Routledge, 2006. — 257 p. Investigating the employment of British aircraft against German submarines during the final years of the First World War, this new book places anti-submarine campaigns from the air in the wider history of the First World War. The Royal Naval Air Service invested heavily in aircraft of all types — airplanes, seaplanes, airships, and kite balloons — to...
Penguin Books, 2006. — 392 p. In the tradition of Antony Beevor's Stalingrad, Nelson's Trafalgar presents the definitive blow-by-blow account of the world's most famous naval battle, when the British Royal Navy under Lord Horatio Nelson dealt a decisive blow to the forces of Napoleon. The Battle of Trafalgar (1805) comes boldly to life in this definitive work that re-creates...
Neil Wilson, 2009. — 73 p. — ISBN: 1906476071. The Clyde has played a major part in warfare in the 20th century. Its most obvious contribution was as the main source of shipping which was supplied to the Royal Navy and the merchant navy. Many of its other stories are less familiar, not least the actual conflict that took place against German U-boats not far off the mainland....
Pen and Sword, 2003. — 224 p. There is no current warship in the Royal Navy called HMS London, but vessels carrying the name have featured for better or worse in some of the most controversial episodes of British naval history. For example, the wooden wall battleship HMS London of the late 18th Century could be called 'the ship that lost America' while the heavy cruiser of WW2...
Pen and Sword, 2010. — 288 p. In May 1941, the German battleship Bismarck, accompanied by heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, broke out into the Atlantic, to attack Allied shipping. The Royal Navy's pursuit and subsequent destruction of Bismarck was an epic of naval warfare. In this new account of those dramatic events at the height of the Second World War, Iain Ballantyne draws...
Amberley Publishing, 2015. — 160 p. For more than 150 years it was the world’s most powerful force: between victory at Trafalgar in 1805 and the withdrawal from ‘east of Suez’ in the 1960s, the ships of the Royal Navy were ubiquitous. From Newfoundland to New South Wales and Cyprus to Ceylon, the Royal Navy protected British interests, projecting British power, and maintaining...
Princeton University Press, 2015. — 584 p. This historical analysis of the problems faced by the British navy during the War of 1739-1748 also sheds light on the character, limitations, and potentialities of eighteenth-century British administration. Originally published in 1965.
University of Plymouth Press, 2012. — 304 p. In late 1944, the German battleship Tirpitz was sunk by RAF Bomber Command. While it was the RAF that delivered the final coup de grace, it was the Royal Navy, from 1942 to 1944, that had contained, crippled and neutralised the German battleship in a series of actions marked by innovation, boldness and bravery. From daring commando...
Endeavour Press Ltd., 2013. — 322 p. Nearly two centuries after his death, does Nelson deserve his reputation as one of the world's great commanders? Nelson's triumphs have so caught the public imagination that his failures are barely remembered. His only victorious battles at sea was Trafalgar (at Copenhagen and the Nile his destroyed ships at anchor), while his infatuation...
George Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2006. — 352 p. Nicholas Best is a master story teller, the author of several highly successful novels as well as serious history books. He was the fiction critic for ten years and reviews regularly for the Sunday Times and TLS. In his hands the story of Trafalgar comes to life as never before. Beginning with a vivid recreation of Napoleon's army...
Conway Publishing, 2012. — 448 p. Elizabeth's Sea Dogs investigates the rise and fall of a unique group of adventurers – men like Francis Drake, John Hawkins, Martin Frobisher and Walter Raleigh. Seen by the English as heroes but by the Spanish as pirates, they were expert seafarers and controversial characters. This riveting new account reveals them for what they were:...
Osprey Publishing, 2018. — 161 p. A familiar sight on the Thames at London Bridge, HMS Belfast is a Royal Navy light cruiser, launched in March 1938. Belfast was part of the British naval blockade against Germany and from November 1942 escorted Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union and assisted in the destruction of the German warship Scharnhorst. In June 1944 Belfast supported...
Naval Institute Press, 2017. — 577 p. The Royal Navy in Eastern Waters tells the compelling story of how the Royal Navy secured the strategic space from Egypt in the west to Australasia in the East through the first half of World War II. It explains why this contribution, made while the Soviet Union’s fate remained in the balance and before American economic power took effect,...
Gravesend: World Ship Society, 1999. — 243 p. — ISBN: 0-905617-89-4 A compendium of warships built on the Tyne by Armstrong Works between 1867 and 1927, from gunboats to dreadnoughts. This World Ship Society book provides technical information on all of Armstrong's ships built 1867 - 1927, in a clear and easy reading. The ships are arranged in type, and ranged from the earliest...
Naval Institute Press, 2010. — 208 p. In this book, the sequel to the highly acclaimed Warrior to Dreadnought, renowned warship author D. K. Brown brings his knowledge and experience as a warship designer to the story of the Royal Navy's development of World War I warships and the influence of that conflict on future warship design. The launch of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 ushered...
