Books

Monson was a late-Elizabethan seaman and naval commander, retired under a cloud in 1616, who occupied his retirement in composing a number of works on naval affairs. Very miscellaneous notes and memoranda, on the duties of various, officers, organization of ships, exploration and discovery, and many other subjects.

This contains documents that date from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The three for the sixteenth century include English piracy against the Spaniards, a Scottish document about a ship getting under way and the taking of the Madre de Dios in 1592. Two documents from the seventeenth century are a description by Rear Admiral… Read Abstract »

These are not for the most part shanties, but ballads about (and in many cases by) sailors and their exploits, from the fourteenth century to the nineteenth, with a learned introduction on their historical value. The tunes are named, but the music is not printed

The views put forward by Corbett in this collection have now been partly discredited, but the collection itself remains of fundamental importance for the study of British naval tactics. It includes both Fighting Instructions in the strict sense, and various orders and memoranda explanatory of them.

This was the first of the Miscellany volumes and while it contains documents from the sixteenth century to the turn of the nineteenth century, the majority relate to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Of the two sixteenth century documents, one relates to French warship signals and the other is a narrative of the Cadiz… Read Abstract »

This was the first of the Miscellany volumes and while it contains documents from the sixteenth century to the turn of the nineteenth century, the majority relate to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Of the two sixteenth century documents, one relates to French warship signals and the other is a narrative of the Cadiz… Read Abstract »

Monson was a late-Elizabethan seaman and naval commander, retired under a cloud in 1616, who occupied his retirement in composing a number of works on naval affairs. This volume continues Monson’s history from the Islands Voyage of 1597 to the end of the war in 1603, and adds various short pieces on naval strategy and… Read Abstract »

Monson was a late-Elizabethan seaman and naval commander, retired under a cloud in 1616, who occupied his retirement in composing a number of works on naval affairs. In this volume are Monson’s accounts of the naval operations from Drake’s voyage of 1585 to the Cadiz Expedition of 1596. Oppenheim’s introductions amount to a detailed nava1… Read Abstract »

This was the first of the Miscellany volumes and while it contains documents from the sixteenth century to the turn of the nineteenth century, the majority relate to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Of the two sixteenth century documents, one relates to French warship signals and the other is a narrative of the Cadiz… Read Abstract »

This volume stands immediately before Laughton’s on the Spanish Armada. It prints the major English documents relating to Drake’s voyage to the West Indies in 1585-86, and his expedition to Cadiz in 1587. To these are added an important collection of papers describing English naval administration, and in particular John Hawkins’ part in it, the… Read Abstract »

The documents are French as well as English, drawn from a variety of sources, the French papers printed in the original language with English abstracts.    

More accurately, the reigns of Richard III and Henry VII: this prints two books of accounts of successive Clerks of the Kings Ships; Thomas Roger’s for 1485-88 and Robert Brygandyne’s for 1495-97. They present a detailed picture of naval administration, ships and their equipment at the end of the Middle Ages.