Naval History

This work by Robert Gardiner and Brian Lavery (who is also the author of the Shield of Empire book) is fully dedicated to the history of the sailing warships in the period stated on the front page. It belongs to the very popular Conway's History of the Ship series and will be of great use for people interested in the naval history and the warships of the past.

The book contains excellent illustrations and so many drawings, photographs and tables providing detailed information and will serve as the good reference source for enthusiasts. In addition to the main fourteen chapters, the publication also contains the Glossary for easier understanding of the terminology. The content of the publication has been restricted to the historical period between 1640 and 1840, i.e. to the time where sail was considered the major motive force for the vessels.

The book has been found to be one of the best volumes available today to provide readers with a concise yet comprehensive historical overview of sailing combat together with the detailed technical information on the sailing ships that used to make up the line of battle, as well as the supporting vessels. The text of the book is excellent and filled with additional supplementary materials, such as twenty-five data tables, and nearly two hundred ship drawings and photos. One of the best sources for the people willing to get a detailed account of the technologies that shaped the history of the mankind.

My interest in Armstrongs began in 1944 when I bought a copy of the 1903 edition of Janes Fighting Ships. In the Italian section was a photograph of a cruiser, the "Piemonte". with a description which included the statement that she was one of the earliest Elswick cruisers and that she was the most heavily armed vessel for her size in the world. Intrigued, I found other Elswick cruisers in the volume and comparing them with their Royal Navy equivalents they seemed better gunned, speedier and better looking.

Twenty four years later it occurred to me that a description of these ships might be the basis for two or three articles in the recently founded "Warship International". I wrote to Vickers for more information and eventually I found myself in correspondence with P H Judd, the Chief Naval Architect (merchant ships) who had access to a mass of archival material giving details about Armstrong ships including dates and dimensions together with a number of photograph albums. Eventually a series of articles were published in "W.I." dealing with Armstrong cruisers and other types. They were mostly bald descriptions with little account of the political climate in which they had been built, nothing about their design history and only a sketchy summary of their careers.

Apart from Judd's personal information, based on Armstrong records, all sources were secondary. A few years ago I was contacted by the late David Topliss, then a mature undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, who was engaged in writing the complex and fascinating story of the "Rio de Janeiro". From him I learnt that J. D. Scott, Vickers' historian, had deposited a large amount of Armstrong material in the University Library, most valuably the Elswick Yard Report Books running from 1883 to January 1913, containing bi-monthly reports to the directors on the progress of warships building in the yard. But why bother to write about a firm which ceased to build warships in 1927, of which possibly only one survives, while not even the shipyards and the works which built and armed them remain?..

One finds a very limited number of events in history that not only encapsulate the spirit of an age, but tremble on the edge of possibility: That Troy, whose topless towers stirred the West's first and greatest epic verse, could actually be found and excavated; that, on a Christmas night in the midst of the worst trench warfare the world had vet seen. British and German troops could gather together, exchanging whiskey and cigars; that three or four small rips in her hull could bring the unsinkable Titanic to the bottom of the ocean in little more than two hours.

The Arctic—where time itself is among the things susceptible to freezing—where, as the inimitable Rudolf Erich Raspe described in his Munchausen tales, sentences spoken in the winter could not be heard until they thawed out the next summer—has seen more than its share of such tales. Writers of fiction and poetry have found it an ideal landscape in which to unfold the extremities of human endeavor; the efforts of a man "to build a fire" in Jack London's story of that name, or the comfort found in a fiery furnace by the eponymous hard-luck prospector of Robert W. Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee." could, it seems, have happened nowhere else.

And yet it is the Arctic, more than any other place upon Earth, where the adage that 'Truth is stranger than fiction" finds its most dramatic embodiment, and as the great number of recent books on Arctic explorers testifies, the romance of those "unknown regions of eternal frost" remains strong to this day...

HMS Crescent was the flagship of Rear Admiral Dudley Rawson Stratford de Chair, CB, MVO, commanding the 10th Cruiser Squadron, the 'Northern Patrol'. whose task was to prevent the passage of enemy warships and merchant shipping between Iceland and the north of Scotland, and to intercept contraband on board neutrals.

This extract from an official account of the events of 11 November 1914 described how the sea conditions west of Shetland forced the Squadron to heave-to. HMS Edgar was also damaged, besides losing a seaman overboard. De Chair gave an extended and more graphic description of this event in a posthumous memoir.