Seaforth Publishing, 2012. — 224 p. In the 50 years that separated HMS Warrior from Dreadnought there was a revolution in warship design unparalleled in naval history. It was a period that began with the fully rigged broadside ironclads and ended with the emergence of the great battleships and battle cruisers of World War I. Noted naval historian D.K. Brown explains how the...
Pen and Sword, 2012. — 208 p. This design history of post-war British warship development, based on both declassified documentation and personal experience, is the fourth and final volume in the authors masterly account of development of Royal Navy's ships from the 1850s to the Falklands War. In this volume the author covers the period in which he himself worked as a Naval...
Naval Institute Press, 2009. — 108 p. — ISBN: 978-1904459361. This revised and updated guide to the ships, aircraft, and weapons of the Royal Navy fleet is now expanded to include Royal Marine Craft and Border Agency vessels.
Seaforth Publishing. An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd. in English, 224 p. Rewriting the history of the creation and use of sea monitors of the Royal Navy of Britain.
New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. — 201 p. Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson was a colourful and complex character, whose supremely successful naval career quickly attained legendary status. By 1803 he was Britain's paramount hero and already maimed with the loss of an arm and blind in one eye. He returned to war when called back in May and spent a further two years at sea before...
Cambridge University Press, 2022. — 312 p. The British Royal Navy of the French Wars (1793 – 1815) is an enduring national symbol, but we often overlook the tens of thousands of foreign seamen who contributed to its operations. Foreign Jack Tars presents the first in-depth study of their employment in the Navy during this crucial period. Based on sources from across Britain,...
Seaforth Publishing, 2014. — 240 p. This new paperback edition brings the history of Henry VIII's famous warship right up-to-date with new chapters on the stunning presentation of the hull and the 19,000 salvaged artifacts in the new museum in Portsmouth. Mary Rose has, along with HMS Victory, become an instantly recognizable symbol of Britain's maritime past, while the...
Seaforth Publishing, 2009. — 224 p. In the sixteenth century England turned from being an insignifcant part of an offshore island into a nation respected and feared in Europe. This was not achieved through empire building, conquest, large armies, treaties, marriage alliances, trade or any of the other traditional means of exercising power. Indeed England was successful in few...
Pen and Sword Maritime, 2009. — 189 p. The story of HMS Invincible, a ship whose eventful life story, it is argued, embodies that of the Royal Navy itself during the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st. From her conception and design, through her various military deployments (including the Falklands) and her evolving role and technical adaptation to meet changing...
Ashgate Publishing, 2013. — 349 p. Today, the First World War is remembered chiefly for the carnage of the Western Front, but at the time the Royal Navy's blockade of Germany was a more frequent source of debate. For, even at a time of war, there were influential voices in Britain who baulked at a concept of economic warfare that hindered the free passage of goods on the high...
London: Institute of Historical Research, 2008. — 383 p. While naval warfare is one of the most popular subjects of research in The National Archives, readers are frequently frustrated in their search for information, and a high proportion of the relevant records are seldom consulted. This invaluable guide will help researchers both to understand TNA’s naval records and to...
Airlife Publishing Ltd, 1993. — 204 p. — ISBN: 1853103284. A guide to all minelayers & minesweepers treated chronologically by class with launch date, builder & specification. Includes requisitioned vessels. 5 appendices (missing: appendices 3-5).
Oxford University Press, 2002. — 424 p. Admiral Horatio Nelson captures our imaginations like few other military figures. A mixture of tactical originality, raw courage, cruelty, and romantic passion, Nelson in action was daring and direct, a paramount naval genius and a natural born predator. Now, in The Nelson Touch, novelist Terry Coleman provides a superb portrait of...
Pen and Sword Maritime, 2013. — 232 p. Monitor warships mounted the biggest guns ever deployed by the Royal Navy, and played an undeniably important part in Allied efforts during World War One and Two. They were built as cheap "disposable" ships made out of redundant bits and pieces which the Admiralty happened to have available which could bring heavy artillery to bear on...
Pen and Sword, 2011. — 178 p. It is not widely remembered that mines were by far the most effective weapon deployed against the British Royal Navy in WW1, costing them 5 battleships, 3 cruisers, 22 destroyers, 4 submarines and a host of other vessels. They were in the main combated by a civilian force using fishing boats and paddle steamers recruited from holiday resorts. This...
US Naval Institute Press, 2015. — 240 p. The Battle for Britain is a provocative reinterpretation of both British air and naval power from 1909 to 1940. Anthony Cumming challenges the view that the Battle of Britain was a decisive victory won solely by the Royal Air Force through independent airpower operations. By re-evaluating the early stage of the Mediterranean conflict and...
Pen & Sword Books, 2006. — 230 p. This biography of Sir John Jervis (1735-1823), who became Admiral Lord Vincent, makes compelling reading. It throws an oblique light on Nelson s personality. St Vincent, who was born twenty-three years before Nelson, and survived for eighteen years after Trafalgar, fundamentally influenced the younger man s career despite the two men being...
