Review by Felix Bustelo

Navires & Histoire (which means ships and history) is a brand new maritime history magazine which premiered in November 1999. This French language journal, which will be published quarterly, will contain numerous articles and dozens of photos that will be of interest to ship modelers and enthusiasts alike. Naturally, the magazine is published entirely in French, which will make reading it very difficult for non-French speakers (like myself) to read, but based on what I saw in the premier issue, the wealth of photographic references may make you ignore this problem.

My review is based on the premier issue, which was kindly provided to me by Jacques Druel of L'Arsenal. The magazine is printed on very high quality glossy A4 sized paper (210 x 297 mm or about 8.25 x 11.66 inches) and is nicely bound. The layout of the magazine is very logical and it contains numerous color and black & white photos. A lot of space and text is devoted to each article, so a lot of care and work has apparently been given to them. Based on my very limited knowledge of French and my fluency in Spanish, I could determine the gist of most of the articles.

Seemingly, each issue will be divided up into several recurring sections, which I will summarize below with what appeared in this first issue.

The magazine opens up with naval and maritime news briefs looking at world developments and events. The section on Today's Ships and History focuses on the new French nuclear carrier Charles de Gaulle, with lots of great color photos. Believe me, I will be using these when I get to my Heller kit! The section on Transatlantic Ships and History discusses the White Star liners Titanic, Britannic and Olympic. Being a ocean liner buff, I will be looking forward to more articles dedicated to ocean liners. At this point, it may be better outline the rest of the sections and articles as bullets.

• Mediterranean History - The Italian Vittorio Veneto class battleships and development of Italian cruisers
• Battle of the Atlantic - German Type IXB Uboats and Uboats acquired by the French Navy.
• Navies of the World - The Dutch Navy in 1939.
• Pacific History - The Chinese Navy of the late 19th century and naval actions they were involved in.
• History Across Time - Warships and the Industrial Revolution.

This is a very nice magazine and should be very popular. I wish that there was a similar publication that was English language. The language barrier aside, this journal would make a very good reference for modelers.

S.A.R.L LELA PRESSE
29, rue Paul Bert
62230 Outreau
France

Rates are 210 French Francs for 1 year (4 Issues) and 380 French Francs for 2 year (8 Issues)