Big Sky Publishing, 2023. — 540 p. HMAS Sydney was the pride of the fleet during the Second World War. A light cruiser and one of Australia’s main combat vessels. On the 19th November 1941, off the coast of Western Australia, The Sydney engaged in a fierce and bloody battle with the German raider Kormoran. Following this action, The Sydney failed to return to port. An extensive...
Routledge, 2024. — 159 p. This work is a close examination of the conditions surrounding and precipitating the last gasp of British naval hegemony and events which led to its demise. Great Britain undertook a massive naval building program in the late-1930s in order to deter aggression and secure dominance at sea against her nascent enemies, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. But...
Grub Street Publishing, 2021. — 288 p. Since the end of World War 2 the primary role of the Royal Navys Fleet Air Arm has been airborne power projection; the ability rapidly to respond to any trouble spot across the globe and to protect the interests of the United Kingdom and its partner nations. The principal tools in that response were the strike aircraft which took the...
Manchester University Press, 2016. — 314 p. Provides a new understanding of the Victorian engineering naval professions, and their rise within the British government and Royal Navy. The nineteenth-century Royal Navy was transformed from a fleet of sailing wooden walls into a steam powered machine. Britain’s warships were her first line of defence, and their transformation...
Air World, 2020. — 338 p. In 1948, Hawker Aircraft, faced with new jet projects that could not use their existing airfield at Langley, began the process of searching for alternative accommodation for their flight-testing requirements. It would, however, take three hard years before Dunsfold Aerodrome would be made available by a reluctant Air Ministry and the company was able...
Pen and Sword Maritime, 2007. — 224 p. The 200 years that separate the navy of Drake's day from that of Nelson were critical for the development of Britain's sea power, and the decade of the Commonwealth, of Cromwell's rule, is one of the turning points in the story. In the aftermath of a disastrous civil war and the execution of Charles I, the navy fought to defend the frail...
Yale University Press, 2022. — 416 p. The first account of Britain’s convoys during the Napoleonic Wars—showing how the protection of trade played a decisive role in victory. During the Napoleonic Wars thousands of merchant ships crisscrossed narrow seas and wide oceans, protected by Britain’s warships. These were wars of attrition and raw materials had to reach their shores...
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...
Osprey Publishing, 2009. — 320 p. "The fought like young Nelsons." The words of a schoolmaster, writing from aboard HMS Mars after the battle of Trafalgar, describing the valor of his pupils in the heat of battle. Made immortal by the novels of Patrick O'Brian, C. S. Forester and Alexander Kent, these boy sailors, alongside those of every other Royal Navy ship, had entered the...
Routledge, 2019. — 468 p. Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) made a significant contribution to British history by his work as a naval administrator, and he bequeathed to Magdalen College, Cambridge its greatest treasure – his library, a unique collection of 3,000 books and manuscripts, still preserved as he left it. There are 250 volumes of manuscripts and these NRS volumes published...
Seaforth Publishing, 2020. — 384 p. The Royal Navy's greatest contribution to the Allied success in World War II was undoubtedly the defeat of the U-boat menace in the North Atlantic, a victory on which all other European campaigns depended. The underwater threat was the most serious naval challenge of the war so it was not surprising that captured German submarine technology...
Archaeopress, 2017. — 135 p. For centuries inventors have been dreaming up schemes to allow people to submerge beneath the waves, stay a while then return again unharmed. The Resurgam was designed for this purpose, as a stealthy underwater weapon which was the brainchild of an eccentric inventor realised in iron, timber, coal and steam. The inventor was George William Garrett,...
Naval Institute Press, 2022. — 455 p. This important new reference work details all those ships and vessels of the Royal Navy, large and small, which were lost by accident or enemy action, during the twentieth century, from the end of the World War, to the last years of the century. In all, the fates of over 2,000 ships and small craft are covered, from aircraft carriers and...