Seaforth Publishing, 2017. — 288 p. It has always been widely accepted that the Stuart kings, Charles II and James II, had an interest in the navy and more generally in the sea. Their enthusiastic delight in sailing, for instance, is often cited as marking the establishment of yachting in England. The major naval developments in their reigns on the other hand developments that...
Routledge, 2007. — 271 p. This volume provides the first comprehensive history of education and training for officers of the Royal Navy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It covers the development of educational provision, from the first 1702 Order in Council appointing schoolmasters to serve in operational warships, to the laying of the foundation stone of the present...
London, Chapman and Hall, 1852. - 372 p. This is the biography of the renowned admiral and general, Robert Blake (1599-1657), and, in it, the naval history of England during the 17th century - one of its most dramatic and turbulent periods. Having been painstakingly researched from official British-state and Blake-family papers and written by one of England's foremost writers...
Pen & Sword Maritime, 2011. — 256 p. Too often historical writing on the Russian War of 1854-1856 focuses narrowly on the land campaign fought in the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea. The wider war waged at sea by the British and French navies against the Russians is ignored. The allied navies aimed to strike at Russian interests anywhere in the world where naval force could...
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. — 268 p. The six Australian colonies united on 1st January 1901 to become the Commonwealth of Australia. One of the reasons given for this federation was that the Commonwealth could provide a common defence. William Rooke Creswell argued that, as an island continent, Australia could not defend itself without a navy. He saw no point in having...
I.B.Tauris, 2014. — 256 p. For many years the naval warfare of World War I has been largely overlooked; yet, at the outbreak of that war, the British Government had expected and intended its military contribution to the conflict to be largely naval. Britain was not simply defending an island; it was defending a far-flung empire. Without the navy, such an undertaking would have...
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. — 294 p. The Officers of the Royal Navy Before 1918 The Naval Officer and Interwar Society Becoming a Naval Officer: Entry, Education and Training Personnel Management The Officers of the Royal Navy in the 1920s Malign Neglect? The Collapse of Executive Officers’ Morale The Officers’ Nadir and the Inflection The Ascension: Improving Morale The...
London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2004. — 214 p. This book suggests that institutional culture can account for a great deal of the activities and rationale of the Royal Navy. War highlights the role of culture in military organizations and as such acts as a spotlight by which this phenomenon can be assessed separately and then in comparison in order to demonstrate the influence of...
Naval Institute Press, 2010. — 160 p. — ISBN: 978-1591142645. In the sailing era, the warships called First Rates were the largest, most powerful, and most costly ships to construct, maintain, and operate. Built to the highest standards, they were lavishly decorated and given carefully considered names that reflected the pride and prestige of their country. They were the very...
New York: Bantam Books, 1963. — 118 p. In 1941, Hitler's deadly Bismarck, the fastest battleship afloat, broke out into the Atlantic. Its mission: to cut the lifeline of British shipping and win the war with one mighty blow. How the Royal Navy tried to meet this threat and its desperate attempt to bring the giant Bismarck to bay is the story C. S. Forester tells with mounting...
Allen & Unwin, 2004. — 350 p. In 1901 Australia's fledgling Federal Government assumed the responsibility for the new nation's defence. Their first task was to take the aged and obsolete remnants of the colonies' navies and create a national navy to defend our island's coastal waters and overseas trade routes. For the first 40 years the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) was designed...
Okręty Wojenne, 2004. — 64 s. — (Okręty Świata 16). — ISBN: 830915653-3-5. Szczegółowa monografia opisująca genezę budowy krążowników typu Leander, ich konstrukcję, przebieg służby. Liczne czarno-białe fotografie, rysunki przekrojowe, schematy.
Naval Institute Press, 2019. — 320 p. John Lambert was a renowned naval draughtsman whose plans were highly valued for their accuracy and detail by model makers and enthusiasts. By the time of his death in 2016 he had produced over 850 sheets of drawings many of which have never been published. British Naval Weapons of World War Two cover weapons carried by British destroyers...
Seaforth Publishing, 2012. — 400 p. Gradually evolving from sailing frigates, the first modern cruiser is not easy to define, but this book starts with the earliest steam paddle warships, covers the evolution of screw-driven frigates, corvettes, and sloops, and then the succeeding iron, composite and steel-hulled classes down to the last armored cruisers.
Seaforth Publishing, 2010. — 431 p. — ISBN: 978-1-84832-078-9. With the world's largest merchant fleet and extensive overseas territories during most of the twentieth century, the Royal Navy depended on the cruiser to defend Britain's trade routes and police the empire. In this handsomely illustrated book, the noted ship historian Norman Friedman provides insights into the...
Chatham Publishing, 2006. — 351 p. British destroyers and frigates of World War II and after. The book describes destroyers built in the 1940s, starting with large Tribal-class destroyers with enhanced gun armament. They were followed by numerous three-turreted ships of the J, K, L, M, and N series. Traditionally, in each letter series, all ships bore names beginning with the...
