Book Reviews - Canadian Nautical Research Society...first USN unit to receive fighter aircraft. In Osprey Aircraft of the Aces # 125: F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat Aces of VF-2, the

Book Reviews

Donald Barry, Bob Applebaum, and EarlWiseman. Fishing for a Solution. Canada’sFisheries Relations with the EuropeanUnion, 1977-2013. Calgary, AB: Universityof Calgary Press, www .uofcpress.com,2014. xvi+178 pp., maps, tables, notes,appendices, bibliography, index. CDN$34.95, paper: ISBN 978-1-55238-778-8.(Co-published with the Centre for Militaryand Strategic Studies)

Fishing for a Solution by Donald Barry,Bob Applebaum and Earl Wiseman shedslight on one of the twentieth century’s mostinteresting chapters in international fisherieshistory, the development of the fisheriesrelationship between Canada and theEuropean Union (EU) following theextension of the Canadian fisheries limit to200 nautical miles (nm).

Co-authors Bob Applebaum and EarlWiseman are former high-ranking officialsof the Canadian Department of Fisheriesand Oceans (DFO) and Donald Barry isProfessor Emeritus of Political Science atthe University of Calgary. Their bookshould be understood as an historical re-flection on the development of Canada-EUfisheries relations by former actors andstakeholders, rather than a traditional pieceof scholarly historical analysis. Theseparticular authors are both the main strengthof the book and also its main weakness. They are, without any doubt, well qualifiedto discuss the topic, but, having beenactively involved in the issues described,

lack the critical distance from the subjectnormally required for an analytical historicalapproach. Furthermore, while the bookbenefits from the authors’ in-depthknowledge of the subject, it is characterizedby a clearly Canadian perspective ratherthan a neutral historical approach.

The book follows a chronological line,describing the main stages of EU-Canadianrelations post-1977along with relatedinternational or bilateral agreements, includ-ing access to fish stocks, tariffs and EUimport regulations for Canadian fisheriesproducts. Worth noting is how Canada wastaken by surprise when, after declaring the200nm fisheries limit, EU trawlers firstfished for their quotas inside the Canadianlimit, and then continued fishing for thesame stocks outside the Canadian limitinstead of returning to their homeports. While this was legal according to the lettersof agreement of the time, it was definitelyneither expected nor welcomed by Canada. This is a key example of the problems ofmodern international fisheries agreements. Unfortunately, the book mainly addressesnational fisheries policy rather thandiscussing developments on the companylevel; for example, the idea of building upEuropean (German)–Canadian jointventures. Integrating the history of theseworking-level developments into the storywould have provided a more nuancedpicture. Despite this, the book is a morethan welcome starting point and willhopefully help to initiate future historical

The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord, XXV (October 2015), 413-465

414 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord

research on topics like the proposed EU-Canada joint ventures.

Statistical data, an index and abibliography make the book an importantresearch tool for any historian interested inthe subject, even if the book itself containsmore historical reflection than historicalanalysis. The bibliography is somewhatlimited, as sources in languages other thanEnglish are rare, despite the relevance ofSpanish, Portuguese and German sources tothe topic.

Perhaps this reviewer’s sense of thebook’s incompleteness is simply the resultof an historian mainly interested in theEuropean (German) side of the develop-ments under discussion reviewing a bookwritten by Canadian authors for a largelyCanadian audience. That being said, theauthors’ efforts to draw attention to a periodthat has, so far, rarely caught the interest ofhistorians is much appreciated. The bookclearly explains that the extension of fishinglimits in the North Atlantic to 200nm didnot resolve all fishing conflicts but served asa turning point that resulted in new conflictsand regulatory challenges that will generatea rich catch for future generations offisheries historians.

Fishing for a Solution is a mostwelcome addition to the existing literatureon the history of the international fisheriesof the Northwest Atlantic, even though afinal historical analysis still needs to bewritten. Taking into account that the periodunder review is less than 50 years in thepast, footnotes referring to ‘confidentialinformation’ might have been unavoidable,but from an historian’s point of view, it isunsatisfactory, if not even unacceptable. Nevertheless, the book is recommended toany researcher interested in the fisheries

history of the North Atlantic and/or thedevelopment of Canadian fisheries policy. The questions it raises should be answeredby future generations of historians once theyhave access to the related sources that willno longer be ‘confidential information’.

Ingo HeidbrinkNorfolk, Virginia

Thomas McKelvey Cleaver. OspreyAircraft of the Aces # 125: F4F Wildcat andF6F Hellcat Aces of VF-2. Botley, Oxford:Osprey Publishing, Inc. , www.ospreypublishing.com, 2015, 96 pp. illus-trations, colour plates, appendix, index. UK£13.99, US $22.95, CDN $26.95; paper;ISBN 978-1-4728-0562-1.

U.S. Navy Fighter Squadron VF-2 was thefirst USN unit to receive fighter aircraft. InOsprey Aircraft of the Aces # 125: F4FWildcat and F6F Hellcat Aces of VF-2, theauthor tells the story of this historic aircraftunit between 1921 and 1944.

In reading this book, one thing must bekept in mind: the USN often dis-establishesunits and later reforms them with differentpersonnel. The new unit bearing the oldnumeric designation has no direct lineagewith the prior unit beyond the same number,though the new unit may (and frequentlydoes) choose to adopt the insignia,nickname, and traditions of the prior unit. From 1921 to 1945, VF-2 was formed, dis-established, reformed, dis-established again,reformed again, and dis-established after itslast combat tour in late 1944. Therefore,this book relates the story of three distinctsquadrons, each bearing the same number.

Book Reviews 415

The first VF-2 squadron was formed in1921 in San Diego, California, and wasoriginally named Combat Squadron Four. It gained the VF-2 designation the nextyear. For the next twenty years, VF-2 wouldbe in the forefront of USN carrier operationdevelopment. Flying biplanes for years, andthen upgrading to the Brewster F2A Buffalomonoplane, the first VF-2 flew off theUSN’s first aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Langley,and then U.S.S. Lexington. During thistime, VF-2 laid the groundwork for USNcarrier operations. When the Japaneseattacked the USN base at Pearl Harbor,Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, VF-2 was atsea aboard the Lexington. For the nextseveral weeks, VF-2’s pilots and airplanescarried out patrols with little combat. Experience with the F2A Buffalo indicatedthat the aircraft was not as good as itscontemporary, the Grumman F4F Wildcat. Therefore, in January, 1942, the first VF-2was dis-established. Many of its pilotsnever saw combat as the USN neededexperienced pilots to train the many pilotcadets that would see future combat in thePacific.

The second VF-2 was formed inJanuary 1942 and its pilots and aircraft wereonce again assigned to U.S.S. Lexington. This time, VF-2 saw combat: the USNcarried out several little-known combatoperations against Japanese installations inthe South Pacific and VF-2 and Lexingtonwere part of those operations. But thesecond VF-2 had a short lifespan: Lexingtonwas sunk during the Coral Sea battle in May1942. (It should be noted that many of thesecond VF-2’s pilots went on to distinguishthemselves during the remainder of theSecond World War and thereafter.)

The third VF-2 was formed a year later,

in June 1943, and it is this “version” of VF-2 that made combat history. The squadronwas originally equipped with the FM-2Wildcat (a variant of the F4F Wildcat) butwas soon re-equipped with the GrummanF6F hellcat—a larger, faster and morepowerful aircraft than the earlier Wildcat. By common consent, the Hellcat was thebest carrier fighter aircraft of the SecondWorld War.

After a period of training on the Hellcat,the third VF-2 went into combat inNovember 1943. From then until its returnto the USA in September 1944, the pilots ofVF-2 destroyed 506 Japanese aircraft—261aircraft in aerial combat and 245 Japaneseaircraft on the ground. When the one aerialvictory of the second VF-2 is added to thetotal, the two versions of VF-2 destroyed262 Japanese aircraft. This is all the moreremarkable when it is noted that VF-2 lostonly three Hellcats and nine pilots during itssecond combat tour—a victory-to-loss ratioof almost nine-to-one. In addition, 28 VF-2pilots shot down five or more enemyaircraft, which still stands as a USN recordfor the most aces in one squadron.

Cleaver’s history of this great squadronfollows the standard Osprey format of thisseries: a well-written narrative that includespilots’ accounts of their times with VF-2,even going back to the first VF-2 in the1930s. The book is heavily illustrated andthe personal accounts add much to thenarrative. As well, the colour sectioncontains plates of aircraft from all three VF-2s. The very colourful prewar schemes ofUSN biplanes are well-represented as is aF2A Buffalo in the bright pre-war colourscheme. The following plates of Buffalos,Wildcats, and Hellcats show the transitionto camouflage and the consequent wartime


USN colour schemes. These are valuablefor the modeller and historian. The authorindicates in the Introduction that VF-2 wasreformed a third time; its fourth versionwhich has seen action in recent years. Asidebar with a brief description of this latestVF-2 would have been helpful.

It would be tempting to dismiss thiswork as “just another Osprey book,” but theaccounts of the first and second versions ofVF-2 lift this above that trite designation. The chapter dealing with the first VF-2gives a wealth of information as to thedevelopment of USN carrier operations. The chapters dealing with the first andsecond versions of VF-2 contain detail onlittle-known post-Pearl Harbor USNoperations and a close look at the Coral Seabattle. The chapters on the third VF-2 havemuch information on Pacific War aerialcombat. For those reasons, this book isrecommended.

Robert L. ShoopColorado Springs, Colorado

D’Maris Coffman, Adrian Leonard, WilliamO’Reilly (eds.) The Atlantic World. London:Routledge, www.routledge .com, 2014. 726pp., illustrations, maps, notes, index. US$205.00, hard-back; ISBN 978-0-415-46704-9.

Few volumes can address the complexscope of the areas and peoples living alongthe Atlantic Ocean between the mid-fifteenth and the early twenty-first centuries. In The Atlantic World, D’Maris Coffman,Adrian Leonard, and William O’Reilly, allfaculty of the University of Cambridge,bring Atlantic world history to life in a

series of 35 articles. This hardcoveranthology consists of 726 pages divided intoeight parts, each of which is centred on animportant theme in Atlantic world history. Topics covered include exploration,immigration and emigration, culturalencounters, warfare and governance,finance and trade, commerce andconsumption, and the circulation of ideas. The notes and references after each articleare useful for those who wish to read moreon a particular topic. The volume issupplemented by two maps and 49 black-and-white images.

Coffman and Leonard begin chapterone by framing the debate over thedefinition of “Atlantic World” and thedifferent methodological approaches tounderstanding the past. The goal of thisbook is to avoid reductionism and Euro-centrism by including articles on overlookedtopics. To address relevant issues in thefield and avoid limiting explanations, theeditors chose an ecumenical approach whendeciding which articles to include, so thatthe book encompasses methodological,theoretical, thematic, and geographicdiversity. Even with the large number oftopics covered, the editors do not claim tohave produced a comprehensive guide toAtlantic history, but rather a volume thatsheds new light on topics that have beenpreviously ignored. Because there were nospecific criteria on the types of articlesincluded, however, there is little coherencyto the publication as a whole. A broadspectrum of interesting and uncommontopics is covered, but there is a lack of depthwithin each subject, unavoidable given theapproach of tackling each topic in a singlearticle. The Atlantic World is a pedagogicbook, and is most appropriate for advanced

Book Reviews 417

scholars. Longstanding debates in historyare touched upon and many chapters includejargon that may overwhelm those who arenovices in Atlantic history. This volumewould be most helpful for those who arealready interested in one of the books’topics and want an additional source. As advertised, the editors includearticles on unconventional subjects notpreviously covered. For example, SouthAfrica, Austria, and Morocco, which are notnormally included in Atlantic history, arediscussed in depth. Racism, or “colourprejudice”, during the French colonizationof Guadeloupe is explored from both theviews of both the French and the indigenouspeoples. And, while the more commonlycovered experiences of Catholics andProtestants are present, the editors alsoinclude articles on the rarely-mentionedexperiences of Jews and Muslims in theAtlantic world.

Familiar concepts are also re-exploredfrom new points of view. For example,slavery is discussed from several uniqueangles, such as the enslavement of Britonsby Barbary pirates. There are differentperspectives on the role of paper money inchanging the Atlantic world, maritimeinsurance, the effects of public taste on freetrade policies, fish and fisheries in the NewWorld, and endemic flora and fauna inNorth America. In addition, new methodsfor studying the Atlantic world are explored. For example, chapter twelve re-examinesAtlantic history by applying the knowledgeand methods used in Pacific world history. The book covers diverse and rare topics,adding new literature to the field, but thetopics covered seem to lack coherence. Thisbook is excellent for those looking forspecific articles on Barbary pirates or

fisheries in the New World for example, butis not recommended for those looking forcomprehensive coverage of life along theAtlantic coast.

Lastly, I find that reductionism andEurocentricity would have been betteravoided by ensuring more diversity withinthe contributors themselves. According tochapter one, “one can give greater weight toevents in one’s own Atlantic world thanthey merit in a broader context” (2). Yet,the majority of contributors appear to beWestern-educated, and all except for twoare affiliated with universities in the UnitedKingdom or a former British colony (e.g.United States, Australia, Canada, and SouthAfrica).

The editors’ joint efforts have yielded awealth of detail that will delight bothacademics and anyone with a scholasticinterest in the Atlantic world. Readers willbe able to enjoy the diverse approaches,methodological pluralism, and uniqueperspectives presented in this volume.

Grace TsaiThousand Oaks, California

David J. Freeman. Designs of Distinction:Unofficial Insignia of the RCN 1910-1948.Privately printed, 2015. 615 pp.,illustrations, charts, appendices,bibliography, indices. CDN $125.00, paper;ISBN 978-0-9940717-0-5. (Orders toinclude postage, via D.J. Freeman, 992Karen Crescent, Victoria, B.C., V8X 3C6,[email protected])

In 1984, Nimbus Publishing produced YogiJensen and Thomas Lynch’s small bookGun-shield Graffiti, an admirable selection


of the artwork that had appeared on aselection of RCN ships’ gunshields duringthe Second World War. Occasionally, otherunofficial badges have appeared inphotographs in various RCN histories, oftenjust in the background. In his new volume,Dave Freeman has once again produced aheavily-researched identification book thathas taken over 15 years to compile, acompanion for his earlier, very valuable,Canadian Warship Names (VanwellPublishing, 2000). This is a major leapforward from the introduction to unofficialRCN ships’ emblems in that GunshieldGraffiti. It also will serve as a supplementto the official DND publication Badges ofthe Canadian Forces (1965) and othersmaller booklets that depicted the officialbadges produced post-1948.

The list of the book’s sections alonewill indicate its scope. The notes onheraldry include the artists’ original designmodifications and Freeman’s efforts tomake the descriptions clearer for thoseunfamiliar with heraldic terms. TheWartime Designs section starts withgunshield artwork and front-of-the-bridgebadges, but expands to include blazer crests,boats’ badges, stationery, plaques, groupinsignia—whatever turned up or could befound. Next come notes on honours,unidentified designs, unsuccessful searchesfor reported badges and more. Non-shipbadges include those for NSHQ, schools,stations, WRCNS, DEMS, rugby teams, apay office—and other material generated bythe author’s appeals for submissions. Heidentifies the difference in crowns used,funnel markings used during the war forship groups, and in some cases, byindividual ships, missing badges, post-1948insignia derivations and changes. The

author concludes the 353 pages of badgeswith 9 appendices with such useful guidesas The Crow’s Nest Club in St. John’s; U-boat insignia (a descriptive table—flotillas,and a few boats with similar badges);insignia known but not found; painters anddesigners. There are three valuable indices: by people, by ships and a general index. This book is not only fascinating to leafthrough, but highly valuable for identifyingbadges.

Not all ships developed an insignia (myown Armed Yacht, HMCS Vison, forinstance!), but Freeman has not missedmany. He has even located insignia forsome of the later British-built Castle Classcorvettes, and has confirmed that he isalready accumulating an addendum forfuture use. Despite the high cost ofproducing a volume with so much colour, itwill undoubtedly produce more hiddengems as time goes on. The standard ofcolour reproduction is mostly excellent,except where Freeman had to rely on apoorer quality illustration, such as a distantphotograph, although he has manipulatedthese to the best of his considerableabilities.

The book’s value will be in identifyingcrew photographs otherwise not identified,by means of some fanciful depiction on acartoon figure, a Kisbie ring or ship’s badgein the background. Many ships, particularlythe destroyers and earlier vessels, have asm a n y a s f i v e d i f f e r e n tinsignia/badges/cartoons illustrated, oftenwildly different, ranging from gunshield artto blazer crests and other sources. HMCSCalgary has four, Iroquois has six, forexample. Freeman provides a descriptionfor each illustration, detailing source, material, a semi-heraldic description if it is

Book Reviews 419

in the form of a badge, date (if known) andoften a brief commentary as to location onthe ship, and the artist where known. Somebadges adhered closely to proper heraldicformat, while others, such as a cowboyriding stylized corvettes biting U-boats,were the subject of a painter’s or badge-maker’s imagination. Some are handsomeand evocative and were even carried over,in part, into the official post-war badges. Others are dull or simply anal, depicting thetraditional fouled anchor with a nameadded. Dawson and Wentworth, forinstance, simply carry that “normal” navalbadge within the oval of leaves with a nameunder it. All that surfaced from Freeman’sappeals for information.

The period covered ranges from HMCSNiobe and Rainbow of 1910 and other pre-First World War vessels, such as Vancouverand Thiepval, to post-Second World War;such as, the ships from Uganda (her RNbadge) to Armed Yachts in a couple ofcases; almost every early corvette; a fewMTBs and LCTs, 13 out of the 80 Fairmilescommissioned; Reserve Divisions (Hunterand Unicorn, even for one of the pre-warHalf Companies). HMCS Trentonian’sexample, a cloth blazer badge, was notproduced until 1990 for a reunioncommemorating the ship’s loss off the U.K.in February 1945—no wartime badge wasfound.

One example will give an ideas of howcomplete (and complex) a reference thiscompendium of insignia is. The 1944Castle Class corvette, Arnprior, has twobadges; one a suspected gunshield (fromYogi Jensen), and the other, a painted jacketpatch, described as:

“Within a diamond frame proper on ared field, a raised golden heraldic arm,

holding an arrow. At the bottom of the arm,the word PRIMUS in red letters on analternating blue and white striped pennant. On each side of the arm and below, threeblue maple leaves highlighted andfimbriated in gold. In the tally plate, theship’s name in black on a gold field. At thebottom of the naval crown, the ship’s title{HMCS} in black letters on a gold field.”The four designs for the next ship entry,HMCS Arrowhead, all contain variations onthe Indian chief’s headdress, on a gunshield,a sweatshirt and two jacket patches, andinclude their sources and a note on thecareer of one of the donors.

This is a fascinating collection insignia,but also, a wartime naval mini-history ofevents and memories. It will, likeFreeman’s earlier volume on ships’ names,be an essential reference for anyone tryingto source or date photos or other items withthe help of the appended notes. It is wellworth the cost to any researcher or seriousstudent of the RCN’s record.