Crescent was a protected cruiser, completed at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1893, with her 'sister' ship. Royal Arthur Crescent displaced 7.700 tons: she was 387 feet long, with a beam of 60 2/3 feet, and she had three-cylinder, triple-expansion engines which developed 12.000 horse power and 19 1/2 knots. She was aimed with one 9.2-inch, and twelve б-inch 21ms with others of smaller calibre, and two 18-inch torpedo tubes.

Her complement was 520-550 officers and men. The other members of the 10th CS. the eponymous Edgar. Endytnion. Grafton and Theseus, were of similar vintage and design, but with two 9.2-inch and ten 6-inch guns. One, Hawke, was torpedoed and sunk in the North Sea by U-9 on 15 October with the loss of 560 lives...

An excellent and very interesting reading, elected the best book of Amazon resource in June 2015 and also one of the best books of same year by Chicago Tribune. The book by Robert Kurson is a thrilling adventure, a mix of danger, historic mystery and suspense. We can say that one of the most difficult things to do under the surface of the sea is to find and identify a pirate vessel.

Two men - John Mattera and John Chatterton - are risking everything trying to find the famous ship of the infamous pirate of the past, Joseph Bannister, called the Golden Fleece. In the Golden Age of Piracy - in the XVII century - he should have been immortalized in the lore of the sea... The book is face-paced indeed and filled with suspense, it is a really unputdownable story going so deep to discover souls and truths long believed lost.

The book shall be highly recommended to all readers delighting in sea adventures. The readers all around the world have highly rated this book and found it to be a non-fiction volume with the trademarks of an excellent and fascinating sea novel, saying that the narration presented by the authors was just as engrossing as the subject of the book. What the author did is that he took all his professional knowledge of the whole underwater world and applied it to the famous Golden Age of Piracy, and this has resulted in a great thriller.

The Outlaws of the Atlantic is one of the most popular publications on the naval history touching so dramatic world of the maritime adventures. Written by the award-winning naval historian, the book literally turns the marine industry upside down - it shows the history from the viewpoint of commoners - pirates, sailors, slaves and other outlaws of the sea from late XVII to the early XIX century.

With a keen eye for these characters, the author shows how the maritime actors shaped the history. The reader will know how merchant sailors organize, inspired and maintained the democratic structures both outside and within the laws at the time. It all resulted in the book exploring the maritime history "from below". According to the readers review, this book is really awesome and containing huge number of information that would be very difficult in other ones. A great reading for all people interested in naval history and very informative source from a very well known and world respected historian.

The readers will definitely enjoy the background history of the present volume providing them with the detailed information on how the merchant seafarers used to organize, inspire and maintain the democratic structures within and also outside the laws for more than three centuries. In fact, this volume presents an excellent collection of the specific historical papers.

All historians who have been involved in the researches of the Mediterranean has paid particular attention to the historical period between 1450 and 1700, and there was a good reason for that. In the early modern centuries, navigators adopted the small vessels and sailing techniques in use at those times to change the whole character of maritime trade together with the naval warfare.

The changes occurred in the competitions marking the Mediterranean seafaring have been considered equally important. After centuries of dominating of the Orthodox Christian and Latin powers in the region, the subsequent rise of the Empire of Ottomans did lead to the great clash between two most powerful human civilizations, namely Christian and Muslim. Subject struggle involved a whole set of religious, cultural, political and commercial aspects, with the diverse people of the Mediterranean region being the major players at first...

The historical overview presented in this publication will trace all the associated developments, mainly relying on the historical scholarship focusing on the early modern period of Mediterranean region. The list of topics covered by the author includes the navies and the Mediterranean in different historical periods including the early modern period mentioned above, era of the world wars, and others; note that the contemporary issues of the maritime strategy and policy in the region have also been addressed in detail.

This remarkably detailed book is a very good source of information to be used for the naval history enthusiasts who will definitely enjoy the story of one of the most famous Naval Officers in the whole history who served in the Submarine Service. The author of this publication has a life-long interest in the naval history and particularly the VC, standing for the Victoria Cross award - he spent much time with the British Royal Navy and either wrote or contributed in a number of maritime publications - he was quite fortunate to be given an opportunity to research the naval life of Rear Admiral Godfrey Place VC - in the present volume he starts as the Lieutenant in command of X7 submarine.

The content of this interesting publication written by Paul Watkins is supplemented with the thirty-six black and white photos placed together somewhere in the middle part of this book. The author offers its readers a truly great story of this remarkable Naval Officer. It shall be taken into account that the content of this volume has been prepared mainly on the basis of the relevant information taken from the sources not published earlier, and the list of references includes the author's personal recollections on the attack done on the Tirpitz and also in prison.