Maritime

Britons like to think that they all pulled together during the Second World War, but as Clive Emsley shows, some of the work force, in particular those employed in the nation’s ports, were just as likely to be pulling a fast one.

On 8 June 1940, British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious was sunk. Philip Weir revisits the controversy surrounding the mysterious events of that fateful day.

Chiefly remembered as Darwin’s captain on HMS Beagle, Robert FitzRoy’s life was eventful – and ultimately tragic.

Robin Bruce Lockhart traces the development of Russia's fleets, from the Napoleonic era to the Soviet period.

On the morning of October 21st, 1805, writes Christopher Lloyd, Nelson’s crushing defeat of the combined naval forces of France and Spain won for Britain an unchallenged mastery of the seas that was to last for over a hundred years.

Greenwich has for centuries been associated with the Royal Navy, and from 1705 until 1869, writes Richard Ollard, the Royal Naval Hospital was the home of pensioned veterans.

C.R. Boxer describes how the cultivated Viceroy of Portuguese India, on his way home from Goa, had a costly misadventure in the Indian Ocean.

Britain’s contribution to the First World War was not merely confined to the trenches. How did the Royal Navy experience Christmas 1914?

N. Merrill Distad describes how a merchant returned to London from his travels in Russia and the East to become a notable eighteenth-century philanthropist.