Wagram Press, 2014. — 202 p. Includes 12 illustrations The name of Horatio Nelson still rings across the United Kingdom, and further afield, as a great and gallant naval hero worthy of remembrance through the ages, his statue still stands atop a lofty column in one of the busiest squares in the world. However Nelson was only one of many heroes that fought the French Navy during...
Yale University Press, 2023. — 352 p. A major new history of the Royal Navy during the tumultuous age of revolution. The French Revolutionary Wars catapulted Britain into a conflict against a new enemy: Republican France. Britain relied on the Royal Navy to protect its shores and empire, but as radical ideas about rights and liberty spread across the globe, it could not prevent...
Uniform Press, 2017. — 320 p. H-Bombs and Hula Girls tells the extraordinary tale of ten bright and cheerful young British midshipmen who were part of Operation Grapple, the top secret thermonuclear weapon tests at Christmas Island in 1957, the first successful test of a British nuclear weapon. Evoking the Cold War atmosphere of Britain in the 1950s as it raced to secure its...
Boydell Press, 2017. — 324 p. A comprehensive overview of the activities of the British navy in the Mediterranean from the earliest times until the present. This book presents a comprehensive overview of the activities of the British navy in the Mediterranean Sea from the earliest times until the twentieth century. It traces developments from Anglo-Saxon times, through the...
Osprey Publishing, 2019. — 144 p. Rigidly organised and harshly disciplined, the Georgian Royal Navy was an orderly and efficient fighting force which played a major role in Great Britain's wars of the 18th and early 19th centuries. This concise book explores what it was like to be a sailor in the Georgian Navy - focusing on the period from 1714 to 1820, this book examines the...
Pen and Sword Maritime, 2016. — 248 p. John D Grainger charts the careers of the thirteen vessels that have served the Royal Navy under the name HMS Shark. Despite the ferocious name, they have all been relatively small vessels including one brigantine, five sloops, one Sixth Rate, a gun vessel, four destroyers and a submarine. Collectively they therefore give a good...
Sapere Books, 2022. — 228 p. A full examination of the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm from the beginning of World War Two until final operations off Japan in August, 1945. Perfect for lovers of naval and aviation history. At the beginning of the Second World War the Royal Navy had only seven aircraft carriers and a couple of hundred obsolete aircraft. Six years later it had more...
Naval Institute Press, 2021. — 392 p. Genesis of the Grand Fleet: The Admiralty, Germany, and the Home Fleet, 1896–1914 tells the story of the prewar predecessor to the Royal Navy’s war-winning Grand Fleet: the Home Fleet. Established in early 1907 by First Sea Lord Sir John Fisher, the Home Fleet combined an active core of powerful armored warships with a unification of the...
Family Murray Trust, 2019. — 132 p. The only complete history of Australia's World War II fleet destroyer, HMAS Nepal. This book is a description of the service during World War II of the Australian fleet destroyer, HMAS Nepal, including the period when Allan's great-uncle, Bobby Forbes, was a crew member. The period 1939-1943 is the focus of Part One of this book, the time...
Routledge, 2004. — 305 p. Cunningham 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 1942-1943, 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 participant in the wartime conferences...
Endeavour Press, 2015. — 457 p. No man ever made his mark on the Navy the way that Lord Fisher did. He was unquestionably the greatest reforming admiral of all time and many of his changes were long-lasting. Some of his critics accused him of ill-thought out reforms carried out on the spur of the moment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Battle fleets of long-range and...
Charles River Editors, 2018. — 65 p. Before Trafalgar, Admiral Horatio Nelson had already earned enduring fame for the British victory at the Battle of the Nile. In 1798, he was given command of a small squadron and sent ahead to Gibraltar, and eventually given instructions to hunt down and destroy Napoleon’s fleet. An initial review of France’s naval forces had led Napoleon to...
Endeavour Press, 2016. — 372 p. A lean and hungry breed of warship, the battle cruisers burned their names deeply into the annals of sea-warfare. Fast and heavy-gunned, the battle-cruiser could overhaul and destroy anything at sea except the battleship. The brain child of Admiral Jacky Fisher, the battle-cruiser was intended to be light, fast, and able to avoid action with...
