Greetings one and all: Believe it or not, there is an actual book on steampunk boat designs. In New York City the Forbes Family (as in Forbes Magazine, Steve Forbes--part time politician, New Jersey's top family financially, etc.) has a museum on the first floor of their building. Among the items are 500 toy boats that were built mostly between the 1880s and 1955. The bulk of the collection are predred ships. To document the collection, a book called "Toy Boats" was published in 2004 and I was given a copy for my 47th birthday. The photographs and captions are FANTASTIC ! Every type of vessel from row boats to ferries to ocean liners to submarines and dreadnaughts are represented. The boats were made either from wood with a lithograph image for decor while other were made from tin and hand enameled. Various countries were represented from Great Britain and Germany to France, Japan, and the USA. The toys ranged in length from 12 inches to 48 inches. Some used clockworks to run a propeller. More modern ones used the first batteries. Some were steam powered ! They all worked in water while a few had wheels to run on a floor. The most complex boat in the collection was a German Nassau Dreadnaught with 3 working propellers, 6 functioning turrets that fired small black powder charges on a mechanical timer, and a rudder control set to a timer that turned the ship around and returned it to shore. Even the submarines dove and surfaced ! By the 1950s, toy airplanes and rockets replaced toy ships as the toy of choice. Toy boats also decayed fairly quickly due to water exposure. Forbes noted that toy boats are the rarest toys on the auction market. One boat Forbes bought cost $20,000 in 1970s dollars. I have found the book inspiring in terms of design. There are French steampunks with tumblehomes and WWI American Dreadnaughts. I am thinking about modeling a Japanese dreadnaught called the Fuji. I am enjoying this book! MMJR
I have a copy of this book. There is an earlier book with the same title "Toy Boats: 1870-1955 A Pictorial History" by Jacques Milet and Robert Forbes. It is another book about the Forbes collection printed in 1979. It has little commentary; mainly photos of the collection. Copies of it now can be very pricy. I was going to buy it on line for $200.00; luckily my credit card didn't go through! I found a copy in a used bookstore for $45.00. I strongly recommend this book if you have interest in toy boats.
