An excellent title providing all readers with quite absorbing look at the life on aboard the sailing ships of the past times, namely those plying the North Atlantic area during the French colonial era. Gilles Proux, the author of this brilliant volume, has mainly been focusing on the first half of the XVIII century and the historical period including the Seven Years' War, analyzing four main aspects of the crossing, namely the maritime shipping traffic and the outfitting of the ships, people of these times together with their occupations, the Atlantic course and ship navigation, and life aboard the vessels.

Combined together, they all making a truly fascinating picture of the sea life. When preparing this publication, the author has used the official correspondence between the Canadian authorities and the Minister of marine, plus the valuable historical documents that have been seized on the ships, personal diaries of the seamen and official log-books, in order to get all required details on the shipboard experience.

In addition to that, numerous photographic images have been included in the volume to better illustrate that exciting period in the history of Canada. The content of this perfectly compiled volume will be very highly rated by all people interesting in the subject.

We understand that all ship managers are under pressure which is constantly increasing. The charter rates are coming down due to the overcapacities in the market of today. This makes the operators fight for the cargo and reduce the fuel cost which is one of the main blocks.

It appears that the ship operators have to sit somewhere in the middle and face the necessity to gain the management contracts while trying to maintain reasonable fees. However, the requirements on liability of the ships are also to be taken into consideration as necessary. We wish to invite our reader, industry professionals and anyone interested in the shipping industry to check these best practice against their operations and get some new and fresh ideas of the potential improvement areas.

The publication comprises different approaches, business models and procedures that are in use by ship managers in order to make their business safer, more efficient and more friendly to the environment. First chapter of the book provides a management view on the best practice; the following chapters are focusing on the best practice in crewing, technical and financial management, quality and safety management, and procurement. The methodology and the importance of ICT have also been highlighted in this booklet. 

Incidents happening at the time of cargo handling are deservedly l being identified as the root cause of numerous injuries to people - they happen every year despite very strict industry approved packing and handling guidelines put in place. Ten years ago an incident took place which resulted in a crew man being crushed by a choke valve when it fell out of a container.

In the course of the investigation it emerged that there was a huge need for commonality of working practices/standards to eliminate the risk to all personnel in the supply chain from cargo handling incidents. All parties must recognise that they have a legal responsibility to protect all staff working within the supply chain as well as members of the general public, that includes but is not limited to vendors and service companies, haulage contractors and logistics service providers, ship and offshore operators etc. There are still several instances where packaged equipment has had to be rejected by supply chain companies and which has highlighted: packaging standards across the industry still differ, pre-dispatch checks that some companies have in place are still not robust enough, and paperwork, documentation, or certification packages are incomplete or not sufficient.

The new revision of the Oil & Gas UK Best Practice for the Safe Packing and Handling of Cargo to and from Offshore Locations is Issue 5, published in November 2011 includes enhanced section on dropped objects, cargo packing section includes information from previous appendices, new Offshore Waste Control Pack,slight amendments to Cargo Summary Tickets, new Audit questionnaire also on the disc, and cosmetic updates and paragraph re-numberings...

The latest eleventh edition of the world famous Glossary. The huge success of this publication within the international shipping industry has finally resulted in several releases; note, however, that the book will be equally interesting and useful even to the people not directly involved in shipping.

Several generations of seamen has got their first understanding of the industry through this volume - the book is covering all shipping-related activities and has been prepared using a very understandable language, and such approach has resulted in the book being so user-friendly and thus popular. It is aimed to both professionals of the shipping industry an newcomers since it illuminates the obscure and clarifies all the technicalities, helping to properly describe the legal background to numerous important aspects of the maritime business.

That is why we all now possess a great educational tool that shall be definitely treated as the indispensable guidance and useful source of reference for all people dealing with the activities connected with the shipping. We really do believe that thie present release of the Glossary will for sure have the same acclaim as the initial edition of the publication, and will provide a significant contribution to a much better understanding of the shipping industry, assist in establishing and maintaining of the good marine practices.

The product information booklet was prepared by the SKF Group professionals. We know that the bearings are considered critically important components of the most engines and it is therefore natural that this machinery piece is always subject of a very extensive research.

This publication is covering such important technical aspects of rolling bearing failures as path patterns and their interpretation, types of possible bearing damage like its wear, smearing, corrosion, indentations, surface distress, damage caused electric current passing through, cracks, cage damage, flaking etc...

This guide to sailboat racing is unique - it shows the reader how to set their sailing goals properly, and then breaks them into some sort of mini-goals, more manageable but still stretching. It was prepared by Jon Emmett who is the veteran sailing coach. In his book Emmet tried to explain how any person can improve his sailing techniques in a number of manageable stages.

Apart from theory, there are many practical tips and wisdom, shared by the Olympic champions, including Joe Glanfield and Paud Goodison. Each of the twenty chapters of this book contains some useful exercises. Use this book and it will help you to get to the very front of the fleet, regardless of whether your aim is to be a winner at open, club, national or even international level. Again, the main objective of the book is to make you discover how to set the goals and create the practical and reasonable action plans to get those goals achieved.

Of course, it contains perfectly detailed analysis of the key sailing techniques with a step-by-step guidance on improving the particular sailing skill according to the reader's own objectives. We would treat this book as the excellent first time resource for the newcomers or club racers.

Another interesting historical publication addressing the naval warships, this one being dedicated to the battleships. Starting from the ancient times and to the Second World War and post-war period, the content of the present volume is charting the evolution of the vessels that used to rule the seas - the vessels that would be most complex and expensive human-made moving objectives in the whole history, until the introduction of the aircraft carriers.

The text part of the volume is supplemented with more than forty photographs making clear all defining features of each design covered. The content of the book is featuring a listing of the ironclads and battleships plus the dreadnoughts arranged in alphabetical order and including the names and countries plus causes of the losses, locations and dates.

According to the reviews of this book provided by the numerous readers, including professional naval historians and just enthusiasts, the publication has been found to give a thorough and lively analysis of all major warships in the history and shall be treated as a must-have for the military readers and all other people with the interest in naval activities. The chapters of the book start with the wooden battleships and then move through the steam and dreadnought to the later eras, covering various approaches to the styles and effectiveness of the associated warfare...

This book is mainly dedicated to the famous battleship Scharnhorst, though some part of it is taken with the comparison to her sister vessel Gneisenau. The publication belongs to the Military Book Club series and contains the brief general history of ship construction as well as most important technical data plus some additional notes on crew training, life on board the vessel etc, supplemented with the number of photographs.

There are following chapters in the book: Shipbuilding - The construction of a ship; Crew Training; Technical Data of Scharnhorst; Engine Room Combat readiness; Scharnhorst Career Notes; Gneisenau and Scharnhorst; A Pictorial History of Scharnhorst; Camouflage Patterns; Scharnhorst as a Scale Model; The Plans and Plan Keys.

The information included by the author into this remarkably interesting book has been found very interesting and useful by a broad audience of readers starting from the general readers and up to the specialists and naval historians. We would definitely recommend this volume because of the amount and quality of the presented information plus informative and colorful illustrations letting readers get a clear and full picture.