F.M. McKeeToronto, Ontario

Norman Friedman. Fighting the Great Warat Sea. Strategy, Tactics and Technology.Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,www.nip.org, 2014, 416 pp., illustrations,maps, notes, bibliography, index. US$85.00, cloth; ISBN 978-1-59114-188-4.

The secondary title of Norman Friedman’sscholarly study succinctly expresses thebook’s themes, the Strategy, Tactics andTechnology of World War I at sea. Hedescribes the way each of the protagonistsattempted to use the sea to their advantage


and thereby, deny it to their adversariesduring a time of advanced industrial andtechnical sophistication, coupled withinventive naval warfare strategies.

The book opens with an overview of thestrategic objectives and resources of thegreatest European maritime powers at thebeginning of the war; those of Great Britain,Germany and, to a lesser degree, France. Areview of the participating fleets’ operationsand outcomes of their combat engagementsfollows. Although Friedman recountsdetails of many battles including DoggerBank, Jutland, Heligoland, and Gallipoli,his literary purpose is more an evaluationand analysis rather than a narrative of thehistorical events. The heart of the book is adetailed examination of the maritimecharacter or technological advancementwithin many classes of vessels involved inthis conflict. These include dreadnoughts(capital ships), cruisers, destroyers, crudeaircraft carriers, minelayers, mine sweepers,specialized logistical craft, submarines,submarine chasers, transports, and moreclose-in littoral vessels, such as torpedoboats. Friedman also provides an academicappraisal of weapons and weapon-systemsthat were developed and deployed alongwith their effectiveness, flaws andevolution, their protective armour, andfinally, their swiftness and agility.

Of particular note is a substantialdiscussion about vessels designed to delivertorpedoes and mine warfare; topics that arerarely covered in other texts concerned withthe First World War. As the author pointsout, torpedoes had deficient targetingsystems making it difficult to accurately plota target’s course and distance. Combinedwith the inability of most submarines to firemore than a single salvo at a target, thismade a potentially deadly weapon much less

potent. The author devotes considerableattention to variations in types of mines,their strategic placement and the safeclearing of underwater minefields. Indescribing the problems of mine removalfrom the Narrows in preparation for theDardanelle campaign Friedman noted,“Because of shore batteries, all sweepingattempts [for mines] were made at night. . ..the strong current flow in the Narrowscaused the mines to dip, bringing thembelow the trawler draught. Sweeping wiresoften could not cut mooring cables, so thatsweepers dragged mines out of the straits,where special dumping areas were set up;”details that have received scant attention inmost accounts of the historic assault onTurkey.

The author also addresses the questionof logistical support. Albeit unglamorous,supplies of munitions, spare parts, medicalsupport, food and clothing are critical to thesuccessful conduct of any militaryengagement. As the technology of complexnaval systems evolved, it became vital torecruit educated men rather than the brawnneeded during the age of sail—and provideadvanced training to the sailors. Oneobvious example is the intelligent use ofradio communications to acquire situationalawareness particularly at sea where precisenavigation was wanting.

Fighting the Great War at Sea is notjust another book about a war that has beenextensively covered. Friedman revisits theconflict armed with declassified documentsopened some seventy-five years after thewar’s end. This new material casts somelight upon what was going through theminds of the maritime hierarchies just priorto the start of the conflict.

Friedman, a renowned naval historian,expresses his opinions seen through the lens

Book Reviews 421

of his accomplished “retrospectoscope.” Henotes that both sides knew that a war in theearly part of the twentieth century wouldseriously disrupt the British economybecause Germany was a major tradingpartner and their respective monarchs werecousins. The two nations were fiscallyinterdependent, but Germany’s failure tostockpile spare parts and munitions meant itwas ill prepared for war. Thus, both sidesthought that if war were declared, it wouldlikely end quickly. “The British war aimwas the defeat of Germany, not thepreservation of France. [But in an untowardscenario] if the Germans did overrunFrance, but lost the war, they would havehad to disgorge what they had seized. Thatis just what happened in the Second WorldWar . . .” (355)

Friedman’s book is a supplement andupdate of the readily available works ofmany other scholars of the naval history ofthe First World War including themonumental multi-volume works of ArthurJacob Marder. Fighting the Great War atSea is a physically large volume. Onemight classify it as a coffee table book, butFriedman’s authoritative work should not besuperficially perused. Although its quasi-encyclopedic treatment of the subject makesit a bit less accessible than it deserves to be,it makes an important contribution to themaritime history of this conflict. The well-organized data are well documented withregard to its various sources. The book’smany illustrations augment the writtendescriptions and new information addsimportant insights about the war’sbeginnings and its conduct at sea.

Louis Arthur Norton West Simsbury, Connecticut

Howard J. Fuller. Empire, Technology andSeapower: Royal Navy crisis in the age ofPalmerston. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge,Cass Series: Naval Policy and History, www.routledge.com, 2013. xv+297 pp.,notes, bibliography, index. US $140.00,hardback; ISBN 978-0-415-37004-2.

For a full century the perception that theRoyal Navy of the 1870s and 1880s wasinadequate to meet the demands that wouldhave been made of it in the event of warwent virtually unchallenged. This vieworiginated in the mid-1880s and gatheredsteam the following decade courtesy ofalarmist screeds by journalists such asWilliam T. Stead and Spenser Wilkinson. Itwas in turn adopted, lock, stock and barrel,by later writers such as Arthur J. Marderand Oscar Parkes, the latter of whom coinedthe resonant phrase “the dark ages of theVictorian navy” to describe the decade1874-84.

Since the 1980s, this interpretation hasbeen largely upended by the work ofAndrew Lambert, myself, Robert Mullins,Richard Dunley, and others, who haveargued that the “dark ages” school drewalmost exclusively on the views ofdisgruntled naval officers such as LordCharles Beresford, Geoffrey PhippsHornby, and John A. Fisher, whoseprofessional antipathy towards politicians’alleged parsimony should be taken forgranted and whose doom-mongering oughtto be taken with several grains of salt, ratherthan accepted at face value, as did Marder,Parkes, and others.

Once one cuts through the navalisthyperbole and assesses the mid-Victorianbattlefleet against its rivals—such as theywere—First Lord G.J. Goschen’spronouncement to the House of Commons


in 1873 that Britain possessed twelveironclads so powerful that they had no peersin other navies appears not whistling in thedark, but the confident utterance of a manwho knew the country held a winninghand.(Hansard, 3rd Ser., vol. 215, col. 44-45) Moreover, so far from failing todevelop an alternative operational strategyto the blockade—its efficacy thrown open todoubt by the arrival of steam power—theRoyal Navy adopted coastal assault as ameans of destroying enemy forces beforethey could sally forth.

In this, his latest volume, Howard J.Fuller would have us return to the “darkages” paradigm. Indeed, he goes further,arguing that Britain’s decline as a worldpower—hitherto dated variously to the1890s, the Edwardian era, post-World WarOne, or even post-1945, depending onwhich book one consults—was in factunderway by the 1850s. Why, especiallygiven that, as Paul Kennedy stressed in TheRise and Fall of the Great Powers, the1860s marked the apogee of Britain’seconomic and industrial dominance?(Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 151) Fuller takesas evidence for his claim Lord Palmerston’sfailure to back up his bellicose utteranceswith action in the Schleswig-Holstein crisis(1864), the narrow margin of superioritythat the British settled for in the ironcladshipbuilding race with France 1858-62, andabove all Britain’s refusal to intervene in theAmerican Civil War.

Moreover, he maintains that the RoyalNavy lacked the offensive capacity as aserious threat to France, Russia, and theUnited States, and that whatever strength itpossessed was therefore defensive. Indeed,he bluntly denies the existence of whatAndrew Lambert has described as the“Cherbourg strategy” for destroying enemy

forces and arsenals with mortar- andgunboats, working in conjunction heavily-armoured and armed breastwork monitorssuch as HMS Devastation.(48) Were thatnot enough, he misses few opportunities todenigrate HMS Warrior’s battle worthiness,while lauding not only the Americanmonitor design’s fighting qualities, but itsseaworthiness as well.

In his eagerness to make his case,however, Fuller has misrepresented thearguments of his scholarly opponents to thepoint of caricature. Contra his allegations,nobody of whom I am aware has claimedthat “[n]othing could prevent British navalpower from destroying at will even the mostheavily defended fortresses in the world,” orthat “that British foreign policy—backed byan all-powerful Royal Navy—all butdictated world peace in the nineteenthcentury.”(3, 7-8) Still less defensibly, hetakes pot shots at Dr. Rebecca Matzke’s fineDeterrence Through Strength: British NavalPower and Foreign Policy Under PaxBritannica (2011) despite the fact that theperiod it surveys (the 1830s and early 40s)falls well outside the chronological scope ofhis own study. Why? A clue is found infootnote 4 on page 63, where it is stated thatDr. Matzke “gratefully acknowledges the‘particular help on the nineteenth-centuryRoyal Navy’ given her by Andrew Lambertand John Beeler.”(7, 63)

Fuller’s argument is grounded on thepresumption that Britain would haveintervened in many of the era’s numerouscrises had it possessed the means to do so,and interprets its failure to act in any ofthem, especially the American Civil War, asevidence that it could not, owing chiefly tothe Royal Navy’s weakness, not to mentionits want of a viable offensive operationalstrategy. That there might have been more

Book Reviews 423

cogent reasons for Britain’s remaining aloofthan fear of American monitors—startingwith the fundamental fact that no corenational interests were at stake—is notcountenanced.

The same is true of his treatment ofBritain’s aloofness during the Italian crisisof 1859-60 and the Schleswig-Holstein Warof 1864, which he attributes in part to “thegrowing realization that the Royal Navy wasnot quite supreme with the advent of theironclad....”(4) Missing is any considerationof the bases on which British foreign policyrested. Intervention on the continent was inthe offing only if national security wasthreatened, and if a continental ally wasforthcoming. Tellingly, when Belgianneutrality appeared to be in jeopardy in thesummer of 1870 even the unwarlikeGladstone sought guarantees from Franceand the North German Confederation andwas prepared to commit Britain to the frayshould either of the combatants occupy thecountry, by cooperating with the party didnot.

Fuller’s derisive dismissal of coastalassault rests on his claim that no “plans” forits employment have surfaced, charging atone point that “no one has published anymeasured proof of its existence” and atanother that “in the absence of any realplans which were formulated at the time...animaginary reality is substituted” for realityitself.(179, 48) Yet he repeatedly quotescontemporaries who evidently took theconcept seriously, starting with RobertSpencer Robinson, Controller of the Navy1861-71, who in 1866 pressed for theconstruction of several small vessels of “theMonitor type being intended either for coastdefences or for the attack of shipping in anenemy’s harbour.” (42, emphasis added) Nine years later, First Naval Lord

Alexander Milne deprecated using suchships for high seas service: “however greatand important the power of their guns andhow admirable [sic] they may be adaptedfor the attack of an Enemy’s fleet, forts, orharbours, yet their sphere of action islimited by the means of obtaining coal nora r e t h e y a d a p t e d f o r o c e a ncruising….”(Quoted in Beeler, Birth of theBattleship. 91, emphasis added) Numerousother examples could be adduced.

What, then, are readers to make ofFuller’s claim that no “plans” for preciselythat employment exist? Are they toconclude that Robinson and Milne (andmany others) did not mean what they wroteor said? To be sure, no bound volumeconveniently labeled “plans for theemployment of coastal assault vessels” is tobe found among the Admiralty Papers, butFuller’s own research should have madehim aware of why: war planning in thenineteenth-century Royal Navy was not acentralized undertaking. Rather, theAdmiralty devolved that function tocommanders on the spot. When hostilitiesthreatened with the U.S. over the Trentaffair in late 1861, First Lord the Duke ofSomerset informed Milne, then in commandof the North America and West IndiaStation, that “[i]n the event of war I do notsend from here any plan of operations asyou have probably better means of judgingwhat it may be advisable to do,” onlysuggesting the advisability of raising theUnion blockade of the South’sports.(Beeler, ed., The Milne Papers, vol. 2,559)

Was this ad hoc approach the mostefficient way of proceeding? Perhaps not,but there was much to be said for the viewSomerset expressed: that those on the spotwere better placed to judge what was


possible and what measures were needed toachieve British aims, especially prior toinstantaneous global communications, thanwere those at the Admiralty. Moreover, thisdevolved approach persisted long after thePalmerston era, even after the creation of aNaval Intelligence Department in 1887.

Was the Royal Navy “all-powerful” inthe 1860s, 70s, and 80s? No. It generallymaintained a modest level of superiorityover France and Russia, not becausepoliticians were unmindful of possiblethreats—although with the exception of1858-62 there were no such worthmentioning—but because they were mindfulof the taxpaying electorate that had to footthe bill. By the standards of 1900-1914 the£10-13 million expended annually on thesenior service appears paltry, but comparedto the £7-8 million per year typically spentduring the 1840s and early 50s it appearedenormous, and was regarded so by many, ifnot most, contemporaries save the usualsuspects: naval officers and their hawkishallies in Parliament and the press.

Moreover, sensible statesmen such asGladstone, Disraeli, Goschen, and otherswere mindful that Britain held virtually allthe trumps should any rival be so foolhardyas to provoke a naval arms race, inparticular unmatched financial resources,the most advanced steam engineeringindustry in the world, and a shipbuildingsector that was still producing almost 60percent of the world’s tonnage as of 1914. Early in the book Fuller paraphrases BryanRanft’s assessment of Britain’s behaviourduring the period 1889-1914: “Ranftdecided that the driving force behindBritain’s naval expansion at the turn of thecentury was a sense of vulnerability.”(22)

Unfortunately, he then fails to followthis line of thought to its logical outcome

and conclude that perhaps the reason forBritain’s comparatively modest navalexpansion from the late 1850s to 1889 wasbecause it largely lacked that sense ofvulnerability.

In justice to Fuller, a case can be madethat, in countering the “dark ages”interpretation, those he labels “revisionists”may have pushed their arguments too far. His approach, however, does not strike meas the most persuasive way to make it.

John BeelerTuscaloosa, Alabama

James Goldrick. Before Jutland. The NavalWar in Northern European Waters, August1914-February 1915. Annapolis, MD:Naval Institute Press, www.nip.org, 2015.xvi+382 pp., illustrations, maps, table,notes, bibliography, index. US $44.95, UK£36.50, paper; ISBN 978-1-59114-349-9.(E-book available.)

The outbreak of war in August 1914followed a decade of unprecedented changein warships and naval technologies. Withinthe Royal Navy it was recognized that thiswas the first major war in a century butthere were many “unknowns” about whatwas to come. In fact, the initialmobilization and deployments to warstations—initiated even before hostilitiesformally began—were well handled. Butswitching to a war fighting mode had itsodd features. On the night Britain declaredwar, the battleship Dreadnought was part ofa darkened formation heading through theStrait of Dover. Lionel Dawson had beensurprised that part of his turnover whentaking over the Middle Watch was an order,soon rescinded, that all officers on duty

Book Reviews 425

were to wear revolvers. (Captain LionelDawson, Flotillas: A Hard-Lying Story,London 1933, 152).

Before Jutland is a very competentoperational history, from a Britishperspective, of the first six months of thewar at sea in the North Sea and Baltic. It isan updated and slightly longer version of thesame author’s The King’s Ships Were atSea, also published by the Naval InstitutePress in 1984, which became generallyrecognized as an authoritative modern battlehistory. Between publishing the twoversions of this history, James Goldrick hashad a distinguished career as an officer inthe Royal Australian Navy, retiring as aRear Admiral, and as the author of severalpublications about British and Australiandefence policies and modern naval history. In his introduction, Goldrick writesengagingly that since the first edition, he“grew up”. His experiences at sea,including command of several ships andserving at more senior operational levels,have better informed his understanding ofhow the opposing forces functioned and ofthe challenges which affected theirperformance.

The author writes “... that the sixmonths described here can be called the truebeginning of modern naval warfare.”(299) Almost all of the new technologiesprofoundly influenced operations:submarines, aircraft both in reconnaissanceand attack, open sea minelaying, surfaceengagements fought at long range and highspeed in adverse weather, and radiocommunications. Then there was theexploitation of an enemy’s use of radiothrough signals intelligence. At the sametime, detection of enemy forces was stilllimited to visual ranges. Goldrick observesthat both the Battles of Doggerbank in

January 1915, described in this book, andJutland, in May 1916, started in conditionsof exceptional visibility. Inevitablenavigational errors bedevilled reports fromunits out of sight of each other. It wouldtake decades to introduce mechanizedplotting tables to record the track of amanoeuvring warship and to developtechniques to coordinate the understoodpositions of widely dispersed units. Goldrick also notes how Britishcommanders at sea failed to grasp theirresponsibilities beyond an individual ship,or formation- level as part of a fightingorganization. One result was lamentablypoor reporting of contact with the enemy. Reporting problems and a lack ofunderstanding of the importance of feedingvital information upwards surfaced early butcontinued and would have seriousconsequences at Jutland more than a yearafter the period covered in this narrative.

The book covers events inchronological order after establishing acontext in six succinct introductory chapterson the individual navies, war plans, andoperational challenges. This second editionalso includes coverage of Russian andGerman operations in the Baltic. Theauthor explains that what he describes as “afundamental source” for both editions wasthe Royal Navy’s Great War “internalhistory” the Naval Staff Monographs(Historical) which had been producedbetween 1919 and 1939. Perhaps becausethe Monographs were his jumping off point,Goldrick’s narrative focus is, as he says,“primarily on the British”. Thus, eventhough the events examined happened acentury ago, this new book—possibly thebest in this genre—joins a long list of workswhich concentrate largely on presenting theRoyal Navy side of operations.


Goldrick’s narrative is buttressed byfrequent allusions to writings and studies byothers. The bibliography of Englishlanguage references is almost intimidating. For example, it lists 68 personalmanuscripts in various British archives. This new edition reflects scholarly workover the 30 years since the first edition,including Andrew Gordon’s dissection ofthe RN’s cult of command in The Rules ofthe Game (1996) and studies such asNicholas Lambert’s Planning forArmageddon (2012) which have clarifiedthe British war plan to wage economicwarfare on Germany by imposing a distantblockade. Stephen Roskill had alreadypublished criticisms of Churchill’s actionsas First Sea Lord by 1984 and there havebeen further searching appraisals since. Goldrick writes: “The Admiralty wouldhave been a different place withoutChurchill, but the question is open as towhether it benefitted from his energy morethan it suffered from his ignorance”. (301) The difficulties the Germans had because ofinferior coal had already been written aboutin English back in 1984, but Goldrick hadpublished an article on this topic in 2014and weaves it into the story. The difficultiesboth the British and the Germansexperienced when wartime demanded moresustained steaming and at higher speeds arewell brought out.

