My own article - which apparently was good enough to be the one opening the book - is on the history of the Lindblad Explorer, the world's first purpose-built expedition cruise ship, which happened to be built at Uusikaupunki. As such, the article naturally concentrates primarily on the design and construction of the ship, but also charts its entire history. The whole thing is lavaishly illustrated, mostly with wonderful images (including interiors in the original guise) provided by the Uusikaupunki museum. For those wanting all this in English, fear not: much of the material will appear in that language in 2017, when my and Bruce Peter's first joint offering, Innovation and Specialisation: A History of Finnish Shipbuilding, is published.
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| Many thanks are in order to the Uusikaupunki museum for the wonderful photos that grace my article here. |
Apart from my article, the Uusikaupunki yearbook includes a host of wonderful articles on subjects as varied as sea transports in ancient Rome, the voyage of Finnish missionaries to Namibia on one of the last commercial liners voyages under sail, and marine paintings. My personal favourites, however, were Pirita Frigren's text on the lives of seamen's wives in the age of sail, and Jukka Huotari's history of the Juliana-class cargo ships.
The book is mailed to the members of the Uusikaupunki Maritime Historical Society automatically; I presume you can ask to buy a copy by contacting the society via their website.
In other news, you may have noticed a distinct lack of updates to this blog of late. The reason for this is simple: the Id Fleet grew by one member in October. As the new addition consumes a sizeable amount of my time, I've decided to use what remains on writing and photo work I'm actually paid to do. Which means that, for the time being, this blog will be on a hiatus. For how long, I cannot say. So, as the wizard said: expect me when you see me.
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