Books

The capacity of navies to influence world events through control of seaborne trade was profoundly affected by nineteenth-century developments in economic theory, commercial organization, and naval technology. In turn, these changing circumstances led, from the outbreak of the Russian war in 1854, to repeated attempts to rewrite the international law of belligerent rights at sea…. Read more »

Not once during 60 years of naval service did Admiral of the Fleet Sir Alexander Milne, Bt, KCB hear British guns fired in anger, yet on the basis of talents and abilities ideally suited to the century of the Pax Britannica, he numbers among the greatest officers of the post-Napoleonic-era Royal Navy. Milne was the… Read more »

Edited documents in this Naval Miscellany include the 14th-century repair of Bayonne Galleys, Armada correspondence, the building of Plymouth dockyard, letters of Admiral Collingwood, Nelson’s Public Order Book during his 1801 blockade of Boulogne, Louis Parsons’ journal 1882-1901, Captain Clayton’s letters from the Australia Station 1885-8, Dudley Pound’s Grand Fleet diary 1914-15, and HMS Aurora’s… Read more »

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…. 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 defence of trade has always been a priority for the Royal Navy. This volume details the operations of the squadrons deployed in South American waters amid the turmoil which began with the French occupation of the Iberian Peninsular and ended with the independence of Argentina, Chile, Peru and, eventually, Brazil. British trade, ships and… Read more »

Sir William Henry Dillon (1780-1857) was born in Birmingham, the illegitimate son of the distinguished writer and traveller John Talbot Dillon (1734-1806), a baron of the Holy Roman Empire. The elder Dillon had briefly served in the Royal Navy, apparently obtaining his discharge in a fit of pique after being ejected, when a midshipman, from… Read more »

The causes of the Second China War were complex; one factor went back deep into China’s past when the country was the predominant power in the Far East and had developed a civilisation that, culturally and technically, was far ahead of that of Europe. This gave them a superiority complex which they retained when the… Read more »

This volume contains letters and official despatches that mainly relate to the operations ashore by the ship’s companies of Shannon and Pearl during the Indian Mutiny of 1857-8. Both were engaged in numerous actions against the rebel forces and most notably in the campaign that led to the relief of Lucknow. To support these operations,… Read more »

The second Cabinet print of January 1856 deals with the naval campaign, excluding the work of the Naval Brigade ashore throughout the siege of Sevastopol. While the latter operation dominated the theatre Vice Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons’ fleet maintained an effective blockade of the Russian coast, secured the vital logistics lifeline that fed armed and… Read more »