Chapter 5, “Operational Challenges”, isparticularly rewarding. Goldrick brings hisown professional background and seaexperience to bear by outlining issues suchas environmental conditions, contemporarynavigation techniques, endurance and fuel,the gaps between prewar expectations ofnew technologies and actual performance inoperational conditions, problems in radiocommunications and the embryonic nature

of both signals intelligence and the Ad-miralty’s organization control forces at sea.

More could have been done to help thereader grasp North Sea geography and theengagements described so fluidly. The textcarries a litany of evocative place nameswhose location is not clarified: SwarteBank, Smith’s Knoll, Norderney Gat, “theGabbards” and most exotic of all “TheBroad Fourteens” (a large area to the westof the Dutch coast with fairly uniformdepths around 14 fathoms). There is a mapas frontispiece but these points are notshown, nor are they defined as in otherbooks about the North Sea encounters. Thetrack charts show times and sinkings butnothing else (the one showing U-9’s famoussinkings of three cruisers on 22 Septemberdoes indicate where Weddingen fired historpedoes). Track charts in other worksabout these actions have annotations abouthow many ships were in formation, whenthe enemy was first sighted, when theyopened fire etc.—some even very usefullyindicate areas of restricted visibility. Thephotographs are disappointing — the samestodgy small images of individual ships andmostly stodgy images of individuals as inthe first edition. Pictures showingcontemporary warships belching smoke andthe torpedo beats with their low freeboardplunging into seas would have underlinedpoints made in the text about how heavysmoke inhibited gunnery and poorperformance in heavy weather hamperedsmall warships. The index is useful becauseit cites page numbers for specific aspects ofa particular heading. There has been an oddchange, however, since the first editionbecause the new index curiously does notlist individual submarines or include thenames of commanding officers other thanMax Horton.

Book Reviews 427

Thanks to the author’s combination ofa naval operational background andmeticulous research, Before Jutland cantruly be described as an authoritative battlehistory of the opening months of the war atsea in Northern Europe in 1914-15. Thisstudy reads easily and incorporates currentscholarship about how new technologieswere influencing naval warfare and aboutBritish plans to use seapower against theGerman economy. While German andRussian intentions and operations arecovered the emphasis is on how the RoyalNavy—not only at sea but as anorganization—planned and conducted theopening phases in home waters of its firstmajor war in a century.

Jan Drent Victoria, British Columbia

David Greentree. Q-Ship versus U-Boat1914-18. Oxford: Osprey Publishing,www.ospreypublishing.com, 2014. 80 pp.,illustrations, tables, map, bibliography,index. US $18.95, UK £12.99, CDN$19.95, paper; ISBN 978-1-78200-284-0. At the outbreak of the First World War in1914, Great Britain was unprepared totackle Imperial Germany’s so-called ‘U-boats’ and its fast torpedo boats that preyedupon Allied merchant vessels in the AtlanticOcean. The Admiralty faced a steeplearning curve in supporting Britain’s wareffort in the Atlantic and, as early as May1915, Britain’s situation was being openlydescribed as desperate

After obtaining an MA in War Studiesfrom King’s College London, the authorserved in the Royal Air Force in a variety oflocations, including Afghanistan and Oman.

His fifth book for Osprey Publishing isillustrated by Peter Dennis and Ian Palmerwho contribute a wide range of fascinatingphotographs, ship’s profiles and illustrationsof weaponry to the book.

This illustrated account of the FirstWorld War at sea shows how these earlymachines of naval warfare—the British ‘Q-ship’ and German ‘U-boat’, as well as thecombatants who operated them—werepitted against each other. The authorexplains how, from the summer of 1915 on,the German Navy was sinking up to sixtyAllied merchant vessels per week. TheAdmiralty was initially at a loss as to how torespond to the threat to their main fleets inthe North Sea while French Jeune Ecolestrategists had suggested building a barrageacross the North Sea to block Germanaccess to the Atlantic. Britain promptlydismissed this notion as unworkable, despitehaving lost over 328,000 tons of shipping tosubmarines by April 1917.

Greentree describes in some detail howthe Admiralty, backed by WinstonChurchill, developed the novel solution of‘decoy vessels’. Constructed to appear tothe enemy as innocent merchant ships, theywere, in fact, fully armed with cannonsconcealed behind camouflage screens andwere crewed by Royal Navy personnel infishermen’s clothes. Allied freighters andocean-going fishing boats stalked theiradversary unrecognized and, when attacked,the crew would theatrically appear to beundisciplined landlubbers or panic-strickencivilians. They also launched lifeboats tofurther tempt the so-called wolf packs ofGerman U-boats to surface (Morris 1995),at which point the hidden guns of the Q-ships would open fire. (Massie 1991)

Greentree carefully explains much ofthe technology involved in creating


Britain’s Q-ships while analyzing Admiraltytactics during the pioneering years of anti-submarine warfare. The evidence clearlyshows that naval service at that time washighly dangerous for the participants andrequired training in the new art of marinedeception. The author has also detailed thevessels, technology and tactics of the twomain sides. He explains how, as the warprogressed, U-boats in the Atlantic becamemore wary, taking fewer risks as Germanyevolved new tactics in the battle forsuperiority to match those of the RoyalNavy.

Although parts of this story have beentold elsewhere, this new book gives afascinating account of how these ships facedoff against each other. It also details thedangers which the Q-ships faced andhighlights how the crews acquired uniquetraining in the black arts of deception. TheFirst World War saw many unexpectedmaritime innovations, such as seaplanes andcommunication at sea, which are outlinedhere. Fortunately, this book is just one partof an illustrated series which highlights notonly Q-ships and U-Boats, but the DestroyerEscorts, British Cruisers, GermanCommerce Raiders, E-Boats and MTBs.

Greentree has made good use of manyof the less conventional maritime sources inwriting this book. The result is achronology that skilfully analyses how thethreat to Allied merchant shippingdeveloped during the First World War andhow Britain effectively dealt withGermany’s novel U-boats.

Officially backed by Winston Churchillat the Admiralty and the dynamic senior SeaLord, Admiral Jacky Fisher, a new dawn ofcontesting submarine warfare was heraldedin. Yet, within two decades, the Treaty ofVersailles had disappeared in a fog of

misunderstanding, missed opportunities andevents, and the seven great navies of theworld had rebuilt their fleets. This slimbook ‘punches above its weight’ and, assuch, it deserves a prominent place on theshelves of any reader with an interest in thecentenary of the First World War and theRoyal Navy.

Michael ClarkLondon, England

John R. Grodzinski. Defender of Canada.Sir George Prevost and the War of 1812.Norman, OK: University of OklahomaPress, www.oupress.com, 2014. xxi+375pp., illustrations, maps, tables, appendices,notes, bibliography, index. US $34.95,cloth; ISBN 978-0-80614387-3.

Most historians of the War of 1812 have notbeen kind to Governor-in-Chief LieutenantGeneral Sir George Prevost, the man incommand of British North America duringthe war. Portrayed in the past as a goodcivil administrator, his military leadershiphas been viewed as timid, interfering, andoutright incompetent. A fracturedrelationship with Royal Navy commanderCommodore Sir James Lucas Yeo, plusPrevost’s own failed attack on Plattsburgh,New York, in September 1814, led toPrevost’s recall to London and the demandfor his court martial. Prevost’s death beforethe court could sit left a permanent bad odoraround his time as military leader inCanada.

John Grodzinski’s Defender of Canada:Sir George Prevost and the War of 1812 isa complete revision of the former narrativesurrounding Prevost’s military leadership inBritish North America. With strong and

Book Reviews 429

clear prose, Grodzinski elevates Prevost outof the dustbin and into the position ofinsightful leader, strategist, tactician andinnocent victim of a self-protective politicalassault by his critics. It is a persuasiveargument.

The first chapter takes us from his birthin 1767 in the New Jersey colony throughhis arrival in Nova Scotia as governor in1808. Prevost’s military credentials areestablished with his involvement in thedefense of St Vincent. Time as governor ofSt Lucia and Dominica led to hisappointment as the governor and militaryleader for Nova Scotia in 1808. With theChesapeake-Leopard Affair in 1807 souringrelationships between Britain and theUnited States, Prevost’s posting to NovaScotia’s was important.

The second chapter focuses onPrevost’s time in Nova Scotia and theexpedition to capture Martinique in 1809. His reorganization of the local militia, theraising of a regiment of fencible infantry forNova Scotia, and repairs and additionalworks for the defense of Halifax preparedthe colony for the coming war. Grodzinskidescribes Prevost’s active part in the captureof Martinique, leading his troops in pursuitof the French, and setting the British siegeguns.

Chapter Three covers his arrival inQuebec to assume the position of Governor-in-Chief through to the beginning of theWar of 1812. The problems in defendingthe colonies, with too few regular troops, asmall logistics staff, limited food supplies, ashaky militia, an incompetent provincialmarine and a supply line over 1,700 miles inlength are sketched out for the reader. TheBritish Government ordered Prevost toadopt a defensive stand. Grodzinski pointsto this directive as critical in understanding

how Prevost approached the war. Passingthis defensive strategy along, he did,however, tell Generals Brock andSherbrooke to attack the enemy ifopportunity allowed. This rather minimalinstruction is used by Grodzinski to supportlater critiques of Brock and his successors. Meanwhile, by accommodating the Frenchpopulation of Lower Canada, Prevost turnedseveral of the English ruling class in thecolony into his worst enemies.

The opening of the war is the subject ofthe next chapter. Continued disadvantagesfor Prevost play across this chapter, but itsmain target is Isaac Brock and his perceivedheroic defense of Upper Canada. Grodzinski notes that Brock’s movesagainst Fort Mackinac and Detroit weresuggested by Francis Gore, the previousGovernor-in-Chief, and that both actionswere completely in line with Prevost’s plan. Brock’s rash behaviour at the Battle ofQueenston Heights is turned into anignorant blunder and Sir Isaac is toppledfrom his mythic pedestal.

Chapters Five and Six address the warduring 1813, including various Americaninvasion efforts, although the central focusis the arrival of Sir James Yeo and theBritish Navy on the Great Lakes. Yeo wasto report to the Admiralty and AdmiralWarren in Halifax, and consult andcooperate with Prevost. Grodzinski seesthis as giving Yeo room to ignorewhomever he liked. The attack on SackettsHarbor at the end of May 1813 is the firstbreak in the relationship between Prevostand Yeo. Prevost suggested the attack, asure sign of his aggressiveness. The assaultdid not go well, but in Grodzinski’s telling,Prevost was the one who pushed the attackto its breaking point before ordering awithdrawal. Yeo is noted as wanting an


attack but abandoned his ships to fightashore. The failure of naval support and anenemy ensconced in fortified positionsdefeated the mission. The second break intheir relationship involved how to use theLake Ontario squadron. During 1813, theBritish and American squadrons met threetimes. These indecisive engagements revealYeo’s hesitation to fight AmericanCommodore Chauncey and win control ofthe lake. At the same time, Prevost hadrequested Yeo cooperate with the army bymoving troops and supplies. Theengagements interrupted such cooperation. On both counts Grodzinski scores hitsagainst Yeo and points for Prevost. At theend of Chapter Six, Grodzinski addressesthe criticism that Prevost’s failure to supportMajor General Henry Proctor atAmherstburg led to the defeats of theBritish squadron on Lake Erie in Septemberand Proctor’s at Moraviantown in October1813. Barclay’s defeat is easily turned intoYeo’s failure to send seamen to Lake Erie. Proctor’s defeat is racked up toincompetence and failing to obey Prevost’sorders.

The assault on Yeo continues inChapter Seven. Prevost’s desire for Yeo’scooperation with the army on the NiagaraPeninsula in 1814 went largely unfulfilled,causing the former great stress. Grodzinskialso claims that Prevost influenced (at leastin part) the attack against Washington. Hewrites that the destructive raids on Dover inMay 1814 and St David’s and Queenston inJuly 1814 moved Prevost to suggest asimilar raid to Cochrane (commanding theBritish Naval forces on the Station). Cochrane decided on Washington.

The central reason for the book lies inChapters Eight and Nine dealing with theSeptember 1814 Plattsburgh campaign, in

which Prevost led an army of 10,000 Britishtroops. They were sent from Europe tocapture the forts and town of Plattsburgh, onthe shore of Lake Champlain. Cooperationwith a squadron of four ships and elevengunboats that would engage the Americansquadron anchored off the town was acritical feature of the assault. The failure ofthis effort is the main military strike againstPrevost; its reassessment by Grodzinski iscritical to his argument.

Prevost is clearly in charge, but he useshis aides to communicate with the generalscommanding the troops and for logistics. Logistical problems slow the transportationof supplies with the army as it moves south. Yeo would later claim that an agreementwas made between Prevost and CaptainDowney (in command of the squadron) thata coordinated assault on the forts atPlattsburgh would occur as the Britishsquadron attacked the American ships. Thiswas to distract the cannons of the forts fromfiring on the British vessels. Grodzinskishows that the ships were too far away fromthe forts for this to be necessary. Hequestions the need for a coordinated attackand the possibility that captured Americanordnance could be used to bombard theAmerican squadron into submission, evenafter it had captured the British ships. Whatis clear is that as the British ships sailed intofight their American counterparts, there wasno corresponding attack by British landforces, with the exception of a minimalcannonade. The uncoordinated preparationsand the loss of the squadron caused Prevostto call off the attack and head for LowerCanada. Fear of a counter attack byAmerican forces in the area also played intoPrevost’s decisions. Mutterings ofdisapproval from the British officers withEuropean experience emerged as the troops

Book Reviews 431

re-entered Lower Canada. Their mainconcern was Prevost’s failure “to issue ascheme of operations” (164) before theforce left to attack Plattsburgh.

As Grodzinski points out, the Britishtroops were not an elite force and there wasan absence of siege engineers andappropriate artillery. The naval situation onLake Champlain was a desperate one, withthe new ship only partially finished, thougharmed, and with the bulk of new recruitsarriving within days of the battle. Oneconcern is Yeo’s sending Captain PeterFisher to replace Commander Daniel Pringas commander of the squadron and thenquickly replacing Fisher with CaptainRobert Downey, who only arrived 1September. Yeo is also rightfully blamedfor ignoring Pring’s requests for moresailors, as he had ignored Barclay’s.Reviewing the exchange of letters betweenDownie and Prevost, Grodzinski is clearthat Prevost did not order, nor goad Downieinto sailing before he was ready, as put forthby Yeo and other critics. When the navysailed into the bay off Plattsburgh it wastheir choice. Yet the letters indicate thatPrevost wanted action to happen soon andthat two days of delay did not please him.They also indicate some form ofcoordinated attack by the British army andnavy against the American forces, but thatcoordination did not occur. Grodzinskistates that, “Prevost may have misemployedthe division, but he had preserved it” (191).

Preparations for Prevost’s court martialon charges stemming from surviving RoyalNavy officers complaining about his urgingof Downey to engage and then failing tosupport him as promised are the focus ofChapter Ten. At the end of the war, Prevostwas recalled to explain the loss atPlattsburgh to the Admiralty. Yeo returned

home to respond to similar questions, butthese concerns disappeared as Yeo pressedto have the former Governor-in-Chief ofBritish North America tried for the defeat atPlattsburgh. As this court martial was beingprepared, with Yeo serving as a prosecutor,Sir George Prevost, already in declininghealth, died. The questions over his militaryand civil conduct in North America werenever fully investigated leaving the cloudthat, Grodzinski holds, unfairly marredPrevost’s reputation. In a final comment onPrevost’s career, Grodzinski states thatPrevost led the war effort, dealt withincredibly demanding logistical concerns forboth the army and the navy and had fewertroops than he needed for most of the war. Instead of criticism, Prevost deserves praisefor his efforts and ultimate success inpreserving the colonies.

Grodzinski’s argument is convincing,but the rendering of Prevost we are left withis that of the saviour of Canada (almostsingle-handedly). While Gore and Prevostrealized their importance, it was Brock whodecided (albeit with a bit of a waffle) toorder the attack on Fort Mackinac before theAmericans there heard about the declarationof war. It was Brock who went after theAmericans at Detroit, delivering a cripplingblow. Both of these events ensured theAboriginal tribes, including those underTecumseh stayed with the British, analliance that was never assured, even withearlier agreements. Grodzinski’s criticismof Proctor’s performance fails to note hissuccess at the Battle of Frenchtown inJanuary 1813, and underplays the pressurefrom Tecumseh to fight. The author’ssuggestion that Prevost had something to dowith the raid on Washington is a stretch. The British had been raiding ChesapeakeBay for over a year, getting more daring and


destructive. Washington was a naturalprogression in these raids, especially withthe arrival of reinforcements in earlyAugust. The overall narrative is that few,other than Prevost, succeeded, and if theydid, it was because of him, which is simplynot reflective of the historic record. Prevosthad some talented officers and steadyregulars, seamen and militia who made theirboss look good.

Black and white illustrations include aportrait of Prevost, maps of St Lucia,Martinique, Dominica, the Great Lakesregion and Prevost’s family coat of armsand grave-site. Two maps appear in thechapter on Plattsburgh. The most dynamicof the six appendices is the last, a copy ofYeo’s incomplete preparatory notes for thecourt martial (a great find, produced herefor the first time) that reveal Sir James’ planto demonstrate Prevost’s forcing Downie toengage the enemy before his squadron wasready, and then Prevost’s failure to deliverthe support he had vowed to give. Grodzinski suggests it is a bizarre “pretend”trial written up by Sir James Yeo himself. Endnotes are thorough, numerous anduseful, as is the bibliography. The index ismore then adequate and easy to work with.

As a revision to the old story of SirGeorge Prevost’s command of British NorthAmerica during the War of 1812, this bookhelps to set a bent record straight, but indoing so, makes it shine just a little toobrightly.

Thomas MalcomsonToronto, Ontario

Morten Hahn-Pedersen (ed.). Årbog forFiskeri-og Søfartsmuseet SaltvandsakvarietEsbjerg 2014. Esbjerg, Denmark: Fiskeri-

og Søfartsmuseet, www.fimus.dk, 2015.191 pp., illustrations, notes, Englishsummaries. 198, Dkk, hardback; ISBN 978-87-90982-75-1.

Reviewing yearbooks published byacademic institutions, and in particular,yearbooks from research-focused museums,are always a challenge because they serve anumber of different functions, and not all ofthese functions are directly related to atraditional academic publication. A reviewof the 2014 yearbook of the fisheries andmaritime museum in Esbjerg, however, is acomparably easy task as the volumecombines a number of scholarly articles thatwould have been easily accepted byvirtually any academic journal within thefield.

The volume combines nine articlescovering various museum research areasranging in time from Early Modern to thepresent. Mette Guldberg provides a historyof the northernmost North Sea port,Hjerting, in the Early Modern period andIda Christine Jørgensen discusses the ideasof life and the world of Danish seafarers inthe same period. Both articles are wellresearched and highlight topics oftenoverlooked, but definitely important for abetter understanding of the past. Contributions by Holger Munchaus Petersenand Benny Boysen deal with the transitionperiod from sail to steam and from timber toiron-built ships.

