I am pleased to be able to offer for sale a fairly nice copy of the final wartime edition of 'Merchant Ships' published in 1944, authored by the famous drawer of Ship Identification silhouettes, Eric C. Talbot-Booth.

As you can see from the images, the spine titles stamp-imprinted in golden gilt are still very clear which will look nice in your book-case. The front boards have some marks and the gold paint carefully added to the front board titles by a previous owner is fading but still highlights the indented wording nicely. By the standards of some 'Merchant Ships' volumes on offer for sale on line, the boards on this one are in pretty good shape! The boards have no decay or wear between the spine, rear and back and are still very firmly held together.

These wartime editions are now very collectable and they ran alongside the Janes Fighting Ships titles of the same period.

The book is unpaginated but a quick glance would suggest around 1000 pages as these early editions were massive tomes designed to assist the crews of Merchant Ships in identifying friend or foe from the bridge, notably when taking part in the Atlantic convoys where many vessels fell foul to German U-boats.

For this reason, editions from this period are often found to be heavily soiled with some page deterioration caused by page-turning of many wet and greasy hands.

However, this copy has pages which are in excellent condition on the whole, just with the very occasional closed tear which has been repaired using a very thin sliver of magic tape. The condition would suggest a copy that never actually went to sea.

The first three pages of adverts have a crease down the middle but the rest are fine. 

The funnel section is in black and white with various shapes and shadings used to indicate certain colours. Please note that four of these pages have been neatly coloured in using crayons in the correct actual colours. An example of one of these is shown in the images.

The ship identification drawings are up to Talbot-Booth's usual high standard and the section covering the world's Merchant Ship fleets is brimming with historical and technical information and a vast number of black and white photos of ships of the period.

The purchaser of this book will have in their hands a superb chronicle of the World's Merchant Shipping from the final years of the Second World War!

Postage to UK addresses is free and the book will be sent by Royal Mail First Class Signed For 'Medium Parcel' service. If you purchase from outside the UK, you will be subject to the normal charges associated with the ebay Global Shipping Program.

Thanks for looking!