This illustrated album provides a survey of modern naval craft from the major maritime powers during the late 1930s. It contains a series of 50 colour cigarette cards depicting battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers and other warships from Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and the Soviet Union. Each card is accompanied by descriptive information, while additional monochrome illustrations and explanatory text provide further details about the vessels and their characteristics. Among the ships represented are HMS Nelson, HMS Revenge, HMS Hood, HMS Exeter, the French cruiser Algerie, the German Admiral Graf Spee, the Italian Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Japanese Kumano and the American USS California. The album offers an interesting visual and documentary record of international naval development in the years immediately preceding the Second World War. John Player & Sons was a British tobacco manufacturer based in Nottingham, established in the nineteenth century. The company became particularly well known for its illustrated cigarette cards, distributed with cigarette packets as collectible promotional material. Its extensive series covered subjects such as shipping, aviation, military history, sport, transport and natural history. Specially designed albums enabled collectors to assemble and preserve complete card collections. (AI-generated content description)