Book Review

"How to Build a Model Yacht"

A review by Earl Boebert

From the late 1800's to around 1930 or so there was a significant interchange between model and full-sized yachting. The two major yachting magazines in the United States, Yachting and The Rudder, published news and technical information on model yachting, as did general "sporting" publications such as Outing and Forest and Stream. The implications of scale effect were not well understood, and even as late as the 1920s designers thought that useful information about a full sized boat could be obtained from 1/12 sized models; today we know that the minimum size required is more like 1/3.

The Rudder magazine offered a series of books on topics of interest to the yachting community, covering things like design, construction, upkeep and racing rules. In 1902 they published a thin, large-format book by Herbert Fisher called How to Build a Model Yacht. The book was reprinted in 1917. Copies of either edition are rare and expensive, and, owing to the cheap, high-acid paper used, are usually in a more or less advanced state of decay.

Russell Potts, and his Curved Air press, has done us the favor of reprinting this work in a more convenient size, and adding an introduction and commentary which is almost double the size of the original text. This additional material is done to Russell's usual high standard of scholarship and places the original work in both its social context and the context of model yachting of this era in the United Kingdom.

The book is well illustrated with both photographs and drawings. The latter, though perfectly legible, could have been more clearly reproduced. Despite this minor flaw, Russell has produced what surely will become the standard work on model yachting during this period.

Publication Data:

Fisher, Herbert. "How to Build a Model Yacht (1902) with a New Introduction and Commentary by Russell Potts". 2006.
ISBN: 1 873148 22 4
List Price: 12 £
Curved Air Press
8 Sherard Road
London
SE9 6EP

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