Military and Naval History Through Alan Moore’s Illustrated Record of Sailing Warships, 1926

Alan Moore

Book

Moore, Alan, Sailing Ships of War 100-1860, 1926, traces the visual and technological history of naval warfare from early sailing vessels through the nineteenth-century transition to steam power. The volume uses engraved, painted, and drawn ship images to document changing forms of maritime military power, with particular value for the study of naval architecture, Royal Navy history, and the representation of warships in British collecting culture. Its emphasis on annotated plates from the A.G.H. MacPherson collection makes the book both an illustrated military reference and a curated record of how naval development was studied in the early twentieth century.

Moore, Alan, Sir. Sailing Ships of War 100-1860 Including The Transition to Steam... With Illustrations From Engravings, Drawings, and Paintings... London: Halton & Truscott Smith, Ltd.; New York: Minton, Balch, and Company, 1926. No. 137 of a limited edition. 78 pages. Mounted color frontispiece, with 90 large illustrated plates, including 11 mounted color plates and one folding plate. Original blue cloth stamped in gilt on upper cover and spine. Large quarto. The plates are individually annotated, pairing visual evidence with historical commentary on ship form, armament, national service, and development across centuries of naval warfare. The introduction analyzes the evolution of naval vessels, the transition to steam, and includes a Royal Navy Admiralty list from 1798 to 1805.

Published after World War I, the volume belongs to an era of renewed attention to naval history, technological change, and Britain’s maritime military past. Its long chronological scope places wooden sailing warships, early modern fleets, and steam transition within a single visual narrative of naval power. Near fine. A substantial limited-edition military reference preserving illustrated evidence of warship design and the historical memory of naval warfare before modern mechanized fleets.

Item #17286

Price: $450.00