did appreciate the detail provided, such as the drawing of the longbow. Overall, very nice while not among the very best that Conway has produced.

Must have

Great book love it good for research

I have just received the book "Tudor Warship MARY ROSE" . Thank you very much! At a first glance I can say this is very nice book unfortunately some of the drawings have been 'cut' while assembling the pages. However I hope I shall be able to pull it out for a better look.Galland5

Zeer leerrijk boek, visueel zeer mooi

nicht nur für Modellbauer sehr informativ.

Si estas interesado en la historia de las marinas europeas de esta época, es un libro fundamental.Muy interesante y bien documentado.Gráficos de primera calidad.