[Sailor Steve]

The Heyday of Sail - volume 4 in Conway's History of the Ship series.
Volume 1 was about the development of the first boats into ships, ending with the Viking Longships.
Volume 2 covered the Mediterranean Galley, from the ancient Phoenicians all the way to the gun-armed Galleasses of the Renaissance.
Volume 3 talked about the development of the merchant/warship, from the British Cog through the Spanish Caravel and Galleon.
Volume 4 covers the development of the Galleon into the sailing warships of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Volume 5 gives the same treatment to the sailing merchant, from 1650 through 1830. As always, individual articles are written by the leading experts in the field, with plenty of charts, graphs, period drawings and paintings. It compares the British and Dutch East Indiamen, the Dutch Fluyt and the development of Mediterranean shipping during the period.

It is lacking in the area of Asian shipping at the time. The authors are aware of this and apologize in advance for not having included this important aspect of ship development.

That aside, the book is a fine follow-on to the first four volumes, and to someone like me well worth reading. If you're looking for sea stories or exciting adventure, skip it. These are basically good reference volumes and valued for explaining what different ship-builders and shipping companies were thinking at the time, and how this affected where and how ships were built and used during the period of the sailing merchant ship.