[Ships. Diderot & d'Alembert] Receuil de planches de l'Encyclopédie

par ordre de matières. Tome cinquième. Paris/ Liège, Panckoucke/ Plomteux, 1787, letterpress title page and "orde des planches" followed by 158 mostly double-page (and partly folding) numbered plates (incl. no. 116A and 156A), finally another series of 16 (double-page) geometrical plates, contemporary plain cardboard, folio.

Inside occ. soiled but else a very good, untrimmed copy; backstrip mostly lacking, as is the paper across back board. Magnificent plate volume from the most famous encyclopedia, in which all aspects of shipping at the time is depicted finely and with great detail, such as construction methods, the shapes of ships in profile and from the outside, machineries, dry docks, flags, rigging and ship types.