Osprey Publishing, 2015. — 160 p. This new addition to the best-selling Conway pocket-book range features Admiral Nelson's fully preserved flagship HMS Victory, the most tangible symbol of the Royal Navy's greatest battle off Cape Trafalgar on October 21st, 1805. In the HMS Victory Pocket Manual, Peter Goodwin adopts a fresh approach to explain the workings of the only...
Naval Institute Press, 1997. — 736 p. When hundreds of warships belonging to the two most powerful fleets in the world clashed off the coast of Denmark in 1916, the encounter had the potential to reshape the political map forever. However, there were devastating failures of communication and command and, while the Battle of Jutland met Britain's strategic need for continued...
Seaforth Publishing, 2010. — 320 p. This is the story of the remarkable, intersecting careers of the two greatest writers on British naval history in the twentieth century the American professor Arthur Marder, son of immigrant Russian Jews, and Captain Stephen Roskill, who knew the Royal Navy from the inside. Between them, these contrasting characters were to peel back the lid...
Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. — 297 p. This book examines how the expansion of a steam-powered Royal Navy from the second half of the nineteenth century had wider ramifications across the British Empire. In particular, it considers how steam propulsion made vessels utterly dependent on a particular resource – coal – and its distribution around the world. In doing so, it shows that...
Pen and Sword Maritime, 2014. — 224 p. Germany’s attempts to build a battleship fleet to match that of the United Kingdom, the dominant naval power on the 19th-century and an island country that depended on sea born trade for survival, is often listed as a major reason for the enmity between those two countries that led to the outbreak of war in 1914. Indeed, German leaders had...
Boydell Press, 2012. — 278 p. It has been widely accepted that British naval war planning from the late nineteenth century to the First World War was amateur and driven by personal political agenda. But Shawn T. Grimes argues that this was far from the case. His extensive original research shows that, in fact, the Royal Navy had a definitive war strategy, which was well...
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. — 300 p. This book fills an important gap in the literature on the history of the modern Royal Navy. Eric Grove provides the only up-to-date, single-authored short history of the service over the last two hundred years, synthesizing the new work and latest research on the subject which has radically transformed our understanding of the story of British...
Ashgate, 2011. — 648 p. Following the end of the First World War the Mediterranean Fleet found itself heavily involved in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Sea of Marmora, the Black Sea and to a lesser extent, the Adriatic. Naval commanders were faced with complex problems in a situation of neither war nor peace. The collapse of the Ottoman, Russian and Habsburg empires created a...
New York, D. Appleton, 1886. - 194 p. This work presents the one from the first of the biographies of General at Sea Robert Blake (1598-1657), who was an important naval commander of the Commonwealth of England and one of the most famous English admirals of the 17th century.
University of Westminster Press, 2017. — 212 p. The Naval Leader has taken centre stage in traditional naval histories. However, while the historical narrative has been fairly consistent the development of various navies has been accompanied by assumptions, challenges and competing visions of the social characteristics of naval leaders and of their function. Whilst leadership...
London, Frank Cass Publishers, 2005. — 305 p. This new book explores innovation within the Royal Navy from the financial constraints of the 1930s to World War Two, the Cold War and the refocusing of the Royal Navy after 1990. Successful adaptation to new conditions has been critical to all navies at all times. To naval historians the significance and process of change is not...
William Collins, 2021. — 494 p. In 1940, Hitler had two choices when it came to the Mediterranean region: stay out, or commit sufficient forces to expel the British from the Middle East. Against his generals’ advice, the Fuhrer committed a major strategic blunder. He ordered the Wehrmacht to seize Crete, allowing the longtime British bastion of Malta to remain in Allied hands....
Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. — 320 p. Examining Britain's imperial outposts in 1920s East Asia, this book explores the changes and challenges affecting the Royal Navy's third largest fleet, the China Station, as its crews fought to hold back the changing tides of fortune. Bridging the gap between high-level naval strategy and everyday imperial culture, Heaslip highlights the...
Pen and Sword Military, 2008. — 320 p. A companion volume to the same author's "The British Field Marshals 1736-1997", this book outlines the lives of the 115 officers who held the rank of Admiral of the Fleet in the Royal Navy from 1734, when it took its modern form, to 1995, when the last one was appointed. Each entry gives details of the dates of the birth and death of its...
Pen and Sword, 2006. — 301 p. The history of weapons and warfare is usually written from the point of view of the battles fought and the tactics used. In naval warfare, in particular, the story of how these weapons were invented, designed and supplied is seldom told. Chris Henry, in this pioneering study, sets the record straight. He describes how, to counter the extraordinary...
Cambridge University Press, 2009. — 227 p. — (Cambridge Library Collection). This illustrated book, first published in 1936, is an edited compilation of source material drawn from some 145 diverse naval documents covering a period of more than three centuries from 1497 to 1805. The editors' intention was to smooth the approach to a highly technical subject, and to use original...
