Judging by the ongoing demand for Chatham’s practical manuals, ship modelling is obviously a thriving hobby. This Spring sees the reprinting of two titles which were, in different ways, ground-breaking approaches to the subject. Phil Reed’s Modelling Sailing-Men-of-War uses over 500 photographs of every stage of the modelling process, describing how to build from scratch the 74-gun ship, HMS Majestic. It is now in its third printing and its popularity owes much to the clarity of the photographs and captions which allow the reader to watch a master at work and gain useful insights into the art of model making. Phil is a full-time professional and builds most of his models for the American market, though his latest, Anson’s ship HMS Centurion, was commissioned by a collector in Scotland. He sells most of his superb creations through the American Marine Model Gallery in Salem, and anyone interested in these can find more information on their website, www.shipmodel.com. The second title is Lennarth Petersson’s Rigging Period Ship Models, now coming up for its third reprinting. The author is a highly accomplished illustrator and the book’s unique selling point is its demonstration of all the intricacies of square rig in graphic form – hundreds of clear and comprehensible drawings depict every individual piece of standing and running rigging. For anyone trying to make sense of the complexity of eighteenth-century top hamper, the book is a must, and the sales since its publication in 2000 suggest that the author knows his market. This is to be followed by a new book on fore-and-aft rig which will cover an American schooner privateer, a French lugger, and an English cutter, and will be based on contemporary models which the author has already photographed and sketched. However, he is having to find time for this task alongside the huge project that is his ‘day job’ in Sweden: the visual documentation of all the research relating to the famous Vasa, that sank on her maiden voyage and lay on the bed of the Baltic for 350 years before being discovered in 1956. Lennarth is now the chief illustrator of the massive project of her preservation. Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 128 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com