Royal Navy vessels in the eighteenth century were so expensive to construct that meticulous records were kept, from the purchasing of timbers to the last details of their furnishings and armament, including even the individual names of some of the shipwrights and craftsmen. From intensive study of these records the authors tell, in extraordinary detail, the building of HMS Thunderer, a two-decked, 74-gun ship-of-the-line, which represented one of...