Some readers have probably noticed that December's Item of the Month has been up for sometime. Penny takes a look at a French picture book,
Types de la Marine Francaise. The book features some great little water colours, showing the wide variety of different kinds of vessels going in and out of French ports around 1870. This was a transitory time, as steam began to displace sail, as evidenced by the increasingly common paddle steamers and early liners. But beautiful and fast clippers show sail did not give in easily. It was also a good opportunity to experiment with the Library catalogue and some pretty amazing results came from searching it by different languages.....
See for yourself at:
http://www.rmg.co.uk/researchers/collections/by-type/archive-and-library/item-of-the-month/