Here's a cleaned-up rewrite, with the typos fixed (the ship's name should read "Sarah Burnyeat," and "in Albany Harbour" needed its space back) and the sentences tightened for flow:

Originally written as a university thesis over a decade ago, Gordon de L. Marshall's work has now been published as a complete volume. Co-written with the late Les Douglas, third generation of an Albany maritime family, the thesis had previously only been available as a photocopied edition sold through the Albany museum.

The book caught the eye of former Albany businessman Tom Saggers, who felt the format didn't do the content justice. He arranged for it to be reviewed, updated and properly published, and it's now available in both paperback and a limited-edition leather-bound hardback.

Drawing on the help of Albany residents and former residents, Marshall's book covers the period from 1820 to 1939, when Albany served as home base for a fleet of locally owned steamers. Written by a genuine maritime history enthusiast, Maritime Albany Remembered is hard to read without catching some of that enthusiasm yourself. Among its highlights are hand-drawn maps, a double-page spread on the scuttled coal hulk Copeland, and the stories of vessels such as the schooner Grace Darling and the former Swan River ferry Silver Star. Alongside this wealth of material on Western Australian coastal history, Marshall also recounts the tale of an abandoned whaleboat rumoured to carry a curse, and a mysterious inscription found at Esperance believed to have been left by survivors of an early Dutch shipwreck.

Perhaps the most remarkable story is how research for the book led to the discovery of the wreck of the Sarah Burnyeat in Albany Harbour — since confirmed as the best-preserved nineteenth-century wooden hull in Western Australia.

Maritime Albany Remembered is an informative and engaging account of Albany's most important industry, richly illustrated with many previously unpublished photographs from private collections. It's a book that covers just about everything anyone could want to know about maritime Albany, and then some.

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