Pen and Sword, 2010. — 255 p. Revered naval theorist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, thought the Battle of Quiberon Bay (20 Nov 1759) was as significant as Nelson's victory in 1805, calling it 'the Trafalgar of this war [the Seven Years War]'. Arguably it was even more vital. Britain in 1759 was much less well-defended, with virtually no regular troops at home, and the threat of French...
University of Toronto Press, 1985. — 384 p. Milner focuses primarily on the series of bitter and tragic battles fought by the RCN in the mid-Atlantic during the latter half of 1942. North Atlantic Run fills an important gap in the historiography of wartime Canada and the war at sea.
University of New South Wales Press, 2010. — 314 p. — ISBN13 9781742231181. — ISBN10 1742231187. Launched in January 1944, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) Tribal Class destroyer HMAS Bataan entered service too late to see action in World War II. However, she went on to play a vital role in the Korean War, the conflict between the Soviet-backed forces of North Korea and China...
Seaforth Publishing, 2022. — 382 p. The Trafalgar Chronicle is the publication of choice for new research about the Georgian Navy, sometimes called ‘Nelson’s Navy’, though its scope includes all the sailing navies of the period from 1714 to 1837. The theme of the 2021 new issue is ‘Georgian Navy encounters with indigenous and enslaved populations’. The theme is particularly...
Canelo History, 2021. — 350 p. The Navy almost finished the career of Britain’s greatest wartime leader. As a young minister responsible for the senior service from 1911, Churchill ruffled feathers and gave scant regard for the feelings of the admirals. When disaster struck in the First World War, it was the navy that led to his political downfall. But when he returned to power...
Sapere Books, 2021. — 224 p. A comprehensive biography of one of the key architects of the modern British Royal Navy. During the course of over a sixty year career John Arbuthnot Fisher, commonly known as Jacky Fisher, tirelessly developed innovative tactics, powerful ships and pioneered new nautical technologies to ensure that Britain did not fall behind in the naval arms race...
Sapere Books, 2021. — 252 p. An engrossing biography of one of the most important naval leaders of the Second World War. Perfect for people who enjoy biographies of Chester W. Nimitz, Isoroku Yamamoto or other legendary World War Two admirals. After serving in the Boer War and World War One with distinction, Andrew Browne Cunningham, popularly known as ABC, served as...
University of Toronto Press, 2003. — 452 p. Jerry Bannister's "The Rule of the Admirals" examines governance in Newfoundland from the rule of the fishing admirals in 1699 to the establishment of representative government in 1832. It offers the first in-depth account of the rise and fall of the system of naval government that dominated the island for more than a century. In this...
Casemate, 2018. — 208 p. Jake Wright’s initiation to war was on the beach at Dunkirk, helping evacuate stragglers. Then volunteering for Motor Torpedo Boats, he served with valor throughout World War II, becoming one of only 44 officers in WWII to receive a DSC with two Bars. Derek Wright learned about small boats from his father, who tragically died when Derek was just 14...
Routledge, 2013. — 818 p. This is the first general selection from the substantial body of surviving documents about Elizabeth's navy. It is a companion to The Navy of Edward VI and Mary I (Volume 157 in the NRS Series), where the apparatus serving both volumes was printed, and it complements the other NRS volumes that deal specifically with the Spanish Armada. This collection...
Routledge, 2019. — 345 p. The articles collected here (two appearing for the first time in English) cover a number of topics central to naval history and illustrate the author's contention that this is not only, or even chiefly, a distinct area of special study, but rather a central theme running through the history of England, and of the whole British Isles. Though the...
I.B. Tauris and Company, 2014. — 388 p. Since 1900, the Royal Navy has seen vast operational changes. This book tells the story, not just of victory and defeat, but also of how the Navy has adjusted to a century of rapid technological and social change. The extensive reforms made by Admiral Fisher at the dawn of the twentieth century saw the navy's nineteenth-century wooden...
