This two-volume work contains the collected papers of F. Ursell, dating from 1946-1992, on ship hydrodynamics, the linear theory of water waves, aerodynamics and acoustics, mathematical methods and oceanography. Ursell's work on ship hydrodynamics is mainly concerned with ships at zero forward speed. It includes the author's pioneering work on the frequency dependence of virtual mass and damping and his contributions to such topics as slender-body theory, decay of the free motion of a floating body, diffractions of head seas, the Kelvin shipwave patterns and the analytic form of the Kelvin wave source. His work on the linear theory of water waves discusses the scattering of water waves by bodies in the free surface, edge waves and trapped modes, short-wave and long-wave asymptotics relating to floating bodies and irregular wave numbers in the solution of the integral equations of wave-wave theory. In Volume 2, Ursell presents papers on aerodynamics and acoustics, encompassing the rigorous foundation of short-wave asymptotics, irregular values and trapped modes. A section on mathematical methods covers asymptotics of integrals involving a large parameter and a method of steepest descents for two nearly coincident saddle points and for many nearly coincident saddle points, for Hilbert transforms and for Legendre functions. Ursell's work on oceanography contains the earliest work on the propagation of ocean waves and the oceanwave spectrum as well as a review of early theories of wave generation by wind."
