Brian Stafford's "The Great Windships: How Sailing Ships made the Modern World" is a great read drawing you in from its Foreword describing the 1938 voyage of the four masted barque 'Moshulu' from London to South Australia to load a cargo wheat, and then her return to Britain via Cape Horn with her precious cargo.
This vibrant description leads into a comprehensive treatise about sailing ships, how they work, the environment they work in, all written in a clear readable way with technical terms simply defined and explained. It describes their use in trade, exploration and discovery, and the opening up of trade routes cross the globe and the associated histories. It provides us with a comprehensive view of the world from a principally western perspective although we are given a tantalising look at the voyages of Zheng He between 1405 - 1431 during the Ming dynasty in China.
In the "age of exploration" Portuguese tentative steps in ocean exploration led to rounding of the Cape of Good Hope and eventually to India and the Spice islands. Stafford puts this into the perspective of the political and economic environment of the day. It is followed by the history and analysis of the Spanish, Dutch, English and French voyaging.
The "age of exploitation" provides us with an analysis of trade supported by the sailing ship as the principal mode of transport across the world. We learn of the slave trade, later opium trade and how those trades affected the design of ships. The book examines the great trading companies and their influence on ship design, and later, how improvements in speed and reliability in sailing ships led to regular services making commercial mail and passenger services possible.
All in all this book is a thorough history of the development of the wind driven sailing ship from early craft on protected waterways through voyaging overnight and longer trips and through to open ocean voyaging and the development of the great sailing ships culminating in those built in the late nineteenth century and sailing commercially into the early part of the twentieth century, until their demise brought about by commercial shipping being driven by engines, initially steam from coal then oil and onto electric from diesel generators.
Stafford's analysis of the broader environment within which sailing ships operated, both economically and politically, for each of the periods covered over the two millenia for which sailing ships provided the principal mode of seaborne transport is in my view its key strength. In this book he has provided a thorough 'Table of Contents' (7 pages), 'List of Illustrations' (3 pages), a 'Select Bibliography' (4 pages) and an 'Index' (15 pages). It is a masterful work.
Graeme Dennett
16 August 2026
