Centred upon a man who never participated in combat operations during his sixty-year naval career, this volume depicts the routine peacetime operations of the mid-Victorian Royal Navy, operations that have received short shrift in naval histories, even though they have constituted the bulk of the service’s mission during the past two centuries. Not surprisingly, the… Read Abstract »
By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the seven home dockyards of the British Royal Navy employed a workforce of nearly 16,000 men and some women. On account of their size, dockyards add much to our understanding of developing social processes as they pioneered systems of recruitment, training and supervision of large-scale workforces. From 1815-1865… Read Abstract »
This seventh volume of Naval Miscellany contains documents which range in date from the late thirteenth century to the Korean War. They illustrate the many different ways in which the naval forces of the crown have served the realm. Topics covered include the role of ships in campaigns against Scotland under Edward I and Edward… Read Abstract »
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 Abstract »
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 Abstract »
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 Abstract »
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 Abstract »
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.
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 Abstract »
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 Abstract »
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 Abstract »
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 Abstract »
This post presents Part III of a series of excerpts from the fascinating diary of Samuel Hobbs. Part I described his experience of the ....
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This post presents extracts from Robert Barrie’s letters home to his mother, written whilst on station as Senior Naval Officer of ....
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‘…leaving the [European] company in doubt whether the scene had actually passed before them, or was a Dream…’ In 1829 the British ....
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This article presents a variety of diary excerpts and images from the diaries of Surgeon Captain Robley Browne that illustrate ....
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