Seaforth Publishing, 2012. — 567 p. Founded in 1912 by some of the Royal Navy’s brightest officers, the quarterly Naval Review has never been subject to official censorship, and its naval members do not need official permission to write for it, so it has always provided an independent, lively and at times outspoken forum for service debate. In broad terms, it has covered...
The Library Press, 1915. — 358 p. This book is not intended to be a full history of the British Navy in the generally accepted sense of the term. For this reason, small space is devoted to various strategical and tactical matters of the past which generally bulk largely in more regular naval histories - of which a sufficiency already exists. The warships of the past are of...
The Library Press, 1915. — 316 p. This book is not intended to be a full history of the British Navy in the generally accepted sense of the term. For this reason, small space is devoted to various strategical and tactical matters of the past which generally bulk largely in more regular naval histories - of which a sufficiency already exists. The warships of the past are of...
Second edition. London: J.H. Haynes & Co Ltd, 2008. — 256 p. ISBN13: 978-1844255627. During the Second World War, Royal Navy motor torpedo boats, motor gunboats and motor launches performed a multitude of dangerous tasks in the English Channel and North Sea. Ferocious close-quarter combat with their German E- and R-boat counterparts could result in glory - or sudden death. This...
Oxford University Press, 2006. — 334 p. The construction of an important element in British national identity is explored in Naval Engagements, looking at the ways in which the navy - a major symbol of national community - was given meaning by a range of social groupings. The study is at once a cultural history of national identity, a social history of naval commemoration, and...
G. P. Putnams Sons, New York, 1969. — 304 p. ISBN: 0213179113 First steps towards a navy War with Spain The Dutch wars War of the Spanish secession War of the Austrian sucession The challenge from France, 1756-1762 Opening the oceans, 1764-1800 War of American independence Life at sea in Nelson's day The Revolutionary War with France Return to the Mediterranean The armed...
Osprey Publishing, 2011. — 65 p. — (Leadership - Strategy - Conflict). The most famous English admiral in history, Horatio Nelson's string of naval victories helped secure Britain's place as the world's dominant maritime power, a position she held for more than a century after Nelson's death. A young officer during the American Revolution, Nelson rose to prominence during...
Faber and Faber, 2008. — 512 p. From the man described by Amanda Foreman as 'one of the most eminent naval historians of our age' comes the story of how this country's maritime power helped Britain gain unparalleled dominance of the world's economy. Told through the lives of ten of our most remarkable admirals, Andrew Lambert's book spans Elizabethan times to the Second World...
Faber and Faber, 2012. — 560 p. In the summer of 1812 Britain stood alone, fighting for her very survival against a vast European Empire. Only the Royal Navy stood between Napoleon's legions and ultimate victory. In that dark hour America saw its chance to challenge British dominance: her troops invaded Canada and American frigates attacked British merchant shipping, the...
Faber & Faber, 2012. — 576 p. In the summer of 1812 Britain stood alone, fighting for her very survival against a vast European Empire. Only the Royal Navy stood between Napoleon's legions and ultimate victory. In that dark hour, America saw its chance to challenge British dominance: her troops invaded Canada and American frigates attacked British merchant shipping, the...
New York: US Naval Institute Press, 1989. — 319 p. This is a vast collection of information, fully illustrated with photos of models and contemporary engravings, outlining developments as they were made in the English man-of-war. Lifestyles, customs, and fighting tactics, and their relationship to changes in architecture and fittings, are also covered.
W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. — 152 p. — ISBN: 0393070093. There is no more famous a vessel in naval fiction than HMS Surprise, the principal ship in Patrick O’Brian’s much-celebrated Aubrey-Maturin series of novels. Yet, this 28-gun frigate also had an eventful real career serving in both the French and then the Royal Navies. It was captured from the French in 1796 and took...
Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. — 222 p. The Home Fleet of the Royal Navy was an important formation during World War II and James Levy tells the story of its history well. Levy reminds his readers of something that is quite easy to forget: naval operations were a critical element in determining the outcome of this war. The Royal Navy could not win the war, but they sure could lose...
Cambridge University Press, 2014. — 344 p. During World War I, British naval supremacy enabled it to impose economic blockades and interdiction of American neutral shipping. The United States responded by building "a navy second to none," one so powerful that Great Britain could not again successfully challenge America's vital economic interests. This book reveals that when the...
Book Rags Inc., 2011. — 302 p. The recent close of the nineteenth century has familiarized us with the thought that such an epoch tends naturally to provoke an estimate of the advance made in the various spheres of human activity during the period which it terminates. Such a reckoning, however, is not a mere matter of more and less, of comparison between the beginning and the...
