The Naval Annual: 1894

I am very fortunate to have an original copy of Lord Brassey's book The Naval Annual for 1894. The only thing about it that is not original is that my copy has a new spine.

I purchased the book in somewhat better times so that I would have a resource for Chinese ships for the Sino-Japanese War. It has some really good drawings (as well as some really drawings are sort of diagrammatic, not to any scale).

The best drawings seem to be taken from original blueprints. The worst are childish sketches.

The cool thing about early copies of The Naval Annual is the text. While there is much good ship data, often beyond anything you might find in modern reference books, there is some that is unreliable, as well.

This was in a period when essentially ALL data was published. This lasted until the early 1900's when the navies became security conscious. In the British case, ship capabilities were exaggerated after 1905.