Treaty Cruisers: The First International Warship Building Co

[maxim]

Does somebody know this book?

Treaty Cruisers: The First International Warship Building Competition
Link

[Laurence Batchelor]

Yes I'm reading it at the moment, I'm upto the section on French Treaty Cruisers and so far I've found numerous errors in the text!!!

For example this book incorrectly mentions that HMS York was involved in the Battle of the River Plate (Graf Spee action) rather than HMS Exeter which it should have read!

There are also quite a few spelling errors also so it seems the book was either rushed to the publishers or was very poorley proof read!

Anything else you wish to know about, just let me know.

Regards
Laurence

[TTTTTTTTTT]

For example this book incorrectly mentions that HMS York was involved in the Battle of the River Plate (Graf Spee action) rather than HMS Exeter which it should have read!

Eesh, that's terrible! Thanks for the warning, Laurence. Is the book well illustrated, with photos, drawings and plans? That might compensate for bad information in the text, to an extent.

Thanks,
Ted

[maxim]

Eesh, that's terrible! Thanks for the warning, Laurence. Is the book well illustrated, with photos, drawings and plans? That might compensate for bad information in the text, to an extent.

Thank you also for the warning. I would be also interessted, if this book has any advantage or would it be better to ignore it?

[Laurence Batchelor]

As I expected the author talks plenty about the Royal Navy and the naval limitation conference in general, but doesnt cover in the same depth the other navies warships programs and difficulties they had to overcome.

Don't get me wrong he still covers all the major classes of warships for each country but he skims over the other nations probably beacuse he's british and he knows most about this country's policies.

In terms of plans there isnt any detailed ones, there is a few line drawings of the ships in profile but they are so small they lack detail and they are rather sporadic i.e. one for each class at least would have helped!.

Photograph wise there are a reasonable amount, but nothing you have not seen before elsewhere. As the book is only A5 in size they are usually half page at best and mostely are taken in peacetime.

Also one thing I noticed is a general trend in warship books nowadays, the author tries to use no photographs from the Imperial War Museum, obviously beacuse they charge stupid amounts for reproduction rights. Which is kind of a shame as they hold all the official MOD stuff as well as many rare donated shots and in my opinion this book would have been better if he actually showed you how the County class, for example, was upgraded via photographs showing how the treaty limitations of 10,000tons were a serve obstacle to producing a balanced warship design.

Most of the important detail to us modellers is thus only in text format in this book and as you have probably read above this book seriously needed proper proof reading!

Regards
Laurence

[TTTTTTTTTT]

Also one thing I noticed is a general trend in warship books nowadays, the author tries to use no photographs from the Imperial War Museum, obviously beacuse they charge stupid amounts for reproduction rights. Which is kind of a shame as they hold all the official MOD stuff as well as many rare donated shots and in my opinion this book would have been better if he actually showed you how the County class, for example, was upgraded via photographs showing how the treaty limitations of 10,000tons were a serve obstacle to producing a balanced warship design.

I've noticed this too. In one book, Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870-1881, all the photographs are from the U.S. Naval Institute! Something is wrong with this system that discourages the fair use, in scholarly works, of taxpayer-funded photographs.
Perhaps your MP could be of assistance, Laurence?

[Laurence Batchelor]

Ted MP's tend to bugger all!

I've spoke to staff at the Imperial War Musuem before about their stupidly high charges for reproduction rights, but I think they are privately funded and thus that is why they are very expensive, as you can imagine they didnt take kindly to my comments!.

Also as they are London based, I believe their overheads are high which shows in the many documentary's they have just released onto DVD all at the high price of �15.99 each!

Laurence