The Steam Boat Association of Great Britain
Member's Book Stall

Publisher's description

"If SMSL is the Bible, then Reed’s is the Old Testament"
Bill Durham

Back in Print after 96 years!

STEAM YACHTS, TRAWLERS AND LAUNCHES by Thomas Reed & Co., 1904

Reed’s… was the only text published during the steam era specifically about small scale marine steam, eg., yachts, fishing vessels and launches. Other texts were about big ship operation, but Reed’s Guide to the Use and Maintenance of Yacht, Trawler and Launch Engines, Including Deck and Auxiliary Machinery is the sole surviving primary source material on tools, materials, techniques, hulls, boilers, engines, and selection criteria, etc. for small steam vessels.

Tantalizing fragments from it were published in STEAMBOATS & Modern Steam Launches thirty-eight years ago, so it became a hunted rarity, but was available even from libraries or the original publisher’s archives. Finally, two copies were discovered, and this facsimile reprint is finally available to the historian, naval architect, and curator of steam machinery, complete with lines drawings, photos, and plates. It is the handbook for the small paddlewheel and propeller-driven steam vessel.

Reed’s explains a crowning achievement of technology—the successful rendering of big ship steam technology into small boat propulsion—written at the very moment before that technology died. Final chapters introduce internal combustion engines and give technical details from a contemporary perspective of the turbine-driven TURBINIA.

For the public or research library, the curator, or antiquarian, this book is a virtual recipe book for designing and operating small steamboats.

See Reed’s entire Table of Contents at www.steamlaunch.com

Boat House, formerly Elliott Bay Press, is part of Elliott Bay Steam Launch Co., manufacturer of technically and historically correct steam engines, boilers, hulls, plans, propellers, for the builder who wishes to rediscover the Victorian-Era steam launch. Elliott Bay is sharing the best of its research library with this fourth volume of the Elliott Bay Classics series.

Elliott Bay Press
6744 SE 36th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97202

Elliott Bay Classics Series, Vol. IV