Tugboats Illustrated: History, Technology, Seamanship

I got this used. Great seller! The book is very informative. It has lots of pictures and very detailed drawings. There is so much information in the book. It even has a couple of female tugboat captains! Yay!I am very pleased with this purchase.

If you're into tugboats then this is the book for you!! Beautiful illustrations, gorgeous pictures of tugs and clear, detailed explanations of everything you'll ever need to know about tugboats and how they are used. I've bought many, many books on tugs and towing......but this one surpasses all the others.....

A wonderful book, packed with great technical information and beautiful illustrations and photos. Highly recommend for anyone who loves boats or has watched tugs at work and wanted to know more. (Dan K)

When I went through the book on arrival a couple of weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised. Aha! A good buy.I've spent several hours a day in it since then, and my approval rating went up with every page. It is great !I have a lifetime interest in ships and the sea.TUGBOATS ILLUSTRATED is the best I've ever seen for the excellent illustrations of hull designs, machinery and equipment;the photo selections that really capture the beauty, the spirit and the grit of tugboat life;and the story lines and captions that are terse, descriptive and complete.

Most of the maritime reference books I purchase tend to be rather dry, serious, or encyclopedic tomes, and therefore easy to categorize. "Tugboats Illustrated" is a book that defies easy categorization. It's difficult to pin down what genre it falls into, what age group it's aimed at, and whether or not it will satisfy serious, uptight readers. After all, it's a large format coffee table book, with large colorful illustrations more in the style of Stephen Biesty than a serious maritime reference book, that covers complex subjects like cycloidal propellers, barge-handling techniques, and fluid couplings. At 148 pages, it's rather short, but it nonetheless surprisingly thorough and in-depth. It starts off rather shaky but gets deeper and more fascinating as it goes along, going all the way back to the first steam-powered and sternwheeler tugs, all the way to today's sophisticated, ship-sized, ocean-going tugs. Along the way, it covers subjects as varied as hull and machinery design, line handling, the roles of different crewmembers, maneuvering different types of ships in harbor, canal work, types of chains and hawsers, and salvaging ships which have run aground.Although it's not (some of the descriptions of modern-day machinery and deck equipment is rather vague, and the introductory chapter on tugboat aesthetics is slightly off in tone compared to the rest of the book), "Tugboats Illustrated" nonetheless offers a lot to love, and I have to applaud Paul Farrell for introducing the subject to a wider audience. Although there's quite a few books on modern tugs available, none of them are quite as broad or accessible as this one. Once I got past the slightly oddball presentation, I found myself eagerly reading all of the photo captions and studying all of the diagrams in detail.

I have been hoping for a book such as this for years. With the notable exception of On the Hawser, most books about tugs focus on the UK and Europe. But this gem of a book is about tugs in the US as well as elsewhere. As an introduction to the tug boat industry it is about perfect. Lots of photos, lots of details on the mechanical aspects of the modern boat, information about the historical development of tugs. The book presents how the design of a contemporary tug is a logical step as operators try to increase efficiency but letting the functional purpose of the tug dectate the design. I highly recommend it, particularly for young people (I am only 77 years young} who are curious, as many of us are, about the tugboat.

If you like DK (Dorling Kindersley) education and history type of books, you will enjoy this great book on Tugboats.

What a wonderful work of love. The pictures and drawings are great. the text is clear and easy to understand. A wonderful resource to study the shipping industry. Many good resources are shared for us to explore. I thought the pictures of the men working on the OSV's were great because they show the immensity and scale of man against nature.