Søren Byskov and Knud Jakobsen focuson fisheries history and in particular, Danishplaice fisheries and Danish fisheries duringthe Second World War. Probably the mostinteresting article in this edition of theyearbook is Morten Hahn-Pedersen’sdiscussion of the development of the DanishNorth Sea tourist industry over the last 200

Book Reviews 433

years. It reads like a blueprint for not onlyDanish seaside-resorts, but also for resortson the German or Dutch North Sea coast. Readers from these areas will not onlyappreciate the detailed historical analysis,but will definitely enjoy the numerousparallels with their own childhoodmemories at the beach. With tourism one oftoday’s most important industries for coastalareas all around the globe, such an analysisseems to be especially relevant forunderstanding the changing coastal cultureof the last two centuries.

The final two articles by Carl ChristianKinze and Bie Thøstesen are dedicated tothe wider field of natural history and focuson humpback whales in the Baltic andbeached whales in Denmark; in otherwords, whales that left their traditionalhabitat. While both articles are primarilynatural history articles, they are at the sametime important contributions to maritimeenvironmental history.

Altogether the nine articles successfullydemonstrate that it is no longer enough fora maritime (and fisheries) museum to focusexclusively on traditional maritime historytopics, but that new fields like coastalculture and/or maritime environmentalhistory can contribute to the future ofinstitutions like the museum in Esbjerg andmaritime history at large. While somemight regard these fields as outside thefocus of an institution dedicated to maritimeand fisheries history, it should be stated thatthis research is critical for keeping andwidening the societal relevance of suchinstitutions and the discipline. With thepublication of their 2014 yearbook, thefisheries and maritime museum in Esbjerghas demonstrated once again that it is notonly one of the foremost Danish institutionsin the field of maritime history, but that it

provides intellectual leadership for thediscipline at large. It serves as an examplefor many other institutions regardless ofwhether they are on the North Sea or on anyother coast around the globe.

I would recommend Esbjerg’s 2014yearbook to any historian interested in thehistory of the North Sea region, whetherpursuing traditional maritime historyresearch or a broader cultural history ofcoastal regions. Although published inDanish for a primarily Danish audience(which might limit international readershipsomewhat), there are English summariesavailable for all articles. This makes thebook more accessible while ensuring theessential clarity of the original article, whichcan sometimes be lost in translation. Theyearbook’s scholarly content is a welcomeaddition to the existing literature. Moreover, the museum should becommended for its decision to continue tocommunicate its research at a time whenmany museums are drifting towards the ideaof ‘edutainment’ or focusing on exhibitionsdesigned to drag a maximum number ofvisitors into the museum regardless of theirscholarly quality or importance.

The high quality of the publication andthe large number of previously unpublishedillustrations, in combination with areasonable price, make it easy recommendthis book, even to readers with limited skillsin Danish.

Ingo HeidbrinkNorfolk, Virginia

Jon K. Hendrickson. Crisis in theMediterranean: Naval Competition andGreat Power Politics, 1904-1914.Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,


www.nip.org, 2014. 234 pp., illustrations,notes, bibliography, index. US $54.95, UK£41.50, hardback; ISBN 978-1-61251-475-8. (E-book available.)

Hendrickson has written an interesting bookabout a little-known side of the naval rivalryin the years prior to the Great War. Inevitably, focus is on the two mainprotagonists—Great Bri tain andGermany—with the navies of other powerseither completely invisible, or skipped overin passing. Consequently, Hendrickson’svolume fulfills a useful service in raising theprofile of the navies of France, Italy andAustria-Hungary. Remaining obscure is thenaval force of the Ottoman Empire.

The author’s basic theme is theexistence of a naval rivalry in theMediterranean that was every bit asimportant as that of the far better knowncontest in the North Sea. In particular,Great Britain’s weakness threw open thedomination of the ancient crucible ofRome’s Mare Nostrum to new powers aftera century of Pax Britannica. It is anintriguing story. Is it true?

It must be noted that the war’s openingdays absolutely witnessed drama ofenormous consequences. The pursuit ofSMS Goeben and SMS Breslau by ana r gu ab l y ou t gu n n ed , c e r t a i n l youtmanoeuvred, British squadron led to theOttoman’s Empire’s entry into the war onthe side of the Central Powers. In turn, thisled to the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign,and then ultimately, to the more successfulcampaigns up the Tigris and EuphratesRiver valleys and the littoral struggle up theMediterranean coast from Egypt, all leadingto the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in theautumn of 1918. No need to enter into adigression as to the malign consequences of

the Treaty of Versailles on the Middle East. Agreement as to the criticality of the regionin the Great War’s progress itself as well asfor the subsequent decades of the twentiethcentury and into today seems axiomatic anduncontroversial.

Once these opening scenes were over,however, the naval war in the Mediter-ranean fled off the front pages of thenewspapers and it became a secondarytheatre. Essentially, the Central Powerscould not effectively challenge thedominance of the Entente navies and controlof the Mediterranean was essentially, but byno means entirely, uncontested. HasHendrickson set the scene for this outcomewith his review of naval developments inthe decade before the Great War’s outbreakin 1914?

In my view, the premise of Hend-rickson’s thesis is ill-founded. Great Britaindid not abandon its Pax Britannicadominance of the Mediterranean in favourof an unsupervised struggle of minnows,and hence, risk loss of prestige and power ina critical theatre. Britain’s reduced presencewas entirely due to the arrangements madewith France and the modernization andcentralization of its fleet in home waters toconfront its main rival, Germany. Possession of bases at Gibraltar, Malta,Cyprus and Egypt would permit a rapiddeployment of naval forces to upholdBritish interests very swiftly as circum-stances dictated. The power of the Frenchfleet was assessed as more than adequate todeal with the presumed rivals Italy andAustria-Hungary. If the French neededassistance, the surfeit of naval power in theNorth Sea would certainly allow theredeployment of sufficient forces to dealwith whatever issue arose. In the event, ofcourse, the Italians never supported their

Book Reviews 435

Central Power allies and so the potentialproblem evaporated in 1915, after consid-erable tensions in 1914.

Indeed, the struggle between the‘minnows’ was intense at that level, butnever a ‘First Division’ struggle representedby the North Sea protagonists. Describingthis as a crisis seems to be overstating thematter. It was certainly important, and thedifficulties faced by authorities principallyin Paris, Rome and Vienna were significant(London seems to have been much lesstroubled). But the scale of the matter wasvery much a second-order struggle. Hendrickson relates with some relish themanoeuvrings for financing that affected theAustria-Hungary fleet, which rather makesthe case for a second-string issue. Thesleight of hand involved for the Austro-Hungarian naval authorities to secure thefunds needed to build their fleet makes foran interesting story, but it illustrates howmarginal the navy was for that government. As was the case with the other powers, thekey branch of the military wasunambiguously the army. Funds spent onthe navy were funds that were not availablefor the far more important army. Given theperformance of the Austro-Hungarian armyduring the war, it can be argued that thenavy funds might have been more profitablyspent elsewhere. (Indeed, this theme is wellknown with regard to Germany. It is nonew thesis to suggest that the resourcespoured into the Kaiser’s fleet were a geo-political disaster of the first order. HadGermany maintained a small, cruiser-basedfleet designed to maintain colonial interests,and not challenged Great Britain for navalsupremacy, we would be living in anentirely different world today.)

I don’t think Hendrickson has made thecase for his ‘crisis’, but that does not mean

the book is not worthwhile. He relates hisstory with some verve and he sheds light onan aspect of the naval rivalries prior to theGreat War that is ignored or glossed over bymost. True, this “Mediterranean” rivalry isminor in big picture terms, but it is notwithout interest. In particular, the role ofthe Italo-Turkish War over Libya (1911-1912) is well covered, and provides asignificant new interpretation on a muchignored aspect of great power rivalry in thepre-war years. Hendrickson has, therefore,provided useful insights that will round outany reader’s knowledge of both the era andthe area involved. He has also made use ofthe primary sources of the four main nationsinvolved and so has shed light on a topicthat is essentially deeply obscure. Hendrickson writes well.

The book is bare bones. There are noillustrations, or maps, or photographs of thevessels involved, or of the naval facilitiesthat were the backbone of the region’snavies. This is a pity as the familiarity ofmost readers with the subject of the bookwill be limited and hence, illustrations allthe more valued. There is also minimaldiscussion as to the material quality of thenavies so painfully built or of theiroperational performance in the war to come. Admittedly the book ends with the outbreakof war in 1914, but a short concludingchapter touching on such matters wouldhave been a useful addition to the book. Irecommend Hendrickson’s book but notethe caveats raised.

Ian YeatesRegina, Saskatchewan

David Hobbs. Warships of the Great WarYear: A History in Ship Models. Barnsley,S. Yorks: Seaforth Publishing,


www.seaforthpublishing.com, 2014. 128pp., illustrations. UK £25.00, cloth; ISBN978-1-84832-212-7.

In his introduction, Hobbs provides thereader with a brief overview of the state ofthe Royal Navy in 1914 as it entered theFirst World War, mentioning the growthand addition of thousands of new ships andvessels under its command, along with theircapabilities relating to communications,armament and machinery. He then goes onto discuss the importance scale ship modelscan play today in the study of these ships

The second chapter/section starts outwith a discussion on battleships and howstandardization of the battleship came withSir William White’s Royal Sovereign classof ship. Using pictures of a highly detailed,1/48 scale model of the Royal Sovereignclass ship Ramillies that was made for thebuilder, the reader is able to view variousconstructional details of the ship as Hobbsdescribes them in his narrative. He thendiscusses the King Edward VII and LordNelson pre-dreadnought classes of ships andtheir armaments, the Dreadnoughtrevolution and the Super-dreadnought. Thissection ends with a look at some of theunderwater threats and protection of theseships.

In Chapter/Section 3, Hobbs coversbattlecruisers, the capitol ship and itsdevelopment 1914-1918. In this section, hemakes use of various highly detailed modelsto highlight various construction details ofthe ships.

The next chapter/section discusses thecruiser, beginning with a general overviewof the cruiser and its beginnings and alsocovers scout cruisers, light cruisers andarmoured cruisers. Included is a briefdiscussion of how Britain dominated the

world market for iron-hulled warships andhow it also built ships for other nations

Next comes a chapter on the torpedo-boat destroyer, later simply shortened todestroyer. This section starts with anoverview on the early River, Tribal andBeagle (or ‘G’) class torpedo-boatdestroyers. The Acorn (‘H’) and Acheron(‘I’) class ships based on Admiralty designsare then looked at. Next is a discussion onstandardization and refinement of featuresof the destroyer covering the ‘M’ through‘U’ classes. The Royal Navy’s ultimateFirst World War destroyer classes, the ‘V &W’, are covered and the section ends withsome examples of comparable Germantorpedo boats.

Chapter/Section 6 is dedicated tosubmarines, while Chapter/Section 7 isdedicated to a variety of other types ofwarships used, including aircraft-carryingships, anti-submarine escorts and coastalmotor boats to name a few. This chapterprovides the reader with some fineexamples (models) that show the diversityof the ships used by the Royal Navy duringthe First Great War. The last chaptercompletes the book with some examples ofmerchant ships armed for war.

With almost all of the ships of this eranow gone, this book will be of interest to awide audience of warship enthusiasts fromscale model ship builders to researchers. Hobbs’ narrative carries the reader througha logical progression of ship development,using highly detailed models to illustratesome of the construction details, in somecases, the configuration of the same ship atdifferent times. I highly recommend thisbook to any warship enthusiasts.

Winston E. ScovilleClinton, Ontario

Book Reviews 437

Harald Hückstädt, Erik Larsen, ReinhardSchmelzkopf, Hans-Günther Wentzel. VonRostock nach See. Die Geschichte derRostocker Dampfschifffahrt, 1850 bis 1945.(Schriften des Deutschen Schiffahrts-museums, Vol. 74) Bremerhaven:Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum andOceanum Verlag, www.dsm.museum, 2011.247 pp., illustrations, maps, bibliography,notes, index German with English andFrench summaries. Euro € 34,90, hardcover; ISBN 978-3-86927-074-6.

With the downfall of the mighty SovietUnion and its stranglehold over EasternEurope, scholars from all walks of academiahave gained access to a myriad of archivalrepositories in which to conduct theirrespective research. German maritimehistorians have often focused on the wellestablished, world-wide trading port citiesof Hamburg and Bremen, as well as smallerGerman cities, such as Lübeck and Kiel,because of their reputations as centrallylocated "gateways" between east and west. Historians Hückstädt, Larsen, Schmelzkopf,and Wentzel shifted their focus from suchinternationally rich harbours to the oldMecklenburgian city of Rostock, located inthe former East German DemocraticRepublic. In Von Rostock nach See: DieGeschichte der Rostocker Dampfschifffahrt,1850 bis 1945 (From Rostock to the Sea:The History of Rostock Steam Shipping,1850 to 1945), the authors chronicle thehistory of steam-powered shipping—theships and ship owners, their development,and daily operation—in a port city that has,for years, stubbornly depended upon theperpetual employment of sailing ships andtheir manpower.

At the beginning of Von Rostock nachSee, the authors supply a history behind the

city’s established practices of maritimetransport and trade, transitioning to theirfocus on the use of steam-powered shipswithin the region. In nineteenth-centuryGermany, Rostock was the third largestharbour city, next to Bremen and Hamburg,the maritime giant. As the authors note,Rostock maintained a stubborn bravadowhen it came to modernizing towards steampower. One of the early practices amongR o s t o c k m e r c h a n t s w a s t h e"Partenreederei", the concept of shippingentrepreneurs seeking financial backingfrom other participants—be they captains,ship builders, agents, or brokers—topromote their enterprise. Each partnerbought a share into the ship hoping theproductivity of its respective trade routewould pay off; yet by the mid-nineteenthcentury, the lack of capital generatedrendered this practice futile, whichultimately left shippers in the same positionof maintaining their already-establishedfleet.

By 1866, Rostock coal and sugar traderMartin Petersen commissioned a shipyard inInverkeithing, Scotland to build the WilhelmTell, a small steamer of 225 BRT(Bruttoregistertonne or gross registeredtonnage). He ran the steamer until 1881,navigating its usual trade route from St.Petersburg to the United Kingdom carryingsugar and wood out and bringing backBritish coal to Mecklenburg. With the warsof German unification, first between Prussiaand Denmark and then with Austria, theadvancement of steam-powered shippinghalted slightly until 1869, when shippingentrepreneur N. H. Witte assumedownership of the Concurrent from the localRostock shipyard. During the latter half ofthe nineteenth century, shippers such asPetersen built his fleet up to five steam-


powered ships, setting the precedent forfuture shipping tycoons such as AugustCords, the Fischer family, Erik Larsen, andOtto Zelck to amass steam-powered fleets atextraordinary strength. Lesser ship owners,such as Witte, partnered with tradesmen likeengineer Carl Abendroth, to establish theRostocker Actien-Gesellschaft für Schiffs-und Maschinenbau—the RostockCorporation for Ship and EngineBuilding—which ultimately becameGermany's famous shipyard, Neptunwerft,located in Rostock.

Just before the onset of the First WorldWar, rail lines were established betweenBerlin and Neusterlitz by the Deutsch-Nordischer Lloyd that stretched all the wayto Rostock's seaside area of Warnemünde. This linked Berlin directly to areas in thenorth and outside of Germany, as well asestablishing Rostock as a ferry port. In1914, the First World War erupted, as theauthors say, "with no warning system." Rostock merchants were hit hard as theytried to maintain their everyday business ofsending ships to all parts of Europe; 18 ofthe 54 total ships in Rostock were lost toenemy harbours, either seized by Alliedpowers, or else attacked and sunk. Towardswar's end, the German government providedsome assistance through the "Gesetz überdie Wiederherstellung der deutschenHandelsflotte", allowing some companies,such as F. W. Fischer, to recover eightsteam-powered ships. Allied powers alsooffered to sell confiscated ships back at alower price, through which about six shipswere resold to Germany. During theinterwar rebuilding period, shipping nameslike Cords and Zelck flourished, whileothers, such as Fischer, were either boughtup or simply went out of business, sellingoff any remaining ships. Life in National

Socialist Germany, according to the authors,seemed surprisingly less stressful than thelosses suffered in the First World War, savefor the typical bureaucratic red tape, whereby 1941, all ships essentially took ordersfrom the Reichskommissar für dieSeeschiffahrt (ReiKoSee). With the war'send in sight, the Baltic became a death trapas Soviet submarines and Allied bomberspreyed on Rostock ships. In the end, thecity was in ruins as Rostock's businessmenfled in fear of the onslaught of Sovietoccupation.

Von Rostock nach See provides a well-researched chronicle of steam-poweredshipping as well as a user-friendly registryof all the Rostock shippers and theirrespective ships, a list which encompassesnearly half the book. Unfortunately, theauthors occasionally fail to provide enoughdetails; for example, a chapter devoted toshipyards like the Neptunwerft, or moreinformation behind the day-to-dayoperations these ships experienced inEuropean waters would have been helpful.Nevertheless, enthusiasts and scholars ofmaritime history in Germany will find VonRostock nach See an insightful addition. Christopher PearcyVirginia Beach, Virginia

Richard Johnstone-Bryden. HMS BelfastCruiser 1939. Barnsley, S. Yorks.: SeaforthPublishing, www.seaforthpublishing.com,2013. (Published and distributed in the USand Canada by Naval Institute Press,http://www.nip.org"www.nip.org). 129 pp.,illustrations, bibliography. US $29.95,paper; ISBN 978-1-59114-385-7.

HMS Belfast Cruiser 1939 was written as

Book Reviews 439

both a visual and historic guide, and is partof a series that focuses on specific historicvessels. The book brings to life the story ofHMS Belfast, a ship which played a vitalpart in the Royal Navy from the early- tomid-twentieth century. The author set outto present a colourful and interestingnarrative, supported by numerous imagesand drawings, on the history of this class ofwarship. But this was not his only aim. From a broader perspective, he describesand illustrates the Belfast’s rescue from ascrapyard in the early 1970s, itspreservation and conservation, and itscontinuing service to the public andmaritime community as a floating museum.

