The great era of the steam warship was from the mid-1860s to the mid-1940s-an eighty-year period in which a huge variety of large ships were built, ever greater in size, firepower, and technical sophistication. Large capital ships, with their batteries of huge guns capable of destroying targets dozens of miles away, were the most expensive and destructive weaponry available to nations prior to the atomic bomb, and their development can be traced decade by decade. Arranged in chronological order, Great Warships from the Age of Steam provides concise coverage of the most famous warships of the period, including Devastation, the first seagoing turreted ship; the Chinese Ting Yuen, sunk at the Battle of Wei-Hai-Wei in 1894; Mikasa and Retvizan, which fought each other at the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904; Indomitable, Nassau, and Lion, which all fought at the Battle of Jutland in 1916; Prince of Wales, which took part in the hunt for the Bismarck and was eventually sunk by Japanese air attack off the coast of Malaya in December 1941; and the Tirpitz, which remained a constant threat to Allied shipping in the North Atlantic until it was sunk by aerial bombers in a Norwegian fjord in late 1944. Filled with colorful artworks, expertly written background text, and useful specifications of 100 warships, Great Warships from the Age of Steam is a visually lavish guide to major fighting ships from the 1860s to the end of World War II. - from Amzon