First published in 1965, this book was written in response to the considerable changes that had taken place in shipbuilding techniques since 1945 and to the new scientific methods that were being increasingly adopted in a strongly competitive market. It describes the advances which had been made in one field of the design of ship structures, a field also of importance in the design of bridges and other rigid structures on land. A grillage is a structure of intersecting beams, usually attached to one side of a continuous plate panel, which is loaded normal to its surface. The decks, bottoms and bulkheads (vertical divisions) of ships are usually flat grillages, and this form of construction is also commonly used in the decks of bridges. The methods of plastic analysis are not directly applicable to plated grillage structures and Mr Clarkson has therefore discussed only elastic methods of design.