Sail and Steam

Masterful picture editing and concisely lucid historical essays by photography historian Falconer ( A Vision of the Past ) here combine with superb book production in a thoroughly satisfying and enlightening portrayal of 19th-century Britain's ocean-based commercial and political ascendancy at a time ``when the surrounding sea permeated every level of national life.'' With handsomely reproduced pictures from England's National Maritime Museum by period photographers William Henry Fox Talbot, Alan Villiers and others, Falconer documents the U.K.'s great days of trade and empire, naval supremacy, shipbuilding, fisheries, exploration and discovery. Despite the static nature of early photography, striking compositions animate such dramatic subjects as a shipwrecked three-master in full sail awash on the rocks; a mass of herring boats in port; a ``grand parade'' of vacationers at Eastbourne; the Aquitania 's launching; an ice mountain in Antarctica; and from 1932, a picture showing deckhands going aloft among the sails at the end of an era. (Oct.)