John Knox Laughton created modern naval history to harmonise the adacemic standards of the new English historical profession with the strategic and doctrinal needs of the contemporary Royal Navy. His correspondents included major figures in both the historical and the naval professions: Alfred T. Mahan, Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Julian Corbett, Cyprian Bridge and many others. This volume will be of particular interest to those interested in the development of naval history and naval theory.

John Knox Laughton created modern naval history to harmonise the adacemic standards of the new English historical profession with the strategic and doctrinal needs of the contemporary Royal Navy. His correspondents included major figures in both the historical and the naval professions: Alfred T. Mahan, Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Julian Corbett, Cyprian Bridge and many others. This volume will be of particular interest to those interested in the development of naval history and naval theory.

'Fascinating . . . Shot through with fresh insights . . . No previous biography has attempted anything so comprehensive.' ObserverNelson is a thrilling new appraisal of Horatio Nelson, the greatest practitioner of naval command the world has ever seen. It explores the professional, personal, intellectual and practical origins of one man's genius, to understand how the greatest warrior that Britain has ever produced transformed the art of conflict, and enabled his country to survive the challenge of total war and international isolation. In Nelson, Andrew Lambert - described by David Cannadine as 'the outstanding British naval historian of his generation' - is able to offer new insights into the individual quality which led Byron rightly to celebrate Nelson's genius as 'Britannia's God of War'. He demonstrates how Admiral Nelson elevated the business of naval warfare to the level of the sublime. Nelson's unique gift was to take that which other commanders found complex, and reduce it to simplicity. Where his predecessors and opponents saw a particular battle as an end in itself, Nelson was always a step ahead - even in the midst of terrifying, close-quarters action, with officers and men struck down all around him. 'Excellent . . . Worthy of the stirring events [it celebrates].' Independent

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 (Vol.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 concentrates (though not exclusively so) on the early years of Elizabeth’s reign when there was no formal war. From 1558-1585 the navy was involved in a number of small-scale campaigns, pursuit of pirates and occasional shows of force. The documents selected emphasize the financial and administrative processes that supported these operations, such as mustering, victualing, demobilisation, and ship maintenance and repair. The fleet varied in size from about 30 to 45 ships during the period and a vast amount of maintenance and repair was required. The main component of the volume is the massively detailed Navy Treasurer's account for 1562-3 which is followed by and collated with the corresponding Exchequer Account. The documents illustrate just how efficiently the dockyards functioned. They were one of the great early Elizabethan achievements.

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 seas, and brought German society to the brink of famine. To further our understanding of these issues, this book looks at the background to the blockade, and the effects of its implementation in 1914. It argues that there was a widely shared, but largely unwritten, strategic culture within British naval circles which accepted that in a war with a major maritime power the British response would be to attack enemy trade. This is demonstrated by the fact that from at least the late 1880s the Royal Navy planned for the use of armed merchantmen to enforce an economic blockade of an enemy. This it did by entering into detailed arrangements with major British shipping companies for the design and subsidy of liners with the potential for use as merchant cruisers, and stockpiling their prospective armament. In line with the contemporary, Corbettian, view that seapower depends upon free communications, the book concludes by asserting that the primary role of the Grand Fleet in the First World War was to guarantee the ability of the merchant cruisers on the Northern Patrol to interdict German seaborne trade, rather than to engage in large set-piece battles.

The reigns of Edward VI and Mary I remain largely by-passed in naval history, yet it was a vital time for the administration of the navy and it saw the apprenticeship of many who would lead the service in Elizabeth's later years. This volume helps to fill the gap and includes all the extant Treasurer's and Victualler's accounts for the two reigns together with entries taken verbatim from the State Papers which augment the calendar summaries previously published, and correct a good many errors. In addition documents are printed here for the first time from a variety of archives in Britain and abroad.

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 vacuum of power in which different factions struggled for control or influence. In the Black Sea this involved the Royal Navy in intervention in 1919 and 1920 on the side of those Russians fighting the Bolsheviks. By 1920 the Allies were also faced with the challenge of the Turkish nationalists, culminating in the Chanak crisis of 1922. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne enabled the Mediterranean Fleet finally to return to a peacetime routine, although there was renewed threat of war over Mosul in 1925-1926. These events are the subject of the majority of the documents contained in this volume. Those that comprise the final section of the book show the Mediterranean Fleet back to preparation for a major war, applying the lessons of World War One and studying how to make use of new weapons, aircraft carriers and aircraft.

This book presents an account of the life of naval commander Andrew Cunningham, the best-known and most celebrated British admiral of the Second World War. It supplements Cunningham's papers by Cabinet and Admiralty records, papers of his service contemporaries and of Churchill.

This edited volume explores conscription in the Napoleonic era, tracing the roots of European conscription and exploring the many methods that states used to obtain the manpower they needed to prosecute their wars. The levée-en-masse of the French Revolution has often been cited as a ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’, but was it truly a ‘revolutionary’ break with past European practices of raising armies, or an intensification of the scope and scale of practices already inherent in the European military system? This international collection of scholars demonstrate that European conscription has far deeper roots than has been previously acknowledged, and that its intensification during the Napoleonic era was more an ‘evolutionary’ than ‘revolutionary’ change. This book will be of much interest to students of Military History, Strategic Studies, Strategic History and European History.

The account in this volume begins with Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham’s assumption of the First Sea Lordship on 5 October 1943, and concludes with the formal surrender of Japan on 2 September 1945. This volume is entitled Anglo-American-Canadian Naval Relations, 1943-1945, for the very good reason that, by the end of the war, the Royal Canadian Navy was the third largest in the world, after its two great partners, and Canadian naval and air forces played a major role in anti-submarine warfare in the Atlantic, and rendered important service also in other theatres. The period covered by this volume was the time in which victory was forged and the three major Allies enjoyed an almost unbroken series of maritime triumphs. In Part I, the relationships of the senior commanders, their services and their countries are discussed. Part II deals with the last stage of the fight against the U-boats, a war which by 1943 had spread to most of the world’s seas. Part III deals with the Western Allies’ eventual return to North West Europe. In Part IV, the final operations in the Mediterranean, including the landings in Southern France and at Anzio in Italy, are covered. Part V recounts the participation of the British Pacific Fleet in the concluding operations against Japan.