Winter's Guide to Warships 1890 - by Dimitry Malkov (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book provides a detailed and original guide to every ship in the world's naval fleets from 1858 to 1890, including ship classes, construction, and armament.

Book Synopsis

Volume 1 comprises 303 full-color, premium paper pages including specifications for 1220 ships with 36 maps, 338 photos, and 442 ship plans, documenting the navies of fourteen nations including Britain and her colonies, Italy, Turkey, Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Chile, Greece, Uruguay, Siam, Mexico and San Domingo.

Embark on a journey through time with Dimitry Malkov's breathtaking documentation of the world's naval fleets in the Victorian era from 1858 to 1890. With his meticulous research and expert insights, Malkov brings to life the ships that ruled the seas during the Gilded Age. Featuring stunning ship plans and detailed information on construction and armament, this two-volume masterpiece is an essential reference for history buffs and lovers of naval warfare. From Britain to San Domingo, from torpedo boats to submarines, from cutters to pre-dreadnoughts, this comprehensive guide covers every ship in every navy. Volume 2 will contain information on nineteen fleets, including France, Russia, Germany, and the United States.

The fleets are presented in order of importance by descending total displacement. Each national fleet section is divided into subsections, including national shipbuilding, ship recognition, ship alphabet indexes, naval guns, and pages dedicated to specific ship types. The book provides a wealth of information on the world's naval fleets, including ship plans, photos, and maps. In addition to technical specifications and armaments, the book also includes a naval trend analysis for the years preceding 1890, examining ship classes and construction rates. The author discusses the evolution of the naval design concept from the Age of Sail to the Age of Steel, and how different countries approached armored capital ship design. The book also provides a detailed overview of the different types of ships, including battleships, cruisers, gunboats, and auxiliaries, and their construction rates over the years.

The author spent 30 years creating a database of over 65,000 warships from 1858 to present and used CAD/CAM software to create detailed images of each and every ship of every nation and every class. The author's expertise in naval history and ship design is evident throughout the work. With its exhaustive collection of hundreds of period photographs, original drawings, and ship specifications, Winter's Guide is a worthy complement and homage to beloved naval reference works such as Jane's Fighting Ships and Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships.

Review Quotes

This was a MUST have, especially after the favorable book review in the latest March issue of WARSHIP INTERNATIONAL. LOTS of color. Covers the UK, Italy and most smaller powers. The gun arcs shown are a bit too much - there is no way HMS Inflexible is going to fire directly to the stern or bow unless it MUST as it would kill sailors and damage the ship from the blast.--Jack W. Greene, wargame designer (Jutland) and historian

[T]he book provides a uniquely quick and effective means of conferring information to the reader, much of which will be newly understood. With so many ships to be covered, inevitably the physical presentation has to be constrained to fit in practical book form. The book is produced in landscape format, like the old Jane's, but in somewhat smaller size-the cover boards being about 11.25 inches across by about 8.75 inches tall. Ships' data and illustrations appear in a standard format, divided between major units each given a half-page of space (upright) and lesser units given a third of a page. Overall, Winter's Guide is a refreshing new look at the navies of the late transitional era, providing a great deal of standardized, reliable, and insightful information on a previously obscure era. [Comparing this book with the main alternatives, Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905 and Jane's Fighting Ships] ... Conway now is well out of date in the reliability and completeness of data that is possible, and Janes didn't exist in 1890, and not in its classic form until about 1900, and also suffers in reliability because of its limited access to contemporary official data. As he intended, the author has taken a carefully considered place seeking to split the difference among the competing paradigms in content design.--Christopher Wright, Ship's Library, Warship International, March 2024