Helpful Reference

Before leaving Singapore I was lucky to stumble across a very helpful paperback: The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, edited by I.C.B. Dear and Peter Kemp, ISBN: 978-0-19-920568-4. In addition to being a first class reference book with all the expected definitions and illustrations of shipboard equipment, it's also filled with many biographies of interesting explorers and navigators plus histories of famous ships and accounts of many overlooked nautical events. It's very well cross-referenced and indexed and it's provided me with a great many hours of enjoyable and educational reading. It's been a terrific adjunct to the first-hand information the officers and crew have so generously shared.