Includes paddlers, cargo and passenger ships as well as the ports and harbours of the Medway towns.

In 1843 Brunel's ironship Great Britain was launched, becoming the forerunner of the great steel-hulled ships of today. Yet she was tiny compared with the transatlantic liners of the early 1900s as ship-owners vied for the top spot in terms of speed, elegance and size. Liners such as Mauritania and Titanic were later followed by two giant Queens and France's liner Normandie. If the innovative engineers of the Victorian age guided the shipping industry from sail to steam, wood to iron and later to steel, then the twentieth-century invention of the computer took ship construction to entirely new concepts. Massive passenger vessels, equipped with remarkable facilities, efficient machinery and capable of meeting the highest standard of safety, can now be built from keel to funnel in no more than two years. Construction techniques have changed beyond recognition, as have methods of ship design and, indeed, the very roles that these floating resorts are asked to play. Today Royal Caribbean's sister ships Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas are the first passenger ships in history to exceed 200,000 gros tons and are promoted as offering a third more space than any other cruise vessel afloat and measuring seventy times the size of the first Victorian passenger-carrying ironship. For the foreseeable future, at least, these two giant floating cities will hold the accolade of being the biggest passenger ships of all time.

Amid peaceful countryside, past historic towns and through the heart of London, the River Thames flows in an easterly direction for some 346 kilometres from its source in Gloucestershire until entering the North Sea. Over many centuries civilisations have traversed the ancient river by way of fords and early ferries, stone-built bridges, by locks, tunnels and railway lines and, most recently, by motorway crossings. Building methods and designs have changed dramatically over time yet, even now, bridges dating from medieval times still span the river, virtually unaltered since when they were built. Within London, bridges and tunnels, old and new, convey the capital's rail systems, road traffic and pedestrians across the Thames. The Thames and its crossings are ever changing and Geoff Lunn, as he travels downriver from source to sea, navigates the reader through their history and right up to the present day.