The last days of commercial sailing vessels have rarely been discussed in length. At most, maritime historians and writers have produced short accounts of the last days of sailing ships or clipper ships or down-easters, confining their efforts to a single, distinguished type of sailing vessel. Here, Robert Carse has written of the final days of many types of vessels, showing the slow decadence of the sailing freighters as a whole and their final economic death-struggles, ending with the supremacy of mechanical power at sea in case after case. Illustrated throughout.