Viking Press, Inc., 1971. — 582 p. Fertile as inspiration for fiction from Billy Budd to the Hornblower series, its history as related in detail by G.J.Marcus' The Age of Nelson is as exciting as any novel. Marcus concentrates on naval action but does not neglect either the human component or the broader canvas of social history. Behind it all, we see the deeper forces at work:...
Seaforth Publishing, 2015. — 351 p. This collection of thought-provoking essays by arguably the 20th century's greatest naval historian was first published in 1974, but their continuing relevance fully justifies this reprint. It opens with a stimulating reappraisal of the naval attack on the Dardanelles, the success of which would have made the disastrous Gallipoli land...
London: Ian Allan Ltd., 1983. — 128 p. — ISBN: 0-7110-1322-5. The wartime frigates. The conversions. The 1951 Frigate Programme. General purpose frigates. Gas turbines and guided missiles.
Pen and Sword Maritime, 2013. — 214 p. The author was Navigation/Gunnery Officer on SS Empire Baffin, a 6,978 ton cargo ship. Aged 31 years he compiled this remarkable diary of the dramas and disasters that befell Convoy PQ18 carrying essential war supplies from Great Britain to the Soviet Union. This story follows the movement of the cargo ships and their Royal Naval escorts...
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. — 231 p. Introduction: The Royal Navy and the British Atlantic The Royal Navy and Caribbean Colonial Society during the Eighteenth Century Ireland and the Royal Navy in the Eighteenth Century Another Look at the Navigation Acts and the Coming of the American Revolution The Royal Navy, the British Atlantic Empire and the Abolition of the Slave Trade At...
Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2006. — 256 p. Lord George Keith (1746-1823), a Scottish admiral who rose to prominence serving His Majesty from 1761 to 1815, ended his career by overseeing Napoleon's surrender in 1815. Born George Keith Elphinstone, Keith at one time or another held nearly every important command in the British navy, and his story illustrates the...
Seafort Publishing, 2020. — 272 p. Sovereign of the Seas was the most spectacular, extravagant, and controversial warship of the early seventeenth century. The ultimate royal prestige project, whose armament was increased by the King's decree to the unheard-of figure of one hundred guns, the ship finally cost the equivalent of ten more conventional warships. In this book, John...
Pen and Sword Maritime, 2011. — 352 p. Winston Churchill wrote, “The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.” Had the convoy link between North America and Britain been broken, the course of World War II would have been different. As it was, there was a period during the winter of 1942-43 when the Germans came close to cutting the North...
Brill Academic Publishers, 2010. — 465 p. This important new book provides the first detailed and clear analysis of the Scots involvement in naval warfare during the early modern period. The lazy use by both contemporaries and some modern authors of the word ‘piracy’ as a catch-all for all sorts of maritime activity obscures a complex picture of Scottish maritime warfare....
Harper Collins, 2005. — 341 p. In Seize the Fire, Adam Nicolson, author of the widely acclaimed God's Secretaries, takes the great naval battle of Trafalgar, fought between the British and Franco-Spanish fleets in October 1805, and uses it to examine our idea of heroism and the heroic. Is violence a necessary aspect of the hero? And daring? Why did the cult of the hero flower...
London, 1854. Pages: 190. Written in 1854, this biography of Admiral Exmouth was painfully researched. Exmounth's eldest brother along with several men who served with the admiral verified all of the incidents related in the book. Exmouth was a British naval officer who fought in the American War of Independence, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Exmouth earned his...
Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1922. — 192 p. This book is written for those who feel more than a passing interest in what is still our First Line of Defence ; to whom a ship should be a living entity, something to be recognised and understood with a little of technical knowledge and a memory of what has been and not merely to be regarded as a grey hulk of steel with a name. To...
Cambridge University Press, 2010. — 188 p. First published in 1928, this was one of the first in-depth studies to investigate why the English navy was unable to prevent William of Orange's invasion in 1688. Edward B. Powley argues that a combination of bad strategic choices as well as adverse weather, William's so-called 'Protestant wind', resulted in the Navy failing to stop...
New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. — 299 p. — ISBN: 0-393-03846-7. They had names like Arethusa, Iphigenia, and Imperieuse, dashing names “as long as the maintop bowline, and hard enough to break your jaw” (Captain Frederick Marryat). They inspired the creations of such heroic fictional captains as C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey....
Seaforth Publishing, 2010. — 224 p. Set up in August 1905, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary – unofficial motto: Ready for Anything – was originally a logistic support organization, Admiralty-owned but run on civilian lines, comprising a miscellaneous and very unglamorous collection of colliers, store ships and harbor craft. This book charts its rise in fleet strength, capability and...
Bivouak Books Ltd., 1973. — 54 p. — ISBN: 85680-003-1. Ensign No 2 covers the Dido class cruisers. With sixteen ships in the class it is not surprising that several have been somewhat neglected, while others such as the Dido have always attracted attention. We have attempted to remedy this state of affairs within this volume and although there are more photos for some than for...
