John McKay wrote Sovereign of the Seas 1637: A Reconstruction of the Most Powerful Warship of its Day (Seaforth Publishing $68.95 hc), which includes a history and a folio of drafted plans and drawings of the ship's design from the hull to the sails and rigging. McKay, a professional draftsman and authority on the design of ships from the sailing era, got into writing books while researching HMS Victory, a museum ship in England best known as Lord Nelson's flagship at 1805’s Battle of Trafalgar that resulted in his first book, The 100-Gun Ship Victory (Conway Maritime 1987). That book has had six reprints and established McKay as a maritime historian. He lives in Langley. 978-1-5267-6629-8

[BCBW 2020]