Cruiser development, in general, startedin the late-eighteenth century whenindividual warships would undertakeindependent operations well away fromtheir home fleets and go “cruising” forpirates, privateers, enemy ships, andintelligence gathering. The word “cruiser”did not yet designate a specific type ofvessel; instead, it described a method ofnaval warfare. The definition of cruiserchanged, however, with the advent of steampropulsion and iron hull amour in the mid-nineteenth century. By the end of thatcentury, the term “cruiser” signified aspecific type of medium-sized, well-armed,long-range warship capable of undertakingthe traditional cruising role. After themaritime arms race, the dreadnought era,the First World War and the naval-limitation treaties of the 1920s and 1930s,governments developed various types ofcruisers. Many of them were characterizedby unique combinations since, dependingupon the needs of the country that orderedthem, the developers could customize thefollowing: tonnage, speed, amour, and guncalibre. Great Britain, because of its

scattered colonies and potential maritimeenemies, such as Japan, became extremelyinterested in d enveloping various classes ofcruisers. The initial result of thisdevelopment was a line of English cruisers,the Southampton-class cruiser, whichincluded HMS Belfast, commissioned inAugust of 1939, just one month before theoutbreak of the Second World War

Directly after her timely commissionand acceptance into the Royal Navy, HMSBelfast proved to be an excellent ship,crewed by first-rate officers and men. Whatfollowed was an outstanding and illustriouscareer that spanned more than threedecades. The author provides a fascinatingdescription of the ship’s activities, includingits historic combat actions from thebeginning of the Second World War in theNorth Atlantic, through the interwar years,the Korean War, and peace-keepingmissions in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In addition to approaching his subject in awell-organized manner, the author alsosupports his narrative with a well-rounded,detailed, and authoritative bibliography. This bibliography, with its quality sources,is a sufficient starting point for readers whowish to further research this ship, othertwentieth-century warships, or the RoyalNavy in general

In terms of an exhibit, Johnstone-Bryden provides a superbly illustrated tourof HMS Belfast from bow to stern, andtopmast to keel. He is well-qualified for thejob: not only is he a professional maritimeauthor, historian, and photographer, but heis active in many efforts to maintain GreatBritain’s maritime past.

HMS Belfast is Britain’s largestremaining historic warship, and serves as alasting reminder of the era of powerful, big-gun, armoured warships that maintained the


strength and backbone of the Royal Navy inthe first half of the twentieth century. It isnow a floating museum maintained by theImperial War Museum on the Thames inLondon, presenting what life was like forthose who served in her from before theSecond World War until the 1960s. Boththe author and publisher should becongratulated for providing a fascinatinginsight into the technology of the periodfrom the 1930s to the 1960s. This work,like the ship itself, contributes to maritimestudies and history. Thanks to the historicalnature of the narrative, vivid illustrations ofthe ship’s layout, and a detailedbibliography, this work would be useful toanyone who is interested in pursuing abetter understanding the Royal Navy andcruiser development in the first half of thetwentieth century. Wayne AbrahamsonPensacola, Florida

Charles Maginley, Bernard Collin, RonaldBarrie. The Canadian Coast Guard Fleet.Mahone Bay, NS: Long Hill Publishing,www.longhillpublishing.ca, 2014. xii +297pp., illustrations, tables, index of ships,hovercraft, and helicopters. CDN $40,paper; $50 hardback; ISBN 978-0-9733946-2-7.

The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) is thenewest of Canada’s uniformed services andalso the smallest, yet despite its size, it playsan important part in Canadian commerce,safety, and exploration. In The CanadianCoast Guard Fleet, authors Maginley,Collin, and Barrie, all veterans of the CCG,tell the story of this vital service.

In 1962, the Canadian Department of

Transportation announcing that the formerCanadian Marine Service would be renamedas the CCG. This was in recognition thatthe booming postwar economy required amaritime service capable of harbour safetyand search and rescue. Also—some notedthat the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) hadoften rescued troubled Canadian vessels;thus, the need for a different organization. The creation of the CCG is one of thelesser-known and less-appreciatedaccomplishments of the Diefenbakergovernment (1957-1963). In 1995, theFisheries and Ocean fleets of the Canadiangovernment were amalgamated into theCCG.

The CCG’s missions are varied: incommon with other nations’ coast guards,the CCG is involved in search and rescue,harbour safety, environmental protection,commercial development, hydrography, andexploration. In 2005, in response to theterrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, theCCG has added border security inconjunction with the Royal CanadianMounted Police and Arctic sovereignty withthe Royal Canadian Navy to its list ofduties.

The Canadian Coast Guard Fleet is afine introduction to this maritime service. Itis divided into three parts: the first relatesthe origins and development of the CCG,including descriptions of the CCG Auxiliaryand Inshore Rescue Program; the secondpart is an in-depth look at the ships,hovercraft, and helicopters of the CCG;while the last is comprised of five statisticaltables containing the dimensions andstatistics of each CCG vessel.

Part One contains a description of theantecedents of the CCG, as well as itsdevelopment during its first 50 years ofexistence. This is a valuable overview

Book Reviews 441

which gives the reader a sense of the rolesplayed by the CCG.

Part Two is the meat of the book. Theintroduction defines tonnage anddimensions used in the book, then thegeneral machinery used in CCG vessels, thecolour schemes used in the CCG (valuableinformation for modellers and maritimeartists,) designations of operating range, andabbreviations used in the following pages. This is helpful to the reader as theinformation given is placed up front, ratherthan in an appendix or scattered throughoutthe narrative. Next, it moves on tosubchapters containing descriptions of eachclass of CCG ship—Eastern Arctic PatrolShips, Icebreakers, as well as weather ships,search and rescue cutters, fisheries patroland research vessels, hydrographic andoceanographic ships, icebreaking cableships, light icebreakers, navigation aidtenders, survey ships, northern supplyvessels, miscellaneous vessels, as well ashovercraft and helicopters. Within eachsubchapter is a narrative of each vessel ofthe class described—basic statistical data,when each ship of that class was introducedinto CCG service, and when (if applicable)that ship was taken out of service and atleast one photograph of the ship or of a shipof that particular class. The sections onhovercraft and helicopters follow thatformat as well. There is one omission—theCCG operated a DC-3 aircraft in the1980s—this is not mentioned in the text. Also, the authors point out that CCGhelicopters, unlike helicopters used by othernational coast guards, are not primarilytasked with search and rescue. The searchand rescue function is primarily one for theRoyal Canadian Air Force and also theRCMP. CCG helicopters can and havebeen used for search and rescue, but their

primary role is logistical support for CCGships and shore stations. Finally, inaddition to the colour cover, the centresection of the book, contained in Part Two,has 18 pages of colour prints of CCGships—attractive and pleasing to see, and ofvalue again to the modeller and maritimeartist. These colour prints add much to thebook.

Part Three is a comprehensive set ofstatistical tables which give the pertinentdata on CCG assets.

This book is a valuable reference tool. The authors’ knowledge of the CCG showsthrough. The research is detailed andmeticulous and the writing is easy to follow. The authors obviously took their collectivetime in researching the CCG history and thehistory of each CCG asset. The manyphotographs aid in connecting the reader tothe accompanying text. The cover carries acolour plate of the CCG ship Henry Larsenand the CCG maple leaf badge.

North Americans are fortunate to havetwo such fine white-water navies protectingtheir shores—the USCG and the CCG. TheCanadian Coast Guard Fleet well relatesthe story of one of those white-water navies. It is an excellent work and deserves to be onthe shelf of every maritime enthusiast.

Robert L. ShoopColorado Springs, Colorado

Hans H. Meyer. Die Schiffe von Howaldtund HDW / The Ships of Howaldt andHDW. Band 1/ Volume 1, Neu- undUmbauten der Kieler Howaldtswerke AGvon 1945 bis 1967 / New and ConvertedVessels Built by Kieler Howaldtswerke AGbetween 1945 and 1967. Bremerhaven:Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum OceanumVerlag, www.dsm.museum, 2013. 446 pp.,


bilingual, illustrations, bibliography, index.49,90 €, hard back; ISBN 978-3-86927-071-5.

Founded in 1838 in Kiel, Germany, themachine factory Schweffel & Howaldtinitially produced boilers, then later turnedto building ships and submarines. Duringthe Second World War, the companydelivered over 100 U-boats to the Nazi-regime. In May 1945, the future of theHowaldswerke shipbuilding company wasin dire straits. Germany lay in ruins. At"Stunde Null", Zero Hour, the country hadto start from scratch, in all aspects ofsociety. Although hampered by severelydamaged facilities and Allied restrictions onGerman shipbuilding, the shipyard setcourse to recovery.

The Second World War drew a longshadow over the post-war era. The PotsdamAgreement of 2 August 1945 signed by theU.K., the U.S.S.R. and the U.S., prohibitedthe shipyard from building new ocean-goingvessels. On 26 September 1946, the AlliedControl Council stated the conditions for theconstruction of ocean-going vessels byGerman shipyards, partially annulling thePotsdam Agreement. On 14 April 1949,Britain, America and France signed theWashington Agreement, which granted theshipyard permission to build new ships. With the signing of the PetersbergAgreement on 22 November 1949 by theFederal Republic of Germany and theWestern occupying powers, Germany wasallowed to build larger ships, up to amaximum 7200 GT for tankers. The AlliedWestern Powers lifted the ban on buildingpassenger ships when France, Britain andthe U.S. signed the General Treaty(Deutschlandvertrag) in 1952. In responseto increasing tensions between the Eastern

Bloc and the West, the Allied WesternPowers desired to create a stronger bondwith the Federal Republic of Germany.

Between 1945 and 1948, the shipyardrepaired and converted German merchantships which had been given to othercountries as part of the war reparations. Thecompany was allowed to repair Germancoastal and fishing vessels and foreignships. Two years after the war, a total of835 merchant vessels had passed throughthe yard. Contracts to repair salvagedvessels were actually more like contracts fornew construction, since in some cases, verylittle remained of the original ship. Some ofthe "repaired" ships were close to ninetypercent newly built. Such extensiveexperience in ship repair enabledHowaldtswerke to add the repair branch totheir key markets. Conversion of tankersinto whaling factory ships and thereconditioning of ships into whalers werecentral to the business of the shipyardduring the post-War years. In 1957/58,Howaldt reconditioned two former Germannavy submarines which had been scuttledby their own crews only days before thesurrender of the German armed forces on8/9 May 1945. Both submarines becamepart of Germany's new Federal Navy. Fulfilling submarine-related contracts pro-vided the company with a basic knowledgeof submarine construction and thereby, thekey to a business segment that wouldbecome critical to the company later on.

New construction undertaken by theyard included all the major ship types,including tankers, bulk carriers, freighters,reefer ships and trawlers. It was in tankerconstruction that the most rapiddevelopment occurred, particularly withregard to ship size. While tankers in theearly 1950s had an average size of 18,000 to

Book Reviews 443

23,000 DWT, the tonnage of thosedelivered towards the end of the decade was70,000 DWT. By 1967, it had reached212,000 DWT.

In the 1960s, the shipyard beganconstruction of a dozen class-201submarines, which the German Navy hadcommissioned in 1959. To make furtheruse of their new submarine productionfacilities and their acquired know-how inthe field, Howaldtswerke endeavoured toexport submarines. According to theagreement between the Federal Republic ofGermany and the Western European Union,German yards were allowed to build andexport submarines with a standarddisplacement of up to 1,000 tons. In 1967,Howaldt landed its first submarine exportcontract with the Greek Navy.

In 1967 the Kieler Howaldtswerkemerged with Howaldtswerke Hamburg AG,and Deutsche Werft AG, Hamburg, to formthe company Howaldtswerke DeutscheWerft AG. The construction of submarinesbecame a decisive economic factor for thenew shipyard. Howaldtswerke also began tochart new waters by developing a tanksystem for the transportation of liquefiednatural gas. Then they explored the use ofnuclear power in shipping. In 1968Howaldtswerke delivered the nuclear-powered ore carrier OTTO HAHN with acapacity of around 14,000 DWT, to be usedfor testing‚ experimentation anddemonstration.

This book, the first of the trilogy TheShips of Howaldt and HDW, presents thehistory of the company and the history,technical data, photographs and sidedrawings of some 400 vessels, which wereconstructed, completed, reconditioned orotherwise converted from 1945 until themerger in 1967.

Jacob Bart HakLeiden, the Netherlands

Morris, Derek and Ken Cozens. London’sSailortown, 1600-1800: A Social History ofShadwell and Ratcliff, an Early ModernLondon Riverside Suburb. The East LondonHistory Society, www.eastlondonhistory.org.uk, 2014. Illustrations, bibliography,indices. UK £12.60 plus postage, paper;ISBN 978-0-9564779-2-7.

In the October 2013 issue of this journal Ireviewed a trio of books by these authors. The works in sequence of publication areMile End Old Town, Wapping, andWhitechapel. Taken altogether theseconstitute a path-breaking contribution tosocial and business history. At onceimportant to the metropolitan history ofgreater London, they also have helped tosave from neglect vital commercial centresof Great Britain and indeed, of the BritishEmpire. Now we have the fourth book inthe series

At a time that Britain was virtually atwar for a century or more, and when themerchant marine and the Royal Navy werepowerful agencies and factors in the profitand power of the kingdom, Shadwell andRatcliff, once part of the great mediaevalparish of Stepney, played remarkable roles. Hardly a history of Great Britain of the eraunder consideration mentions theseriverside locales. Now, all of this is beingrectified. It may be hoped that buddinghistorians, young and old alike, will takethese works to heart. Perhaps supervisingprofessors in the fields of urban history willtake note, too.

Professor Jerry White of BirkbeckCollege in the University of London, amongthe first of the academics to accord Morris


and Cozens their rightful place in thehistorical literature, writes in his Preface tothe volume under review: “Revelatory is nottoo strong a word for the work undertakenhere. The public understanding of the EastEnd of London at any time up to the FirstWorld War is of a uniformly bleak, oftenterrible, place of desperate poverty. Thismonochrome picture has been challenged byhistorians who have stressed the importanceof an indigenous merchant and industrialclass, especially in the years before 1800. But we have never before had revealed to usin such immense and convincing detail justhow prosperous, diverse and cultured thisEast End heritage was in fact.” ProfessorWhite points out how Morris and Cozenshave shown the cross-class complexity ofthis district. Of greatest surprise and delightis the exploration of the lives andconnections of “the middling sort ofpeople.” London’s eastern parishes were aplace of astonishing commercial and socialdiversity. Morris and Cozens lay before usall sorts of details about the merchants,ships’ captains, manufacturers, contractors,clergymen, doctors and other professionals.And as Professor White also correctly notes,the lives of women come strongly to thefore. I would add that we see, too, thedirection applied on the social fabric byparish and council governments, for as theBritish state came into its powerfulformation in the years beginning withQueen Anne, the profit and the power of thewhole in the national and imperial interestrested not solely on individual, mercantileand corporate advancement, and capitalaccumulation and investment, but on whatwe might call the enabling state, one thatmade possible the conditions on which thesepersons and entities in London’s easternparishes prospered and laboured.

These riverside parishes linked the

Thames River to the flanking interior to thenorth, and they were also adjacent to thesouth side (that of Greenwich Hospital andthe naval complex based around the RoyalDockyards of Deptford and Woolwich) thatseemed to represent the more government-directed, or government-owned, aspect ofthe proto-military state. In the parish ofShadwell and the now forgotten hamlet ofRatcliff, as in Wapping and Limehouse, wefind enterprises supplying the thousands ofships that had found their way into the Poolof London (both coastal shipping and thoseocean-going vessels that could navigateupstream) with essential repairs andmaterials: sails, ropes, masts, anchors,victuals, and other necessities, together withpilots, seamen and sea captains. The RoyalNavy required extensive foodstuffs andvarious liquid refreshments. Hence we findSir William Curtis, “Billy Biscuit,”supplying biscuit for the fleet (and learn thatweevils might have provided essentialVitamin C as an antiscorbutic). We alsofind that India Pale Ale (IPA) wasdeveloped here, and if the reviewer iscorrect in his brewing history, IPA is twice-processed, and the final, resulting fluid hasgreater travelling potential than somethingsingle-fermented which, in time, will sour. Among the items purchased by theHudson’s Bay Company were nails: in 1751no less than 10,000 No.40 nails and 500No. 30 nails were shipped. Processed ironwas precious in HBC territories, and Irecollect that York boats at the conclusionof their upcountry passages were burned fortheir nails, and the latter recycled to baysidefor the construction of new boats. Undercontract were delivered seeds supplied byJames Gordon, who had also sold seeds toJoseph Banks, Daniel Solander and hisneighbor, Captain James Cook, before theirfirst voyage of exploration. Etches and St.

Book Reviews 445

Barbe had their ships in the whaling tradesupplied here, as did firms shipping to theBaltic and the Greenland seas and America. Once again, the quoting from JosephConrad’s Heart of Darkness provesirresistible: “The tidal current runs to andfro in its unceasing service, crowded withmemories of men and ships it had borne tothe rest of home or to the battles of thesea.... Hunters for gold and pursuers offame, they all had gone out on that stream,bearing the sword, and often the torch,messengers of the might within the land,bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. Whatgreatness had not floated on the ebb of thatriver into the mystery of an unknownearth!... The dreams of men, the seed ofcommonwealths, the germs of empire.”

The work contains useful indexes aswell as bibliographies (these accompanyeach section of the book). There is aglossary, useful when we need to find outthat kentledge means pig iron used inballast; link, a torch carried by a link boy;lumpers, stevedores; small beer, weak beer;trenail, a wooden pin for securing timbers;and more. There’s a sailmaker’s glossary ofthose terms found in the text. There areassorted lists and indexes. Thebibliographies are intended as guides tofuture reading.

The student or inquisitive scholarreading this book will find the enterprise ofdoing so not for the weak of heart. It is truethat the material is set out in generalchapters, as the table of contents declares,and the work as a whole is comprehensiveand full of facts. But getting at these facts isnot easy, and perhaps one general indexwould have been best in the long run. Morecross-referencing would have helped. Perhaps, too, one general bibliographywould have been preferable along with acalendar of primary sources. From an

editorial perspective, too, running heads forthe individual chapters, if adopted, wouldhave aided the reader. It could be that thefinal, and summary volume, will give us abetter guide to the whole and be acompendium for the entire set. And puttingthat together may be the greatest challengeof all.

Before closing, it is pleasing to see thehistory of commerce being given attentionin what might be called the microcosm, forit is from the local that we learn aboutrelationships to larger entities. Withwisdom, John S. Galbraith, the dean ofcorporate imperial histories of the BritishEmpire of the nineteenth century, concludedthat the expansion of the Empire had beenlargely motivated by the energies of themercantile class. Of greater importance inthe shaping of imperial policy than thesecretaries and under-secretaries of statecredited with its formation, were countlesspersons in the commercial community whocreated the conditions upon which thatpolicy was based. These persons are mostlyunknown to history. The same could besaid of these communities of east Londonuntil the Morris and Cozens team began topublish their findings. As the publishersays of London’s Sailortown, this is the firstbook to describe this unique area ofseventeenth and eighteenth century London. It features the rich and poor, the churchesand chapels, the East India Company, theHudson’s Bay Company, brewers, coopers,mariners, sailmakers, shipbuilders, shipchandlers, and more. I have stressed abovethe merchant and mercantile marine aspectsof this work that have attracted myattention, and the evolution of docks andwarehouses has been excluded in thisreview on account of space limitations. Many social and institutional aspects ofShadwell and Ratcliff are laid out in detail


by Morris and Cozens, and in these aspects,too, the diligent student will discover manyvitally important findings besides newperspectives that show that this part ofgreater London was no dismal andbackwater slum of the metropolis asportrayed by the Victorians Charles Dickensand William Booth, rather the opposite: itwas a living organism that served localneeds and the marine trades and the Navywith global reach and global capacity. London was the port of the world. Tradebrought England its liquid wealth, and in1724, Daniel Defoe spoke of the “silverThames” because of the revenue that theriver generated. Morris and Cozens havefound true silver in those insurance, parish,company and tax records that are of thegreatest value to historical studies.