Bivouak Books Ltd., 1973. — 54 p. — ISBN: 0856800082. The raison d'etre of the Southampton class cruisers (or Town class as they were later known) was very simple - a case of "keeping up with the neighbours". Their design history however' was quite complex, especially in the case of the later modified Town class. They were conceived in 1933 when it was learned that the Japanese...
RSV Publications, 1978. — 56 p. — ISBN: 0-85368-213-5. Monograph on this famous class of Royal Navy Heavy Cruisers conceived in the 1920s and which saw action much action in World War 2.
The History Press, 2013. — 256 p. World War I was the first real time in 100 years that the reputation of the British Royal Navy was put on the line in defense of the country. This book tells of the creation and development of the Grand Fleet under the drive of the energetic and charismatic admiral of the fleet, "Jacky" Fisher, who modernized the navy with the introduction of...
This fundamental work was created by the Commander of the Engineering Forces of the British Royal Navy and traces the development of weapons of warships (smooth-bore and rifled) in the process of their evolution from sailing to screw-propelled. The work is extremely detailed and includes empirical assessments of various events over the past decades. The book is written in a...
Penguin, 2006. — 976 p. The Command of the Ocean describes with unprecedented authority and scholarship the rise of Britain to naval greatness, and the central place of the Navy and naval activity in the life of the nation and government. Based on the author's own research in a dozen languages over more than a decade, it describes not just battles, voyages, and cruises but also...
W. W. Norton and Company, 1999. — 692 p. Throughout the chronicle of Britain's history, one factor above all others has determined the fate of kings, the security of trade, and the integrity of the realm. Without its navy, Britain would have been a weakling among the nations of Europe, could never have built or maintained the empire, and in all likelihood would have been...
Great Britain, Seaforth Publishing, Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 2013. — 208 p. We often think of England in terms of Shakespeare's "precious stone set in a silver sea," safe behind its watery ramparts with its naval strength resisting all invaders. To the English of an earlier period - from the eighth to the eleventh centuries - such a notion would have seemed absurd. To them, the...
Naval Institute Press, 2018. — 432 p. Stephen Roskill's magnificent biography explains why Admiral David Beatty has come to be seen as Britain's last naval hero. His early promise led to fast promotion and he became the youngest admiral since Nelson. But that is only one part of the story and there are aspects of his character that were not entirely admirable. There were, and...
Pen and Sword Naval, 2014. — 352 p. Winston Churchill enjoyed two stints as First Lord of the Admiralty, at the start of the First World War and at the start of the Second War. He retained close interest in Naval matters, especially as the defeat of the U-boat menace was so vital in both wars to maintain the vital supplies so necessary for Britain’s war efforts. Indeed,...
Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. — 336 p. During the year between July 1588, when the Spanish Armada set sail from Spain and July 1589, when the survivors of the English counterpart of this fleet, the little-known English Armada, reached port in England, two of history's worst naval catastrophes took place. A great deal of attention has been dedicated to the former and precious...
Pen & Sword, 2011. — 192 p. Admiral Schofield’s accounts of the Taranto and Bismarck battles make for unforgettable reading. The author traces the development of British naval aviation from its early beginnings in 1912, through the First World War and the frustrations of the inter-war years. The November 1940 attack on the Italian fleet in its strongly defended base at Taranto...
New York: Atheneum, 1990. — 421 p. Early on the morning of October 21st, 1805, the British Fleet, commanded by Admiral Lord Nelson, encountered the French navy a few miles off the Spanish coast near Cape Trafalgar. As it became clear that a fight was inevitable, the French and English ships drew into battle formation. Aboard his flagship Victory, Nelson offered his famous...
Oxford University Press, 2012. — 197 p. When and why did the Royal Navy come to view the expansion of German maritime power as a threat to British maritime security? Contrary to current thinking, Matthew S. Seligmann argues that Germany emerged as a major threat at the outset of the twentieth century, not because of its growing battle fleet, but because the British Admiralty...
Ashgate, 2015. — 559 p. The intense rivalry in battleship building that took place between Britain and Germany in the run up to the First World War is seen by many as the most totemic of all armaments races. Blamed by numerous commentators during the inter-war years as a major cause of the Great War, it has become emblematic of all that is wrong with international competitions...
London, Franc Cass, 2004. - 281 p. Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham (1883-1963) was the best-known and most celebrated British admiral of the Second World War. He held one of the two major fleet commands between 1939 and 1942, and in 1942-43, he was Allied naval commander for the great amphibious operations in the Mediterranean. From 1943 to 1946, he was the First Sea Lord and a...
London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2005. — 223 p. This book adopts an innovative new approach to examine the role of maritime power and the utility of navies. It uses a number of case studies based upon key Royal Navy operations in the twentieth century to draw out enduring principles about maritime power and to examine the strengths and limitations of maritime forces as...
