Home / Browse / Military & Naval / Britain's Glory: or Ship-Building Unvail'd.
SUTHERLAND, William.
Britain's Glory: or Ship-Building Unvail'd.
Being a General Director, for Building and Completing the said Machines.
Publisher: London: A. Bettesworth, S. Fitzer, E. Midwinter; and D[ryden] L[each], 1729 & 1717
Stock code: 51981
Price: £3,500 Currency Conversion
Second "edition" of the first, & first of the second part. Sutherland had worked for many years as a master carpenter and then inspector and overseer of shipwrights in the naval dockyards at Portsmouth and Deptford. He published at the point where the oral tradition of shipbuilding was, with the expansion of maritime enterprise and the impact of scientific innovation, by necessity passing into print. The importance of this integration of age-old craft skills within the modern scientific design is stressed in his preface: "It's reported, that when Heraclitus's scholars found him in the Tradesman's Shop, into which they were ashamed to enter, he told them, that the Gods were as conversant in such Places as in others. Intimating, that as Divine Power and Wisdom might be discern'd in such common Arts, altho' so much despised: And tho' Manual Exercise and Practice of them are esteemed ignoble, yet the Study of their general Causes and Principles cannot be prejudicial to any other (tho' the most Sacred) Profession." Consequently Sutherland's treatise is a detailed survey of both technical and commercial matters: "Part I goes deeply into sizes and proportions and includes a most valuable sample specification for a new ship; Part II is concerned mainly with the question of prices of labour and materials" (Anderson "Early Books on Shipbuilding and Rigging" in Mariner's Mirror, X, I, 1924). The second part is particularly innovative in analysing the "Value of the Labouring Part in Ship-building; from a Ship of the biggest Magnitude, to a small Boat … shewing the Working of the whole Ship … [and] the Value of every particular Part." This is apparently one of the earliest published systematic costings of such a complex industrial process. The book has a complex publishing history. There were at least two issues of the first part in 1717 with no precedence established, and further editions of that part in 1722 (ESTC has Library Company of Philadelphia only) and this so-called second edition of 1729, in truth a re-issue with new title page; while the second part printed by Dryden Leach, which appears to have been genuinely issued separately, remains a first edition in all copies located. All versions are uncommon.
Folio (336 × 203 mm). Two parts bound in one, the second with a separate title page, The Prices of the Labour in Ship-Building Adjusted: or, the Mystery of Ship-Building Unveiled. Contemporary calf, neatly rebacked, the original spine - gilt in compartments, red morocco label - laid down Folding frontispiece portrait engraved by Vander Gucht of George I surrounded by a roundel formed of his fleet, 6 plates by Sutton Nicholls, numerous illustrations, 2 full-page, diagrams and tables to the text, title page to the first part in red and black. Armorial Lauriston Castle bookplate of Macknight Crawfurd to the front pastedown. Slight rubbed at the extremities, folding frontispiece split, no loss, one plate with small hole, light browning, but a very good copy.
