Reed (Joseph William)
Warships Fitted with J.W. Reed's Boilers & Engines. Privately produced by Charles W. Reed, [n.d. post 1905]. Oblong 4to, cloth-backed boards with tie, upper board with central paper label; 27 tipped-in and 2 loose black and white photographs, list of ships fitted with Reed boilers laid down on upper pastedown; sold with portrait photograph labelled J.W. Reed, diary and notebook for 1907 labelled as belonging to J.W. Reed (with his business card loosely inserted) and scale diagram (1 1/2" = 1 Foot) of the water-tube boiler with MSS annotations stating "Patent applied for Nov 30 93 JW Reed" and "Shown to admiralty officials".
Reed was an engineer and general manager of the engineering department of Palmer's Shipbuilding and Iron Company of Jarrow-on-Tyne, where he reorganised and partly rebuilt the engine works. He was also a member of the Institution of Naval Architects, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Council of the North-East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders.

He is noted for designing a new water-tube boiler, manufactured by Palmer between 1893 and 1905 and fitted in almost 170 Naval vessels. Palmer's was vertically integrated, taking in iron ore from its mining operations and sending it out again as ships. It is thus not surprising that they also manufactured boilers such as Reed's. Such was the respect the Admiralty held for Reed's boilers they even ordered them fitted in ships built in other yards. In 1895 two torpedo boats, HMSs Fervent and Zephyr, were retrofitted with Reed's boilers when the original builders' were rejected.

These photographs show different examples of the engines with notes on the verso listing the ships in which they were installed. There are also pictures of ships undergoing trial with notes on the engines installed.