Barry GoughVictoria, British Columbia

Roger Parkinson. The Ship that Changedthe World. Dreadnought. London: I.B.Tauris, www.ibtauris.com, 2015. xiv+306pp., illustrations, tables, appendix, notes,bibliography, index. UK £25.00, hardback;£15.00 paper; ISBN 978-1-78076-826-7.

This is one of many recent books on theDreadnought and the First World Warpublished at the one hundredth anniversaryof the event. It is an analysis of the capitalship building programs of world navies,focusing on Britain and Germany, leading tothe worldwide “dreadnought” arms raceprior to and during the First World War. Other navies represented are those of theUnited States, Japan, France, Italy and otherminor and historical countries. The authorcovers a wide range of factors, includingtechnological development, as well as

economics, politics, and diplomacy. Hewrites, “An alternative title for this bookmight have been, The Navalist Era inDefence 1889-1922” (xi). It is an accountof the most dangerous period in navalhistory before our own age from a Britishperspective. The definition of thedreadnought includes battleships andbattlecruisers, that is, large, turbine-driven,armoured vessels, carrying for primaryarmament a number of a single type of largenaval rifles.

The chapter on “Origins of the Pre-Dreadnought Era” offers a concise survey ofhistorical developments in the technologyand economics of steel-making for armourplate and engines (turbines) and propellantsfor large guns. The development of firecontrol technology is reviewed briefly. Inthe next chapters the evolution of the capitalship in the Royal Navy is traced in thecontext of British politics, beginning withthe Naval Defence Act of 1889 andinternational diplomacy in the years leadingup to their trial of the Battle of Jutland.

“The New Navies of the 1890s” coversthe rapid rise of the American and Japanesenavies, illuminating Britain’s formative rolein the development of the Japanese navy,first as a supplier of ships, and later oftechnology. There is a detailed descriptionof the realities of maintaining ships on theother side of the world which required deepwater docking and other facilities availablein Japan. Parkinson analyzes the behaviourof the vessels of the combatant fleets of theSino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars,culminating at the Battle of Tsushima,which was a proving ground for newtechnologies and tactics.

Beginning with “Fisher and theDreadnought”, the reader is introduced tothe individual people who were the mainactors. Prime movers in the arms race, like

Book Reviews 447

Admiral “Jacky” Fisher and Kaiser WilhelmII, are presented in great detail. The authortraces the strong ties between Britain andGermany based on the relationships of theirroyal families and those of leadingaristocratic families. He shows where thetheories of Mahan fit into the logic of onebig battle that became Jutland. Individualleaders include Bülow, Tirpitz, Battenberg(later Mountbatten) and other figures ofBritish political history. The performancesof Beatty, Hipper, Jellicoe, Scheer, andTogo are analyzed.

In “From Dreadnoughts to Super-Dreadnoughts” the author traces theacceleration in size and range of guns in theperiod prior to the First World War, from12-inch in en echelon turrets in theDreadnought to 13.5-inch and heavier gunsin superimposed turrets in the super-dreadnoughts. The author shows how theinexorable drive for faster ships firingheavier shells with ever increasing rangesbecame a world-wide arms race, in whicheach generation of ship was quicklyrendered obsolete by the next. This racefinally went some way toward bankruptingthe main participants, Britain and Germany. In the denouement at the Battle of Jutland;Parkinson traces the fate of the individualships back to their design, attributing Britishlosses to misuse (lack of armour) of thebattlecruisers and the unsafe handling ofexplosives.

The study ends with the exhaustion ofthe British and their attempt to controlevents at the first Washington conference. In closing, the author looks forward to thedemise of the battleship, which heconcludes, was caused by the prohibitivecosts of the ship that evolved out of thedreadnought and the advance in theconstraints to their use, especially torpedoesand mines. The author only alludes to the

coming of airpower. Parkinson ably demonstrates that while

the Dreadnought was the culmination of thetheories of Admiral Jacky Fisher, itscompletion marked the beginning of adisastrous naval race. It was also “simply aship whose time had come” (102). All theelements were present and other navies,particularly the U.S. Navy, were moving inthe direction of an all-big-gun ship poweredby turbines. What was revolutionary aboutthe ship and its construction was that, forthe first time, the British Navy dramaticallyand publicly became a first adopter. Beforethat, the policy of reaction to innovation hadefficiently served the British Empire for acentury. Now this balance was shattered: interms of building time, Dreadnought took ascant 14 months compared to the morecommon two to three years

Among the best features of the work aresmall-scale drawings (based on Brassey’sannuals) and specifications for individualvessels. These drawings are situated withthe text related to the vessels and theimportant developments they represent. They give compressed data. The appendix,“Dreadnought building times, costs andfate”, presents valuable tabular informationon battleships in world navies. Additionaldata includes time to build in months;estimates under which the ships were built,and fate of the vessel (cancelled, sunk,scrapped, and so on) all in a format thatallows comparison within and amongnavies. This is testament to Fisher’s desireto demonstrate Britain’s superiority indesign and ship-building.

In terms of weights and measures, thesize of guns, being the primary weapon, isgiven in inches (Imperial measure) unlessthe country of origin was using Internationalmeasure at the time, for example Germany,France and Italy, where it is given in


centimetres. Interestingly, Japanese gunsare also measured in inches.

The “Bibliography” section hasproblems. It lists under “Primary sources”some published articles and omitsAdmiralty and other government papers. Under “Secondary sources”, location andyear of publication are given but the nameof the publisher omitted, which makes ithard for the reader to judge their value. Sources are almost entirely British and inthe English language, which indicates thevery British prism through which the authorviews events.

A list of acronyms or glossary would behelpful. The Notes section is easy tonavigate, being arranged under headingsshowing the page numbers, for example,“Notes to pages 4 - 11”.

Ian Dew and Kathy TraynorThunder Bay, Ontario

Philip Paynton, Alston Kennerly and HelenDoe (eds.). The Maritime History ofCornwall. Exeter: University of ExeterPress, www.exeterpress.co.uk, 2014. xvi+461 pp., illustrations, maps, tables,notes, bibliography, index. US $ 110.00,cloth; ISBN 978-0-85089-850-8.Distributed in North America by theUniversity of Chicago Press.

Editors Payton, Kennerley and Doe haveprovided a collection of papers whichexamine specific elements of Cornwall’smaritime past, organized into five timeperiods from the pre-medieval age throughto the present. The book tells of the powerof sea and terrain in shaping the course of acommunity’s life. The people of Cornwallwere drawn to the sea that surrounded themon three sides to bring in the harvest of

pilchard, mackerel and crustaceans. Theinland veins of tin, copper and china clayprovided another kind of livelihood. Afterfilling their local needs the excess of earthand sea bounty was placed aboard ships anddelivered to ports along the adjoiningBritish coastline and beyond.

Section one lays down the origin of theCornwall to be studied in depth in thefollowing sections. Settlement in the IronAge, development of coastal towns and therise of coastal and international trade arecovered in three detailed chapters. Chapterfour, by Wendy R. Childs, provides a richdescription of the rise in exports of tin andchina clay and the import of foreign foodand wares, placing Cornwall in the thick ofinternational trade.

‘The Age of Turbulence’ MaritimeDisorder in Tudor and Stuart Cornwall,’section two, turns to the period of 1485 to1714. After a lengthy introductory piece bythe editors, three chapters address keyaspects of the era which is dominated by theintegration of Cornwall into the rest of thenation, a task that in some ways is nevercompletely accomplished. Piracy andprivateering, the region’s involvement in thenaval aspects of the English Civil War andthe customs service’s corruption andineptness form the focused chapters in thissection.

Section three examines the longeighteenth century, beginning with anoverview essay of the period and fourchapters dedicated to the tin trade,development of Cornish ports, navigation,and wrecking and salvage. This sectionholds the prerequisite piece on the RoyalNavy by Nicholas Rodger. As expected, itis well written and provides a good surveyof the navy at this time, dotted with localconnections to Cornwall.

Profit from wreckage, smuggling and

Book Reviews 449

piracy keeps appearing in the volume. While not the mainstay for most of theCornish population, the rough coastlineprovided many wrecks that would deposittheir cargoes on the beaches, to which localshelped themselves. The book explores thehistory of the people’s right to collect theselost goods and authority’s entitlement toclaim a portion, or all of it. The coastingtrade and foreign vessels attempting to makelandfall offered targets for sea marauders. The smuggler’s dance with authorityoccurred frequently along the Cornwallcoast.

Section four covers the age of industrialexpansion and empire. The 30-pageintroduction gives a detailed description ofmaritime developments including insurance,life saving technology, port expansions, theemigration of Cornish people to NorthAmerica and the continuing tale ofwrecking and salvage. It was a time ofchange and turmoil. Seven chapters fill outthis section, touching on the fisheries,yachting, China Clay trade, the rise ofsteam, smuggling and wrecking, andCornish ports.

Section five deals with the twentiethcentury and Cornwall’s maritime future. This section explores the decline in the useof sail, the region’s roles in the First andSecond World Wars, the shift of tradingports into a variety of different functionsand the significant changes to the fisheriessince 1950, essentially the economicdownturn of Cornwall. But not all is doomand gloom as Philip Payton contemplatesCornwall’s potential future development asa tourist destination with a focus onhistorical sites and recreation possibilities. Attracting visitors to the spectacularlybeautiful coast and seaside towns holds outsome hope for the future economicwellbeing of the region.

Throughout the book we are told thatCornwall is separate from the rest ofEngland. At first, this is due to the roughterrain and the Tamar River (at the very eastend of the region) almost running the fullwidth of the peninsula, making it all but anisland. Later, the sheer distance from thepolitical centre of the country led to acertain sense of isolation, but canalbuilding, the age of the train, and large spanbridge development somewhat changed this,linking Cornwall more directly with the restof the country. It also undermined the roleof merchant shipping in transporting minedores and clay, fish, and local products tomarkets in Britain. In part, the linkagebegan Cornwall’s decline. More could besaid about the rail and canal developmentand its direct competition with the coastingtrade.

The strongest element in the book is theintroductory chapters for each of the fivesections. Written by the editors, theyprovide a thorough grounding in the majorhistoric, economic and social developmentsof the time period, both of regionalimportance and the larger context withinwhich Cornwall life was woven. They areexcellent essays, combining establishedsources with new research into the era underexploration. Reading these alone is worththe price of the volume.

Many of the chapters use terms andassume a certain level of knowledge ofships and fishing that might frustrate thenovice to maritime studies; so too thestatistics that appear in some of the analysis. The use of stats, however, is supremelydone, especially in Alston Kennerley’s“Cornwall and the Decline of CommercialSail.” He integrates his number crunchingperfectly into his argument. If there is anarea that needs significantly more emphasis,it would be that of women and the sea. Not


only women who went to sea or ownedboats, but the impact of a husband’s sea lifeon his wife and family ashore and how theymaintained a home.

The volume contains many images, atleast three per chapter. Black and whiteillustrations dominate but there are colouredimages, both paintings and photographs,throughout but most noticeably in acollection between pages six and seven. They contribute a visual documentation tothe work that adds significantly to the valueof the book as a source, if not simply to thepleasure of reading. The various tables areeasy to interpret. Maps are limited, butclear and helpful where they appear. A mapshowing the progress of rail and canaldevelopment would have been helpful,perhaps with Terry Chapman’s chapter,“Cornwall’s Trading Ports.” The detailedindex is very useful and the brief, selectedbibliography is a good addition to thereferences at the end of each of the 29chapters.

As the editors note in their introductionthis is the first academic collection ofarticles on the maritime history of Cornwall(3). It holds many jewels, but its realpurpose is to lead others interested inmaritime, social, economic and culturalstudies to the coast, rivers and upland ofCornwall. Thomas MalcomsonToronto, Ontario

Matthew S. Seligmann, Frank Nägler, andMichael Epkenhans (eds.). The Naval Routeto the Abyss: The Anglo-German NavalRace 1895-1914. London: Navy RecordsSociety Publications, distributed in the USby Ashgate Press, www.ashgate.com, 2015.xlix+508 pp., tables, notes, bibliography,

index. US $165.00, cloth; ISBN 978-1-4724-4093-8.

This work is a compendium of British andGerman documents designed to allowscholarly study of the Anglo-German navalarms race via side-by-side comparison,rather than through the traditional lens ofeither an Anglo-centric or German-centricwork. In doing so, the editors, British NavalHistorian Dr. Matthew S. Seligmann ofBrunel University London, retired GermanNaval Officer and current Lecturer at theUniversity of Potsdam Dr. Frank Nägler,and the Bundeswehr Center for MilitaryHistory and Social Sciences’ leading Navalhistorian Dr. Michael Epkenhans, havegathered a selection of 153 single or multi-part documents and partitioned them intogroups following key changes in the Anglo-German naval dynamic. Essentially, thesepaired chapters are broken up into the years1898-1904, 1905-1907, 1908-1911, and1912-1914, with German documents of thefirst period actually extending back to 1895to highlight the initial actions that triggeredthe whole debacle.

The work largely allows the primarysource documents to stand on their own, asis the style of such Navy Record Societybooks, but it leads with a rather impressiveintroduction and historiography that allowsone to get a feel for the editors’ hand andthe logic of their approach. The historio-graphy addresses both British and Germancontexts in depth, covering record surviv-ability and the interpretative trends ofscholarly studies for both nationalities. Compared to the corresponding ImperialGerman Archive, fewer British navaldocuments survive since the former washeavily and almost indiscriminately culledfrom 1958 to 1961, whereas the latter waskept safe during the Second World War via

Book Reviews 451

a transfer to Bavaria and guards ignoringorders to burn the archive. Some additionaltraces of lost British records did surviveoutside the Admiralty Papers, in corres-pondence between governmental bodies andin the works of American historian Arthur J.Marder, who quoted several lost documentsin his pre-1958 works. Bothhistoriographies operate on a cyclical trend,with initial basis forming out of theimmediate post-war publications of Britishand German naval leaders, followed byrevisionism. This occurred in Germanyafter the Kriegsmarine documents weredeclassified in the 1960s, whereas Britishrevisionism took another two decades toemerge. Now, both sides are experiencinga fresh wave of counter-revisionism andnew approaches, starting at the turn of thecentury and ramping up during thecentennial of the War.

The introduction heavily documents theanalysis of these trends and reallyshowcases the views held by the editors,most notably their staunch defense ofArthur Marder’s works (xix). Additionally,each chapter’s primary source collection ispredicated with an introductory section,where the editors are able to offer scholarlyanalysis and place the text within the largercontext of world events, such as “domesticconsiderations” within Germany and the riseof the ‘black-blue bloc’ coalition spurringthe 1907 escalation of German Navalmanufacturing, or the October 1911appointment of Winston Churchill as FirstSea Lord and his rapid reorganization ofnaval leadership to include much youngerand more innovative individuals just on theeve of war (161, 164, 415). Within thedocument sections are a myriad assortmentof notes that offer concise biographies onpeople mentioned, ship data upon a vessel’sfirst mentioning, and explanations regarding

references to people and events outside thepurview of the document itself. This worksextremely well, save for one instance. The1904 Dogger Bank Incident is alluded to ina November 1904 letter from AdmiralTirpitz to Freiherr von Richthofen, butwithout any note to explain to theuninformed that it entailed paranoid Russiansailors opening fire on British fishermenand their own ships while under the falseassumption that they were Japanesewarships, an action that outraged the Britishand lowered their opinion of the RussianNavy (99). Other than this single oversight,the design allows for the work to standalone quite well, with almost no need forcross-referencing to achieve the maximumamount of understanding of the text’scontent.

In terms of said content, all selecteddocuments were chosen to show what bothsides intended to achieve, how theyregarded each other, and what actions weretruly aggressive or actually reactive. Correspondence and budgetary documentscompose a large portion of the earlier work,back when France and Russia were stillviewed as the threat to Britain and Germanywas only just beginning to ramp up shipproduction. After Japan’s resoundingdefeat of the Russian Navy in 1904-1905and Germany’s emergence as a burgeoningnaval entity, texts began to shift in tone andtype. Ship designs and memorandaregarding financing warship constructionlitter the German chapters, and while Britishdocuments offer arguments on how to dealwith the German naval presence. Newlydesigned Naval War Plans begin to appearon both sides, showing their increased focusagainst one another. By the time of the1908-1911 chapters, the papers indicate thatthe battle lines for the First World War aremore or less set in what would become the


preferred actions for both sides on thewaves once the fighting commenced, withthe last few German documents highlightingthe Navy’s fall from the German spotlight infavour of the Army, as the British textshighlight their reactionary measures andexploding battleship construction plan thatwould ultimately form the core of thewartime Grand Fleet.

The Naval Route to the Abyss isdefinitely an important piece of scholarship,coming in at the start of newhistoriographical trends with a uniquecombined nature that offers a much moreimpartial view of an often unintentionallypartisan subject. With the centennial of theFirst World War well underway and thismetamorphosis of scholarly opinion, suchan impressive source compendium is all themore valuable to understanding the originsof the fleets made immortal at Jutland.

Charles Ross Patterson IIYorktown, Virginia

Harold G. Simms II. William Ernest Simms,Master Wooden Yacht Builder, 1896-1986.Self-published, 2011. ix+314 pp., table ofcontents, illustrations, appendix, boat list,bibliography, index and foreword by Olin J.Stephens II. US $45.00+$5 postage, cloth;ISBN 0-9759498-0-3. (Order directly fromH.G. Simms, [email protected])

In this excellent biography, Harold G.Simms sets out the life and achievements ofhis father, the American master wooden-yacht-builder, William Ernest Simms. Withhis brother, Eric James Simms, Williamfounded a boat-building business on the eastcoast of the United States in the early1930s. Producing everything from luxuryyachts to military vessels, it became one ofBoston’s most respected shipyards.

This is the second book Harold Simmshas written about a family member. In theearly 1980s, he began making a list of boatsthat his maternal grandfather, Amos Pentz,had built and after thirteen years ofresearch, he published One Hundred Forty-One Wooden Ships, 1872-1922: Amos PentzMaster Shipbuilder of Shelburne, NovaScotia (2004). It was after this that Harolddecided to write about his father, WilliamErnest Simms, for the benefit of futuregenerations of the family. Although thebook contains many interesting stories aboutthe family, it is also filled with detailedinformation about the sailing boats andmilitary vessels built by the Simms brothers. It is illustrated with numerous photographsof vessels, plans, documents andadvertisements from William’s extensivecollection.

