From their heyday in the mid-1800’s to their return in 1976 as "Operation Sail" - the Plymouth to Newport race celebrating America’s bicentennial - tall ships have been a source of fascination. Now Kathryn Lasky and Christopher Knight capture the action, the color, the flavor of life aboard those hardy vessels that sailed to the other side of the world and back.. "They had only the wind," writes Kathryn Lasky, "and the skill of men who knew the waays of the sea."
Sailing recently aboard the barkentine Regina Maris, one of the most authentic tall ships afloat, Christopher Knight took extraodinary photographs to show the day-to-day operation of the ship. These combined with periond illustrations to enrich Kathryn Lasky’s compelling narrative.
To read Tall Ships is to know how it must have been to sail during those days of danger, drudgery, and excitement - to be the ship’s sailmaiker, perhaps, or carpenter, or cook, or the youngest and least experienced man on board, the apprentice seamean identified in the ships’ records as simply "boy".