Osprey Publishing, 2005. — 225 p. The battle of Trafalgar (1805) lasted just five hours, yet those short hours forever shattered Napoleon's dream of adding England to his list of conquests. This book, written by a number of respected authors, examines not only the battle but also the characters and motivation of the men that fought in it, including the great commanders Nelson...
Naval Institute Press, 2014. — 400 p. In his groundbreaking work, In Defence of Naval Supremacy, Sumida presents a provocative and authoritative revisionist history of the origins, nature and consequences of the "Dreadnought Revolution" of 1906. Based on intensive and extensive archival research, the book strives to explain vital financial and technical matters which enable...
University of South Carolina Press, 1998. — 228 p. During the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), Great Britain's Royal Navy faced foes that included, in addition to American forces, the navies of France, Spain, and the Netherlands. In this operational history of a period that proved to be a turning point for one of the world's great naval powers, David Syrett presents a...
Pen & Sword Paperbacks, 1998. — 362 p. This is an up-to-date reference book for nav al historians and indeed, for anyone interested in Britain''s maritime history and heritage. It lists every battle honour awarded to ships of the Royal Navy and gives an account of the action concerned. An invaluable and up-to-date reference book listing every battle honour awarded to ships of...
Osprey Publishing, 2012. — 285 p. Drawing on hundreds of eyewitness accounts and convoy veterans and personal research in the Russian naval archives in Murmansk, the author reconstructs the history of the polar convoys. Hitler called Norway the “Zone of Destiny” for Nazi Germany because convoys from Churchill's Britain and Roosevelt's United States supplied Stalin's Soviet...
Naval War College Press, 1983. — 249 p. — (Observations of the British Home Fleet from the Diary, Reports, and Letters of Joseph H. Wellings, Assistant U.S. Naval Attache, London, 1940-1941). This Memoirs and papers of U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Joseph H. Wellings (1903-1988), who served in London during 1940-1941 as Assistant U.S. Naval Attache. This large collection consists of...
Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005. — 525 p. Nelson - The New Letters, edited by Colin White, presents around 500 of the most important letters uncovered during the course of the epic Nelson Letters Project, a five year search of archives throughout the world. Dating from 1777 and including the earliest extant Nelson letter, this collection shows us both Nelson the officer and...
Boydell Press, 2004. — 257 p. The Royal Navy, prominent in building Britain's maritime empire in the eighteenth century, also had a significant impact on politics, public finance and the administrative and bureaucratic development of the British state throughout the century. The Navy was the most expensive branch of the state and its effective funding and maintenance was a...
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2014. — 720 p. The longest story of British Royal Navy is nothing less than the story of Britain, our culture and our empire. Much more than a parade of admirals and their battles, this is the story of how an insignificant island nation conquered the world's oceans to become its greatest trading empire. Yet, as Ben Wilson shows, there was nothing...
Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing, 2005. — 371 p. At the zenith of its power in 1809 the Royal Navy comprised one half of all the warships in the world, the first (and last) time any navy achieved this dominance. Given its importance, it is not surprising that much attention has been lavished on this subject, but among the numerous books on the design, development and technical...
Seaforth Publishing, 2007. — 400 p. — ISBN: 978-1844157006. The new Hanoverian dynasty that came to power with the accession of George I in 1714 inherited the largest navy in the world. In the course of the century, this force would see a vast amount of action against nearly every major navy, reaching a pinnacle of success in the Seven Years War only to taste defeat in the...
Pen and Sword Maritime, 2008. — 224 p. A distinguished British maritime writer, Woodman offers a compelling reassessment of the British and German planning that led to the first and one of the most famous naval battles of World War II. The dramatic sea fight between the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee and the British cruisers Exeter, Ajax, and Achilles off the coast...
Robinson Publishing, 2002. — 416 p. Extraordinary maritime heroes of the late 18th and early 19th centuries stride across these pages - some, like Warren, Pellew, Cochrane and Collingwood, are still renowned; others are almost unknown today, yet their brilliant exploits deserve to be pulled from under the long shadow of the greatest naval figure of all, Horatio Nelson. The...
Maritime Books, 1986. — 160 p. Naval mine clearance was originally done by whatever type of vessel could easily be adapted to the task, paddle steamers proving particularly suited due to their shallow draught. In both World Wars naval trawlers were used, as they were naturally suitable for wire sweeping. In World War II this task was given to smaller trawlers of about 300 tons,...
Pen and Sword, 2009. — 252 p. Above the Waves is the history of the first century of British Naval aviation, with personal accounts adding colour to the achievements both in technology, such as angled flight decks, mirror deck landing systems, helicopter assault and vertical take-off, and in operations, including the sinking of the Konigsberg and the daring attack on the...
Pen and Sword Maritime, 2015. — 304 p. On the declaration of war in 1939, the British Admiralty signaled all warships and naval bases: Total Germany. It was fortunate that of Germany’s three armed services, the Kriegsmarine, under Grosser-admiral Erich Raeder, was the least well prepared. They had not expected to fight all-out war for another two to three years. While Admiral...
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