William Ernest Simms was born inNewfoundland, Canada, in 1896 andalthough he grew up on a farm, he showedan interest in boat building from childhood. In 1919, at the age of 23, he moved toShelbourne, Nova Scotia, to learn the art ofwooden shipbuilding. Unable to find muchwork there, he moved down the coast toBoston in 1922 and began working forGeorge Lawley & Son, one of the largestyacht-building companies in the UnitedStates. Although hired as a carpenter, heworked in every department, including theblacksmith shop, the rigging department andthe mast-making department, to learn allaspects of yacht construction. Afterbecoming foreman of the small boatdivision, he married Ruby Pentz, thedaughter of Amos. In 1928, he leftLawley’s and after some years struggling tofind steady work as a yacht builder, he andhis brother Eric finally decided to foundtheir own boat-building yard. Williamknew wooden yacht construction and finish

Book Reviews 453

work, and Eric knew engines and anythingmechanical, so with a small amount ofcapital, they leased the old LawsonBoatyard in Dorchester, Boston, in 1933. Under the name Simms Brothers, theybegan building wooden sailing boats. Overcoming initial financial difficulties,their business and reputation steadily grewand by 1938, they were in a position to buythe yard outright.

It was not long before the Americangovernment noticed the capabilities ofSimms Brothers. In 1940, the yard builtand sold their first mine yawl to the Navy. They went on to build the sardine boatWilliam Underwood, but in 1941, the Navycontracted Simms Brothers to build twoharbour barges, then three more, the last ofwhich was delivered in October of that year. The attack on Pearl Harbor in December1941 changed everything. In 1942, SimmsBrothers turned their boatyard over towartime work for the Navy, dredging thebasin in front of their yard, repairing thepier and building a long shed on it, andinstalling a second railway to haul andlaunch large yachts. Their first post-PearlHarbour government contract was with theArmy for four harbour freight boats. In thesame year, 1942, they won a contract tobuild four marine sub-chasers for the Navy,and over the next two and a half years, theybuilt twelve of these. By this time, 99 menwere working at the boatyard. Williambecame an American citizen in 1943 at theNavy’s request in order to facilitate relationsbetween the boatyard and the government.In the following year, the Navy orderedeight air-sea rescue boats, the last of whichleft the yard in May 1945.

After the war, they returned to thebusiness of building and servicing yachts. In 1946, they began work on the famousocean racer Argyll, along with other yachts,

including the 89-foot motor sailer Versatile,built for Harold S. Vanderbilt and launchedin September 1950. This was the heyday ofSimms Brothers and the same year in whichHarold joined his father’s company with abachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering fromTufts College and a year of navalarchitecture studies at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology (MIT).

At the outbreak of the Korean War in1950, Simms Brothers resumed buildingmilitary vessels, producing nineminesweepers and ten air-sea rescue boatsfor the Navy between 1951 and 1957. When it was found that the Dorchester linkof the new Southeast Expressway was topass through their boatyard, however, theysold up and moved to Jacksonville, Florida,taking over the site of Knight Boats andMotors in May 1957. At this point, Williamdecided he no longer wished to bid ongovernment contracts and instead the yardsold, serviced and stored yachts. In 1961,the family sold the business and returned tothe northeast, where they bought and ran aboatyard in Scituate under the name SimmsYacht Yard, Inc. They built one morevessel in 1962, the sloop Dottie G., thenconcentrated on servicing and storingvessels. At its maximum size, the yard hadmore than fifty yachts. When the yard wasfinally sold in 1977, William officiallyretired at the age of 82.

Ending with a list of 76 vessels built bySimms Brothers, Harold Simm’s bookoffers an in-depth, lavishly illustratedinsight into the world of wooden boatconstruction in the 1900s. It will beappreciated by anyone interested in thehistory of boat-building.

Michael ClarkLondon, England


Adm. James Stavridis, USN (Ret.). TheAccidental Admiral: A Sailor TakesCommand of NATO. Annapolis, MD: NavalInstitute Press, www.nip.org, 2014. xvi+246pp., illustrations, appendices, index. US$32.95, UK £22.95, cloth; ISBN 978-1-61251-704-9.

For Admiral James Stavridis to claim thathis selection to the command of the NorthAtlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) andthe United States’ European Command(EUCOM) represents an “accident” may beone of the greatest examples of humilityfrom the last several years. Given hisdecades of exemplary service, his razor-sharp mind, and his “outside-the-box” ideasabout messaging and strategiccommunication, Stavridis more than met thelofty standard set for NATO commanderssince Eisenhower. The fact that he wouldbecome the first admiral to command thelargely land-based alliance at a time when itfaced war, transitions and crises provedunique, but his handling of the complexitiesof his command exhibited why he was no“accident.” Under his able hand, thealliance sailed well into the twenty-firstcentury, updating to meet emerging threatswhile maintaining its core values.

The Accidental Admiral chartsStavridis’ more than four years incommand. Arriving in 2009, the newcommander faced the problem of fightingan ongoing and difficult war in Afghanistanwhile also having to navigate the ever-changing dynamics of the Arab Spring, aresurgent Russia, and a new war in Libya. All of these events occurred amid abureaucratic morass of heated internal andexternal politics among Europe’s leaders. Stavridis dutifully explains the complexitiesof the NATO decision-making process andhow he tried to streamline it when he could.

He avoids excessive detail when it comes tothe machinations of these crises; as he statesin his preface, his intent is not to discuss“what happened,” but rather to analyze“why it happened.” (xi) As such, hisnarrative remains reader-friendlythroughout. His treatments of Afghanistan,Libya, Syria and Russia, all less than 20pages each, provide a brief primer not juston what occurred while he led NATO, butwhere he sees the various situations goingand why. A lengthy reading list at the endo f t h e b ook p rov i d e s r e a d yrecommendations for anyone wanting to digdeeper.

Stavridis’ last several chapters are thebest. Here he moves the narrative awayfrom diplomatic and operational discussionsto illuminate more ephemeral concepts:team-building, globalization, strategiccommunication, and planning. It is withinthese chapters where he proves he is noaccident. One could tear out each of theseseparate sections and insert them intomanuals on leadership, strategy, or businessand not only enliven the texts, but providemuch needed insight in a very readablemanner. The admiral iconoclastically toredown traditional ways of thinking at NATOand worked to insert modernization into theinstitution. In The Accidental Admiral heexplains how he did it, his thoughtprocesses behind it, and how one couldbuild these changes into their organizations. His chapter on “convergence,” or theintersection of seemingly dissimilar globaltrends to create exponentially morethreatening crises, provides one of the bestoverviews of the darker side of globalizationever written.

Stavridis devotes much of his narrativeto examining leaders and the traits thathelped them succeed. His analysis of theleadership personalities he worked with

Book Reviews 455

while in command of NATO is outstanding. From the perspective of an “insider lookinginside”, Stavridis reflects on several of thecommanders he worked with: GeneralsStanley McChrystal, David Petraeus, andJohn Allen. Each of these military menreached the pinnacle of their careers andthen, through an unanticipated misstep,found themselves forced to resign or retire. Always gracious, Stavridis clearly thinksvery highly of all three, but understandshow perception can create problems. Tofurther drive the point home, he turns thefocus on himself, recounting theinvestigation into some of his travelfinances while NATO commander. Although ultimately cleared of any wrong-doing, the rumour of misconduct provedenough to prevent his promotion to Chief ofNaval Operations. As a result, Stavridiselected to retire after four decades ofservice, and the United States lost anoutstanding military leader.

The Accidental Admiral does not spinany sea yarns, nor does it provide anoperational recounting of a militarycampaign. Instead, it’s a fitting memoir tocap the exemplary career of one of thebrightest minds the United States militaryhas seen in a generation. Stavridis clearlymisses the sea, but more so the navy and thecamaraderie it builds. The hint ofbittersweet farewell pervades his narrative,and you pine for the sea along with theformer admiral. His recounting of his lastweek in the navy is touching and deeplypersonal, reflecting a humility that can befelt on every page. Surely Stavridis willfind future success (he is now the dean ofthe Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacyat Tufts University) and will not be out ofthe limelight for long. At his core, though,he will always be a navy man. That fact,when one considers that his last command

entailed over watching a land-based alliancespread out over thousands of square miles,might be considered ironic, if notaccidental.

Andrew J. ForneyWest Point, New York

Robert C. Stern. Big Gun Battles.WarshipDuels of the Second World War. Barnsley,S. Yorks: Seaforth Publishing,www.seaforthpublishing.com, 2015.xx+268 pp., illustrations, maps, notes,bibliography, index. UK £30.00, cloth;ISBN 978-1-184832-153-3.

Despite the ambiguity in the title, this bookis not primarily an examination of battlesinvolving big-gunned battleships. It offersa different take on a particular aspect of theSecond World War at sea. The author hasfocussed exclusively on significantengagements where only surface shipsparticipated—to the exclusion of aircraftand submarines—and where the primaryweapons used were naval guns. While thisfocus leaves out much of the campaigns inthe Pacific, including major surface shipbattles in the Solomon Islands, much of theBattle of the Atlantic and other key battles,there is still a wealth of material for thoseinterested in naval history.

In the early twentieth century, theintroduction of the long-range, large calibrenaval gun mounted in a rotating turret—asexemplified in HMS Dreadnought in1906—changed the naval tactical equation. No longer would it be necessary, as Nelsonexhorted, to “engage the enemy moreclosely.” But technology exacted a price. Longer range firing introduced bothballistics complexities and point-of-impactuncertainties—in other words, a


sophisticated fire-control solution needed tobe developed to take advantage of thecapabilities of the weapon. Naval gunnerydiffers greatly from its artillery counterparton land. Naval guns are usually shooting ata moving target that is likely also firingback, as well as taking evasive action. Andthey are being fired from a moving platformwhich may equally be conducting evasivemanoeuvres. Practical solutions to theproblem were developed to the point that, atthe outbreak of the Second World War,relatively sophisticated electro-mechanicalsystems coupled with superb optics were atsea in all major navies. The crux of thisbook is how these systems performed inbattle and how they were exploited by themen in command of the ships that carriedthem.

Robert Stern has arranged the narrativechronologically so that the first threechapters deal with the Royal Navy’sstruggles with the Kriegsmarine and theItalian Regia Marina in the Atlantic and theMediterranean. Subsequent chapters dealwith engagements between the ImperialJapanese Navy (IJN) and Allied forces,predominantly the United States Navy, inSouth East Asian waters. In between is achapter which examines the battles betweenBritish and German surface forces in theBarents Sea in defence of the Arcticconvoys.

The opening gambit of theKriegsmarine was the deployment ofcommerce raiders or “Panzerschiffe” intothe Atlantic to attack the British seabornetrade routes. In the vast reaches of theNorth and South Atlantic, these long-leggedcruisers could effectively disappear, forcingthe Royal Navy to expend considerableresources to both find and destroy them. The most famous of these was Graf Speeand her exploits are succinctly detailed and

analyzed. The author offers some differentinsights into what took place off the RiverPlate in December 1939.

The book then traces the strategicallyinconclusive series of surface shipengagements between British and Italianforces in the Mediterranean from June 1940to March 1941, including an incisiveanalysis of the events and outcome. Thissegment deals with lesser knownengagements and some fascinating aspectsare revealed; for example, the post-actionanalysis by the Regia Marina of theaccuracy and firing techniques of the Britishsalvos. It is interesting to note the author’sobservation that while both opposingAdmirals claimed victory in one battle, theBritish Admiral was criticised for his lack ofaggression. The author considers that thismay have had an influence on his actions inhis subsequent command—HMS Hood andPrince of Wales—when they foughtBismarck.

Chapter three follows the generallysuccessful activities of the Germancommerce raiders up to the Bismarck’sexcursion into the Atlantic in May 1941. Stern’s account of the events leading up tothe engagement in which Hood was sunk isone of the best. Then the focus moves eastas the Imperial Japanese Navy began itsassault into Southeast Asian waters. TheAllied forces, known as ABDA (American-British-Dutch-Australian), were completelyoutnumbered by the Japanese yet theyfought ferociously and had some localsuccesses. Again, the author is examininglesser known battles in out-of-the-wayplaces.

The final chapter looks at what was thelast surface ship gunnery battle of theSecond World War in October 1944. Thiswas the Battle of Surigao Strait, a key partof what became known as the Battle of

Book Reviews 457

Leyte Gulf. It was a last ditch attempt ofthe IJN to dislodge the American landing onthe Philippines and involved most of theheavy units of the IJN. It was a classic,complex battle and the author describes itwith skill and understanding.

One of the most interesting (at least tothis reviewer) facets of the book is theextent and detail of the analysis. The authorcites statistics of the engagements in termsof rounds fired and hits obtained. In manycases, the actual damage inflicted by thosehits or near misses is also described. It issobering to learn how profligate the gunnerscould be on occasion and how few reallydamaging hits were often actually made. And yet, as the author observes in hisAfterword, in 1944 it was technologicallypossible to achieve a hit with the first salvoat night at a range in excess of 20,000 yards(10 nautical miles/18.5 Km). This, hecontends, was “…the harbinger of the endof naval gunnery as a major factor inwarfare” (229).

This is a remarkable book. RobertStern’s narrative exhibits a deepunderstanding of the tactical and technicalissues involved in naval warfare. Hisanalysis is incisive and he often posesinteresting historical “what if” typequestions. The endnotes also contain awealth of additional information. Thephotographs and illustrations complementthe text and the publisher has chosen avisually pleasing layout. It is an importantcontribution to naval history and navaltechnical history.

E.J.M. Young Ottawa, Ontario

Mark Stille. The Imperial Japanese Navy inthe Pacific War. Oxford, UK: Osprey

Publishing, www.ospreypublishing.com,2014. 392 pp., illustrations, bibliography,index. CDN $46.00, hardback; ISBN 978-1-4728- 0146-3.

Since the introduction of steam power as apropulsion system, technology has becomea greater feature of nautical history thanmany people realize. For generations, thelatest technology or the limits of thetechnology of the day have set the tempo ofnaval operations. Technology is also thefoundation for understanding the dramaticchanges in naval capability and generallydefines the ability of navies to project powerand, therefore, command of the sea. Formany readers, it is also the easiest point ofconnection between great naval events andthe more difficult concept of naval power. The technology of the ship and itsequipment is easily recognizable and morereadily digested.

Naturally, this has led to an entire genreof books detailing the technology of warfarefor easy comparison and comprehension. Mark Stille’s recent work, The ImperialJapanese Navy in the Pacific War, stands asan excellent example. In nine chapters, heseeks to establish an understanding of theJapanese naval order of battle during theSecond World War and succeeds byproviding much more than a simple list ofships.

Each major fleet of the period generallyhad six major types of ships on anoperational basis. Starting from the largestcapital ships, such as aircraft carriers andbattleships, and working through tosubmarines, the six chapters at the core ofwork revolve around these divisions. Eachchapter represents one of the key ship typesand within each, the author then dissects thevarious ships and their development, theiroperational experiences, weapon systems,


and similar key issues. This situates eachindividual ship type as an operational unit,identifies its capabilities and moreimportantly, places it within the Japanesephilosophy and how they used it.

Since each ship type consisted of morethan one design, the author identifiesvariations of each common theme as aunique class of ship which reflected theevolution of technical developments at thetime of production. While sharing acommon design construct (in the sense thatthey are all the same type of ship), eachclass exhibits unique features, providing auseful chronology of ship development byclass and individual ship. This allows thereader to follow individual ships of aparticular class and type from constructionthrough upgrades and into the conflict itself. Aircraft carriers, for example are discussedin terms of carrier development andoperations, aircraft carried and shipboardweapon systems and other key issues likeradar and fighter defense. There follows anexamination of each ship type from pre-warconstruction forward, based on armamentand salient features. Thus, the reader is ableto examine the IJN Soryu briefly fromcreation to loss.

Stille rounds out his text by providingthree additional chapters and anintroduction. One chapter discussesImperial Japanese Navy (IJN) strategy anddoctrine and tries to set up the strategicthinking and doctrinal underpinnings of theIJN. A stand-alone chapter summarizingthe Pacific War is also provided with someexcellent maps to produce a sense of thecontext in which the fleet was operating andthe events they experienced. Finally, ananalysis/conclusion brings all this together. Lavishly illustrated with maps and imagesalong with annotations discussing minordetails of the Japanese Navy, the book

produces a powerful visual impact on thereader.

While an interesting read and afascinating tool for tracking changes in theIJN over time, the book suffers from seriouslimitations of scale. Such an attempt toproduce a study of the Imperial JapaneseNavy fleet units and their development is totackle a subject of epic size. Trying toinclude doctrinal discussions as well as asurvey of the Second World War, is a recipefor potential disaster. Pulling all thistogether into a coherent narrative in 392short pages forced the author to bereductionist in terms of the details providedand necessarily required him to skim over agreat deal of information. This hasseriously reduced the academic value of thebook, further marginalized by the hugenumber of photographs and illustrationswhich took up space that could have beenused for substantive additions to reinforcethe value of the text. That the authormanages to provide some valuable materialthis way is a testimony to Stille, but it begsthe question of how much other informationwas sacrificed for brevity and illustrations. Unfortunately, when combined with a lackof citations and a very limited bibliography,the overall value of this book dropsappreciably. It is a beautifully illustratedbook based on extensive research, but it ismore useful to those with no background inthe field than it is to most serious scholars.

Robert DieneschWindsor, Ontario

William Warner. ONBOARD HMASAUSTRALIA 1914-1918. A boy’srecollections of life on the lower deck of thebattlecruiser. Sydney, NSW: Five SensesE d u c a t i o n P t y L t d . ,

Book Reviews 459

www.fivesenseseducation.com.au, 2014.192 pp., illustrations, maps. AU $29.95,paper; ISBN 978-1-74130-984-3.

William Warner was a teenage signalmanwho served in the battlecruiser HMASAustralia during 1916-18. He wrote thisbook in the 1930s, but it was neverpublished. In 2014, his children, RobertWarner and Olwyn Green, edited theirfather’s manuscript and produced this work. Accounts of life on the lower deck in theRAN during the First World War are fewand far between and William Warner’s bookis a very welcome addition to the history ofthe RAN. That said, it is a ‘diamond in the rough’ and has its flaws.

Warner’s detailed descriptions of hislife in the battlecruiser include long andmonotonous patrols in the North Sea,arduous living and working conditions(especially the much-hated coaling ship),frequent gunnery and torpedo trainingexercises, the boredom of the Scapa Flowanchorage, his shipmates (including thealcoholic senior boat coxswain ‘GentleDick’ who was frequently dis-rated but stillmaintained his position as the senior boatcoxswain due to his skill), time on leave inLondon, and the food, which he states wasnot too bad and that ‘sailors are not normalif they are not grumbling about something’. He also provides insights into some of theship’s officers, such as the 1st lieutenant andthe surgeon, for their unceasing demandsfor cleanliness, and Australian-born gunneryofficer, Lieutenant Commander FrederickDarley, who was highly respected andrevered for his calm manner and bravery.

