For more than one hundred years small and elegant ferries forged links across the world's straits, channels and estuaries carrying passengers to and from the European continent, across the Mediterranean and, further afield, the Bass Strait, the Bay of Fundy or the River Plate.
Superseded by the car ferry in the 1960s, they are now but a fond memory; here, though, they are brought wonderfully to life, described and depicted in more than 300 evocative photographs.