The first news of the Battle of Jutland in 1916 startled the British public, who had looked forward to an emphatic victory at sea. Geoffrey Bennett asks, what exactly happened in the course of this momentous and controversial engagement?
In the wars with France from 1745 to 1815, writes Richard C. Saxby, the French naval base was blockaded from English Channel ports miles to its leeward.
Christopher Hibbert describes how the people of Malta revolted against their Napoleonic garrison and, with British and Neapolitan aid, became a British Mediterranean dependency.
At the close of the First World War, writes David Woodward, German Sailors were the forerunners of general revolt against the imperial system.
Richard Freeman asks whether public hysteria in wartime Britain helped fend off an attack, while public apathy in America help to precipitate one.
The month before Trafalgar, the Duke and the Admiral had a singular encounter.
Christopher Lloyd describes how Hawke’s victory over the Brest Fleet, on November 20th 1759, destroyed the last possibility of the French gaining the supremacy at sea necessary for their projected invasion of Britain.
Under the terms of the Armistice, writes Geoffrey Bennett, the ships of the German High Sea Fleet were interned and not surrendered. Hence they were manned by their own crews, who eight months later were able to carry out “an act of treachery.”
During the earliest phase of World War I, writes Robert Hessen, an enterprising American industrialist helped to turn the tide of naval warfare.
Between 1798 and 1800, writes Geoffrey Bennett, a Russian fleet co-operated with the British in the Mediterranean.
