Last of the Windjammers, The. 2 vols. with Illustrations and Plans

TWO VOLUMES COMPLETE. Originally v.1. 1927; v.2. 1929. I: pp. xiv, 518; II: xv, 448. Fold out diagrams, plates, etc. (Some top shelf-wear to top of Vol. II jacket, otherwise FINE.)
“This book was planned to take in every sailing ship of any note from the year of the opening of the Suez Canal [1869] to the present day [1927], but in practice vessels of a very much earlier date have been included especially when sketching the earlier history of shipping firms. Volume I is divided into 3 parts. The first deals with the life and personnel in sail, with a chapter on the history of Cape Horn. Part II is devoted to the vessels in the big sailing ship trades, such as the jute clippers and grain carriers. Part III is devoted entirely to the small fry- Swansea-copper-ore-men, clipper barques in the South and West African trades, intercolonial and south Sea traders, fruit schooners and fish carriers. The illustrations and plans, which are numerous, have been carefully selected and are intended to provide a pictorial record of the last seventy years of the now almost extinct windjammer.”
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A windjammer is a commercial sailing ship with multiple masts that may be either square rigged or fore-and-aft rigged or a combination of the two. The informal term arose during the transition from the Age of Sail to the Age of Steam.
The word “windjammer” has a variety of associations, both nautical and not. In the late 19th century the term was pejorative, as used by sailors aboard steamships.[1]

In 1892, Rudder Magazine said in a story, “The deck hands on the liners contemptuously refer to [sailing vessels] as ‘wind-jammers’.”[1] In 1917, the American Dialect Society recorded residents of the U.S. state of Maine referring to fore-and-aft sailing vessels as “windjammers” in a list of regional word usages.[2] The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea calls windjammer “a non-nautical name by which square-rigged sailing ships are sometimes known”.[3] The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military calls windjammer “a merchant sailing ship”.[4] Note: Two very heavy volumes, which will definitely incur additional postage costs if ordered via Abebooks or from overseas.