An avid ship modeler for over 50 years, Al Ross has been building professionally for nearly two decades. He has crafted half-hulls, ship models, and nautical dioramas for corporate, private, and museum collections. While he specializes in powered naval vessels from 1860 to the present, he has also built coasting schooners, fishing boats, yachts, and other working craft. For the last ten years, he has been designing kits and building custom models for BlueJacket Shipcrafters, a company celebrating its 100^th anniversary in 2005.

Al is also well-known internationally as an author and illustrator. He has written and illustrated four books in the Anatomy of the Ship series and, with friend and colleague John Lambert, the multi-volume Allied Coastal Forces of World War II. Al has also written extensively for such publications as “Ships in Scale”, “Scale Ship Modeler”, “Warship”, and “Marine Modelling”, as well as contributing a chapter in Conway Maritime Press’ History of the Ship series.

His ship drawings have appeared in a number of books and articles by other authors, including Norman Friedman’s U.S. Small Combatants and D.W. Fostle’s “Vessels of Opportunity - the PTs” in Nautical Quarterly.

A long-time resident of Bangor, Maine, Al holds a PhD in Adult Education from Florida State University. He has designed technical training programs for the nuclear power and paper industries and taught Technical Writing at Unity College.