The ship’s officers actually receive duecredit for their ability with the only real (andoften repeated) complaint being the menwere rarely kept informed of the ship’sprogram. Warner states, quite rightly, if the

men had known more about why they weresteaming in ever decreasing circles aroundthe North Sea, their morale and operationalfocus would have been improved. Even asa junior sailor, Warner understood the valueof British sea power and its ability to winthe war. In June 1916 he wrote: “In fact theBritish were in command of the seas. In thefleet we knew this. We also knew the pricethat had been paid in the Battle of Jutland tomaintain supremacy.”

The book covers much of Australia’scareer, including the ill-fated collision withHMS New Zealand in April 1916, whichkept the Australian ship out of the battle ofJutland on 31 May/1June 1916, anothercollision with HMS Repulse in December1917, embarking of aircraft in 1918 (whichwere launched from platforms constructedon P and Q Turrets), convoy escort duties inthe North Sea, the detachment of 11 men totake part in the Zeebrugge Raid, and thesurrender of the German High Seas Fleet inNovember 1918.

What spoils the book overall is poorediting. When Warner produced his manu-script in the 1930s, he was recalling eventsfrom a decade before and many eventsbecame jumbled and out of sequence. Thecollision with Repulse in December 1917(which saw Australia go into dock again)gets mixed up with the disastrous ‘Battle ofMay Island’ in January 1918, where thefleet departed Rosyth at night resulting indamage to several vessels and the sinking oftwo K- Class submarines. These twoseparate incidents become the same incidentin the book, incorrectly said to occur in late1916. Additionally, the arrival of USwarships to join the Grand Fleet inDecember 1917 somehow gets moved tomid-1916 and the embarking of aircraft inAustralia in 1917-18 is detailed as alsooccurring in 1916. These errors could have


been avoided by simply reading the OfficialHistory of the RAN in World War I byArthur Jose to get an appreciation of anaccurate time line of events.

Additionally, there is some poor proofreading regarding dates (the Battle ofJutland occurs in 1915, 1916 and 1917 atdifferent points in the book) and incorrectspelling of ship and place names that isannoying. The editors also state that theyomitted paragraphs including descriptionsof scenery, personal impressions andopinions but do not contain factualmaterial. This is a pity, as several ofWilliam Warner’s comments are well worthremembering. My favourite is hisdescription of life in the North Sea in badweather: “ÒThe only means of signaling insuch conditions was by flashing the 24 inchsearchlights, which were at best indistinct inthe misty thick spray. It was very difficultto manipulate these searchlights and this jobwas hard work. Despite the use of severalpairs of woolen mittens, one on top of theother, my hands would soon become numband my face would ache from the cold. Itwas almost impossible to keep a foothold onthe slippery, sloppy uncovered brass deckand I could easily fall a number of times…..It was far worse at night in the pitchydarkness when nothing was clearly visibleand you could have persons or thingsbumping into you. The sound of retching,with interspersed groans coming from thebridge corner was nauseating. On such darknights in a gale the only sanctuary was yourhammock, but even this jerked around likea suspended gyro, and the air of the messdeck was foul. If and when you got to yourhammock it was likely as not to be lying ina sloppy pool of water.”

As an 18 year old signalman, even afterhis tough training in HMAS Tingira in1914-15 the North Sea was hard and

dangerous work. This is the value ofWilliam Warner’s book in describing life onthe lower deck in a much forgotten part ofthe Australian experience of World War I. With a little more polish this rough diamondcould have been a much better production. It is still very highly recommended to a widerange of readers from the professionalhistorian through to those wanting to knowmore about the RANs role in World War I.

Greg SwindenCanberra, Australia

Richard E. Winslow III. “A Race ofShipbuilders”The Hanscoms of Eliot,Maine. Portsmouth, NH: PortsmouthMarine Society, www.portsmouthhistory,org, 2013. xvii+307 pp., illustrations, maps,notes, bibliography, index. US $35.00,cloth; ISBN 978-0-915819-41-6.

In “A Race of Shipbuilders,” historianRichard E. Winslow III brings us the storyof a remarkable American family, theHanscoms of Eliot, Maine, designers andconstructors extraordinaire of vessels, largeand small, for over three hundred years. Asthe author of several books published by theMarine Society of Portsmouth, Winslow isan expert on all things maritime and navalalong the shores of the Piscataqua River inMaine and New Hampshire.

According to Winslow, the firstHanscoms arrived in the New World asEnglish colonists in the seventeenth century,with subsequent generations beingemployed as seamen and shipwrights in theera of the Revolution and War of 1812. Bythe 1820s and 30s, Hanscoms had earnedthe title of master shipwrights, and wereturning out ships and schooners at theirown, as well as at several other yards along

Book Reviews 461

the Piscataqua, under the direction ofWilliam Hanscom, Sr. His son, WilliamLeighton Hanscom, continued the familybusiness at Eliot for several years. William’s brother, Isaiah, opted forgovernment service and became Clerk at theNavy Yard at Portsmouth in the 1840s,overseeing the building of ships, schooners,sloops, and frigates for ‘Uncle Sam,’including the steam frigate USS Saranac,launched in 1848. Isaiah also led asuccessful lobbying effort to expand thePortsmouth Yard to include a ship-repairingdry dock.

“Gold Fever” changed the lives of manyAmericans in the 1840s, including at leastone Hanscom, William Leighton. Temporarily relocating to the West,Hanscom designed and briefly operated LotWhitcomb, the first steamboat built on thePacific coast. Other Hanscoms, UncleSamuel and his two nephews, also launchedseveral clippers on the Piscataqua in the1850s, most notably Nighingale, called bythe U.S. Nautical and Naval Journal in1855 “the swiftest ship in the world” (39). Victims of the business depression of the1850s, however, the Hanscom brothers wereforced to close their Piscataqua operations,and entered government service full-time ascivilian employees of the Navy; Isaiahsuccessively in Florida, California,Portsmouth, and Norfolk, and William atPortsmouth, Boston, Philadelphia, andBrooklyn.

The Civil War found the Hanscomsdesigning, building, and launching ships forthe Union Navy. Notably Hanscom-built,with William as designer and Isaiah asconstructor, was the steamer USSKearsarge, famous for sinking theConfederate sloop-of-war Alabama in 1864. Hanscom-built, as well, were ironcladsMonadnock and Agamenticus launched in

the wake of the Merrimac-Monitor clash atHampton Roads in 1862. As Winslowreminds us, Hanscoms were there at thebirth of modern naval warships.

Despite his admiration for theHanscoms, Winslow does not shy awayfrom detailing a possible blot on thefamily’s escutcheon. In 1871, Isaiahmarked the zenith of his professional careerwhen he became chief of the U.S. Navy’sBureau of Construction and Repair. Asmembers of the graft-ridden Grantadministration, not surprisingly, he andSecretary Robeson were recommended forimpeachment in 1876 on charges ofcorruption in their department by aDemocrat-controlled Congressionalcommittee. The charges were likelypolitically motivated, as no legal actionfollowed, and both men retained theirpositions. Nonetheless, it seems, Isaiah wastainted by the amoral atmosphere of GildedAge Washington.

Winslow devotes many of his laterchapters in “A Race of Shipbuilders” tobiographical vignettes of other Hanscomnotables. He describes Captain JohnHanscom (1835-1863) as “an energeticyoung shipmaster” (85) who served hiscountry in the Northern Merchant Marineduring the Civil War. To the usual hazardsof shipwreck, accidents, storms, disease,and unruly crews endemic to the merchantmarine in peacetime, says Winslow, wereadded Confederate privateers, blockaderunners, and British-built raiders inwartime. With little Southern cottonavailable for the Anglo-American market,John Hanscom engaged in the trade forIndian cotton at Calcutta. Though hesuccessfully conducted the Calcutta run forseveral years, he was mysteriously murderedin 1863, likely by a mutinous crew, aheinous crime that still remains unsolved.


Winslow calls Simon Parker Hanscom(1819-1876) a “Journalist and Friend ofPresidents” (111). A cousin of William L.and Isaiah Hanscom, Simon was theexception to the Hanscom family’sattachment to the sea. He pursued asuccessful newspaper career, serving asWashington correspondent for various NewYork sheets, ultimately becoming editor ofthe Washington National Republican, astrong pro-Lincoln journal during the CivilWar. Winslow calls the Republican and itseditor “Lincoln’s favorites” (120).

Admiral John Forsyth Hanscom (1842-1912) helped build America’s Steel Navy. He served at various private andgovernment yards, designing and renovatingships to fight in the Spanish-American Warand, according to Winslow, “the biggestbattleships [of the day] show many ofHanscom’s ideas” (203).

Charles Ridgely Hanscom (1850-1918)became a preeminent designer of navalvessels, yachts, and merchant ships,including two ocean-going steamboats forrailroad baron James J. Hill. This Hanscomalso served as general superintendent atBath Iron Works in Maine.

Last in Winslow’s parade of Hanscomnotables is Lawrence G. Hanscom (1906-1941), journalist and aviator, who became aleading proponent of building airports fornational security on the eve of the SecondWorld War. Hanscom Field and HanscomAir Force base in Massachusetts are namedin his honour.

Meticulously researched from a widearray of sources, both primary andsecondary, “A Race of Shipbuilders” is animpressive work of scholarship. Winslowhas enhanced his study with numerousphotographs, ship plans and drawings, andimages of oil paintings, plus a helpful mapof the Piscataqua region. Though his title

seems to imply he has written a localhistory, his book is really the story ofmaritime America as told through the livesof a remarkable American family.

William L. Welch Natick, Massachusetts

Timothy S. Wolters. Information at Sea:Shipboard Command and Control in theNavy from Mobile Bay to Okinawa. Balti-more, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,www.jhu.edu, 2013, xii+317 pp, illustra-tions, notes, sources, index. US $54.95,hardback; ISBN 978-1-4214-1026-5.

Managing information while underway hasbeen a challenge for maritime commanderssince the earliest ships of war put to sea. Inrecent years, the United States Navy hasmade significant efforts to incorporatecyberspace into its processes for managinginformation in peace, war and othercontested environments. The establishingof Fleet Cyber Command and the creationof Information Dominance Corps in 2010highlight two of the USN’s latest efforts tokeep up with the newest technological andinformation challenges of today’s maritimeoperations. While the challenges may seemnew, the problems presented whenmanaging and using information at sea areenduring, a point well proven inInformation at Sea: Shipboard Commandand Control in the Navy from Mobile Bay toOkinawa.

Wolters’ book chronicles the navy’spursuit “to improve the fleet’s systems formanaging information” from the Virginiusaffair in 1873 through the end of the SecondWorld War. This history is a relevant andtimely study that explores the timelesschallenges of innovating during austere

Book Reviews 463

times. By focusing on the past, Woltersseeks to provide historical insights from theevolution of naval information managementthat culminated in the creation of theCommand Information Center (CIC) onboard American war ships in the SecondWorld War. More importantly, thisevolution resulted not just from thedevelopment of new devices and processes,but also from the work and ingenuity ofseveral generations of naval officers andleaders. In Wolters’ terms, this history is“an examination of the brains behind thisbrawn” (2). With the implementation of theCIC during the Second World War II,Wolters posits that the responsibility fordecision-making transformed from one,singular officer (à la Lord Nelson in the ageof sail) into a more “distributed” modelwhere “the junior personnel assumingunprecedented responsibility” (4).

The junior personnel, the navymiddlemen who made this evolutionpossible are a central focus of the book. Similar to Paul Kennedy’s 2013 book,Engineers of Victory: The Problem SolversWho Turned the Tide in the Second WorldWar, this study looks to the men who solvedthe problems of information sharing andcommunications along the way. Bothstudies seek to understand “how things gotdone” with respect the developing andimplementing the innovations created tofight the war. Information at Sea describesthe achievements of inventors, sailors andradiomen such as Foxhall Parker, EdwardVery, Daniel Wurstbaugh, Stanford Hooper,and Charles Badger; men who createdsignal and flag systems, applied “spark andarc” radio technology and other processes toimprove fleet “signaling” at the turn of thelast century.

Wolters also explores the role of theNavy Department’s bureaucracy in

advancing the signal and communicationsystems into the fleet, both materially andwith respect to the training of the operators. The author includes accounts of howresponsibility for integrating radiotechnology into the fleet alternated betweenthe Bureau of Equipment and the Bureau ofSteam Engineering prior to the creation ofthe Radio Division and the Fleet Radioofficer. While certainly this approach is allencompassing, the author’s narrative issomewh a t d i f f i cu l t t o fo l l owchronologically. Still, he succeeds in tellingthe story of these men and the machines. In particular, the book navigates theemergence of aircraft carriers, submarines,radar, and direction finder radios in thelead-up to the Second World War. Thepenultimate chapter, titled “A MostComplex Problem,” examines how each ofthese new technologies presented newstreams of information for naval leaders tomanage and then coordinate. While somereaders may find this chapter not as familiaras the book’s final chapter on the CIC inwar, Wolters’ analysis of how the Navyfigured out these new developments duringthe interwar period is rich with analogs tothe current challenges of maritimeinformation management. During theannual “Fleet Problems” between the 1924and 1940, naval leaders developedoperational concepts to fight the fleet thatincluded using “radio silence,” leveragingmission command type orders, andemploying encrypted radio messages. Thepace of information managementaccelerated from days and hours down tominutes. Officers at the Naval War Collegeand the Naval Research Laboratory also hadsignificant roles in creating the newdoctrine. Wolters recounts how Nimitz’scircular formation led to improved radiocommunications. On the eve of the Second


World War, “senior officers [created] acommon operational doctrine thatemphasized initiative and tacticalflexibility” (168). Moreover, the interwaryears showed that “superior command andcontrol gave combatant commanders adecisive advantage” (169).

The result of the interwar exercises andresearch was the Command InformationCenter becoming “the brain” of the ship. As radar emerged as one of the mostindispensable sources of tactical informationon the ship, J.C. Wylie, Mahlon Tisdale,and Caleb Laning proved to be pivotal inthe design and creation of the CIC on boardAmerican ships. At Admiral Nimitz’surging, they designed the CIC layout andwrote the CIC doctrine that would be usedthroughout the fleet during the war. ForWolters, theirs is not a story of individualachievement, but rather, yet anotherexample of the Second World Wargeneration willingly putting the needs of theservice and nation ahead of self.

With Information at Sea, Wolters hasfilled a gap in the story of the Americannavy’s crowning success at war. Heincludes over 66 pages of endnotes thatprovide a great resource for further researchin maritime command and control. Thestory of maritime information from the1870s through 1945 can and should informhow the Navy tackles the informationchallenges of the future.

Jon Scott LogelPortsmouth, Rhode Island

Zheng Yangwen. China on the Sea: Howthe Maritime World Shaped Modern China.Leiden: Brill, www.brill.com, 2012. x+362pp., illustrations, index. Euro €135,00, US

$176.00, cloth; ISBN 9789-0041-94779, E-ISBN: 9789-0041-94786.

A book entitled China on the Sea: How theMaritime World Shaped China mightreasonably be expected to focus on maritimeaffairs, especially the activities of Chinesemariners, merchants, and officials. AsZheng writes in her introduction, she wantsto reassess Qing China by “putting the seasat the center of the narrative and using theoceans to elucidate the complexity ofChinese history.” While the book is full offascinating vignettes about how anincreasingly open-door policy towardsforeign trade exposed the Chinese to avariety of imports, Chinese mariners andmaritime trade-related institutions are all butabsent from most of the book; the indexcontains no entries for “crew,” “port,” or“ships.”

That a missed opportunity may be in theoffing is suggested when she writes of herthree-fold periodization of Chinese maritimehistory: “the pre–Sui-Tang period (to 589CE), the Tang-Song-Yuan period(589–1367), when seafaring and tradedeveloped fully, and the Ming-Qing period(1368–1911), when it stagnated.” While thegovernment did impose strict limits (haijin,which Zheng does not discuss) on overseastrade, Zheng He’s voyages took placeduring the early Ming, and trade liberalizedafter 1567. The new Qing governmentimposed haijin specifically in response tothe threat of the fleets of Ming loyalistZheng Chenggong (Koxinga), but theKangxi emperor relaxed them following therebels’ defeat in 1683. This encouragedwestern traders to visit, but it also led to anunprecedented growth in China’s sea tradeand the flourishing of communities ofoverseas Chinese—“merchants withoutempire” as Wang Gungwu put it.

Book Reviews 465

Zheng covers these developments inchapter 2 and, almost exclusively in thecontext of the rice trade with Thailand inchapter 3. While she briefly discusses theChinese presence in Dutch Batavia(Jakarta), she has little to say about itbeyond the number of junks calling there inthe first half of the eighteenth century andremarking that the Dutch murdered 10,000Chinese in 1740. Manila gets a briefmention, but nothing is said of themassacre—or resilience—of Chinesecommunities in Manila, Cho Lon(Vietnam), Borneo, and elsewhere, to saynothing of how they came to be or how theyfunctioned within Asia’s maritimenetworks.

More than half the book is given over todiscussions of various commodities andnovelties introduced by “western”merchants—cotton, clocks, opium, andarchitectural, musical, and artisticstyles—how these were initially thepreserve of the elite, and how they wereeventually indigenized (or not) by a growingconsumer base. Zheng concludes with atruncated assessment of how China’sexports changed foreign cultures. Far frombeing at the centre of the narrative,however, the seas are almost entirely absent. Instead, we are left with a China all butstripped of agency with respect to its foreigntrade, and at the mercy of Europeaninterlopers. Nothing is said of Chinesenavigators’ increased knowledge of theworld as revealed in maps and writings, thestrength of China’s merchant marine andnaval defense forces, or its important tradewith Japan in the two centuries after theTokugawa shogun issued the sakoku (closedcountry) edict in 1635.

The text often has the feel of a literaturereview, and Zheng frequently raises subjectsthat call for further research, without

acknowledging that the research is oftenwell under way. She even fumbles some ofher own conclusions. Discussing theEnglish taste for Chinese tea, she quotes anineteenth-century author who “sums up theimportance of tea” in terms of revenues tothe exchequer and the East India Company(EIC) and the numbers of seamen and shipsemployed. As a precursor to the AmericanRevolution, the Boston tea party—a protestover the EIC’s dumping tea in the NorthAmerican colonies—was perhaps moreimportant, though it goes unnoticed. ButZheng’s anglophilia is acute, and she addsthat in the nineteenth century “The English,rather than the Chinese, had come to perfectthe art of tea,” a claim she supports byquoting an advertisement for Tea at the Ritzin 2010. The authors of Chinese andJapanese tea classics written as early as theeighth century might dissent.

Foreign trade shaped China in theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as it didall of the world’s major powers, and most ofthat trade moved by sea. But how goodsthat happened to move across the seachanged their recipients is not the same ashow a country or people operated in andaround the maritime world, or on the sea. Afull assessment of China’s long andcomplex maritime history remains to bewritten.

Lincoln PainePortland, Maine

Documents

Book Reviews - Canadian Nautical Research Society...first USN unit to receive fighter aircraft. In Osprey Aircraft of the Aces # 125: F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat Aces of VF-2, the