Books

The two pieces of work which make up this volume were compiled by Pepys in the 1660s. The first is Pepys’s own record of how the Navy Board functioned. It records details of meetings with fellow officers such as Sir William Penn and Sir John Mennes, and how work could be hampered at times by… Read more »

To celebrate its centenary in 1993, the Society produced a special volume covering seven hundred and fifty years of British naval history, containing 535 documents carefully selected by leading experts. See the contents of British Naval Documents 1204-1960. View PDF

This edition contains documents from the seventeenth century to the Second World War. There is additional material to complement NRS Volume 116 from the Commission of Enquiry in 1608, an account of the Earl of Warwick’s voyage to the Mediterranean in 1627 and documents relating to the management of the Royal Dockyards between 1672 and… Read more »

How should the Royal Navy be manned? Was impressment the best answer to this question? Was the seizure of men off the streets by Press Gangs acceptable to a freedom-loving society? What was the alternative? This issue provoked considerable debate, especially with reference to the Georgian and Victorian Navy, and attracted the attention, not only… Read more »

The decade with which this volume deals saw the Navy was emerging from its adolescence, begun under Henry VIII and continued under Elizabeth, into an adulthood where a permanent fleet was maintained by the Crown with an established administration to oversee it. It developed into the largest state enterprise, indeed the largest organisation in the… Read more »

In 1666 Prince Rupert and George Monk, Duke of Albemarle were appointed by Charles II to a joint command of the fleet that had been engaged in the Second Dutch War, fought largely at sea, for five years without either side gaining much advantage. The appointment of two men to share a single responsibility is… Read more »

In the struggle between King and Parliament (1642-1648), naval power played a decisive role. Although the first two Stuart Kings took a keen and practical interest in the Navy -building ships, repairing shipyards, raising money though the controversial Ship Money taxation – ordinary seamen in the service of the monarch frequently found themselves without pay,… Read more »

This volume presents a selection of documents dealing with the administration of the Navy in the years 1702 to 1714. It can be seen as a sequel to The Sergison Papers (NRS volume 89) which drew on similar material about the administration of the Navy in the years 1689 to 1702. Much of the material… Read more »

The episode that is the subject of this volume occurred during the War of the Spanish Succession. At the time that Marlborough had completed his successful campaign in Europe, the Secretary of State for War, Henry St John, had for some time been under pressure to help the colonial forces in northern America and the… Read more »

Published in this volume are various Spanish documents concerning the Armada; a journal of one of Blake’s officers in the mid seventeenth century; Boscawen’s letters to his wife; the account of a Swedish officer who served in the French Navy during the Seven Years War; selections from the Hood papers regarding Prince William’s service in… Read more »

Charles Sergison (1654-1732) had a long and honourable career with the Navy Board in which organisation he rose to become Clerk of the Acts, the Principal Officer and Commissioner responsible for the Board’s secretariat. He occupied this position for nearly thirty years from early 1689/90 to his retirement in 1719. On leaving office he retained… Read more »

The Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-1674) at sea formed part of the greater conflict between France and England against the Dutch, in which the naval campaign was fought in conjunction with a major land offensive, leading to an invasion of the Netherlands by France. The war at sea saw English and French fleets both trying hard… Read more »