Pen and Sword Maritime, 2023. — 298 p. HMS Turbulent was a Royal Navy T-class submarine. From its launch in May 1941 to when it was lost at sea, along with its entire crew, in March 1943, it was responsible for the sinking of nearly 100,000 tons of enemy shipping. Besides the number of enemy vessels it sunk, HMS Turbulent has gone down in history for the attack on the Italian...
Pen and Sword Books, 2016. — 262 p. For three hundred years or more the Royal Navy really did Rule the Waves, in the sense that during the numerous wars with our overseas enemies, British fleets and individual ships more often than not emerged victorious from combat.
McGill-Queen's University Press, 1974. — 325 p. The financial impact of war in the eighteenth century upon the corps of naval officers has not been systematically studied. Nor have the opportunities of a naval career to exploit such sidelines as trade, money-lending, and land purchases in the colonies, where officers spent much of their time, been looked at carefully. The...
Heritage House, 2012. — 152 p. In late 1942, Britain was desperate to win the ongoing Battle of the Atlantic. German U-boats had sunk hundreds of Allied ships containing millions of tons of cargo that was needed to continue the war effort. Prime Minister Churchill had to find a solution to the carnage or the Nazis would be victorious. With the support of Churchill and Lord...
I.B. Tauris, 2016. — 250 p. The Seven Years War (1756-1763) was the first global conflict and became the key factor in creating the British Empire. This book looks at Britain's maritime strategic, operational and tactical success (and failures), through a wide-ranging history of the Royal Navy's role in the war. By the end of the war in 1763 Britain was by no means a hegemonic...
I.B. Tauris, 2014. — 250 p. The Royal Navy's operations in World War II started on 3 September 1939 and continued until the surrender of Japan in August 1945 - there was no 'phoney war' at sea. The navy played a central role in the evacuation of the retreating British army at Dunkirk, and later orchestrated the sinking of Germany's mighty battleship and Hitler's pride, the...
Pen and Sword, 2022. — 228 p. The story of the British Eastern Fleet, which operated in the Indian Ocean against Japan, has rarely been told. Although it was the largest fleet deployed by the Royal Navy prior to 1945 and played a vital part in the theater it was sent to protect, it has no place in the popular consciousness of the naval history of the Second World War. So...
Bloomsbury Academic, 2007. — 174 p. The press gang, and its forcible recruitment of sailors to man the Royal Navy in times of war, acquired notoriety for depriving men of their liberty and carrying them away to a harsh life at sea, sometimes for years at a time. Nicholas Rogers explains exactly how the press gang worked, whom it was aimed at and how successful it was in...
Tauris Academic Studies, 2010. — 332 p. Underhand and damned un-English' was the view of submarines in Edwardian Britain. However, by the 1960s new nuclear powered submarines were seen by the Royal Navy as being the 'hallmark of a first class navy'. This exciting new book explores the changing attitudes to the submarine in Britain from World War One to the age of nuclear...
Seaforth Publishing, 2023. — 200 p. The self-propelled or locomotive torpedo was probably the greatest game-changer in the history of naval warfare. For the first time the largest warship could be sunk by a weapon carried by the smallest, and most navies were quick to see the potential. Although the 19th-century Royal Navy had a reputation for technological conservatism, it was...
I.B. Tauris, 2018. — 288 р. The Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) was created in 1917, re-formed in 1938 and maintained after 1945. This book determines for the first time the reasons for the expansion and contraction of the service and the impact key individuals had on it and in turn the influence it had on its members. Hannah Roberts offers new insights into a previously...
New Edition. — I.B. Tauris, 2016. — 898 p. Much is known about Britain's role in the Atlantic slave trade during the eighteenth century but few are aware of the sustained campaign against slaving conducted by the Royal Navy after the passing of the Slave Trade Abolition Act of 1807. Peter Grindal provides the definitive account of this little known yet important part of the...