Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

Wellington and the Siege of San Sebastian, 1813 / Bruce Collins. "Bruce Collins's in-depth reassessment of the Duke of Wellington's siege of San Sebastian during the Peninsular War is a fascinating reconstruction of one of the most challenging siege operations Wellington's army undertook, and it is an important contribution to the history of siege warfare during the Napoleonic Wars. He sets the siege in the context of the practice of siege warfare during the period and Wellington's campaign strategies following his victory at the Battle of Vitoria. He focuses on how the army assigned to the siege was managed and draws on the records of the main military departments for the first time to give an integrated picture of its operations in the field. The close support given by the Royal Navy is a key aspect of his narrative. This broad approach, based in fresh archive research, offers an original perspective on both San Sebastian's significance and the nature of siege warfare in this period."--Provided by the publisher. 2017. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.48"1813"(460)

The Royal Navy in the Napoleonic age : senior service, 1800-1815 /Mark Jessop. "In 1801 the newly forged United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland commenced life at war with France and her allies and remained so until 1815. After 1812 she had to shoulder the extra burden of a war against the United States of America. With conflict on multiple fronts, hardships continued to be inflicted at home. Trade was made precarious. People became bone-weary of hostilities and the threat of invasion ran high. Napoleon Bonaparte was no ordinary opponent, and the United States navy showed the world the worth of her ships, but what stood in their way was the Royal Navy. Despite notable losses, after the victory of Trafalgar in 1805 she dominated the seas. Although not the only means, her warships were the nation's first line of defence that helped keep British shores safe. As the era ended it was obvious the navy had to change. Steam began to alter perspectives with new opportunities. From the vantage point of later decades it could be seen what the Royal Navy had once been and still was. A naval superpower. Britain's oldest continual military force. The senior service."--Provided by the publisher. 24 cm • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.2745

By wind and iron : naval campaigns in the Champlain Valley, 1665-1815 /Michael G. Laramie. "For more than 150 years, the natural invasion route along the waterways of the Champlain and Richelieu valleys into northeastern North America was among the most fiercely contested in the history of the continent. Whether the French and their Indian allies attacking British forts and settlements during the Seven Years' War, the American Continentals striking north into Canada during the American Revolution, or the British battling French and later American forces in these wars and the War of 1812, it was clear to policy makers in Quebec, London, Paris, Philadelphia, and Washington that whoever controlled this corridor and its lakes and rivers, controlled the heart of the continent. In By Wind and Iron: Naval Campaigns in the Champlain Valley, 1665-1815, Michael G. Laramie details the maritime history of this region from the first French fortifications along the Richelieu River in the late seventeenth century through the tremendous American victory over the British at the Battle of Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain in 1814. Using period letters, journals, and other primary source materials, the author examines the northeastern waterways and their tributaries within the framework of the soldiers and sailors who faced the perils of the campaigns, while at the same time clarifying the key role played by this region in the greater struggle for North America and American independence. In support of the narrative, the book also contains appendices that include after action reports from various fleet commanders, tables of fleet strengths, additional battle maps, a glossary, and a dictionary of lake warships with notes on vessel types, typical armament, construction, deployment, and fates."--Provided by the publisher. 2015. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.49"1665/1815"(714.4)

Nelson's Victory : 250 years of war and peace /Brian Lavery "May 2015 sees the 250th anniversary of the launch of HMS Victory, the ship that is so closely associated with Nelson and his great victory at Trafalgar and which, still extant, has today become the embodiment of the great Age of Sail. Many books have been written about Victory but none like this, which tells the full story of the ship since she first took to the waters in May 1765. It contains many surprises - that she was almost wrecked on her launch; that diplomacy conducted onboard her played a crucial role in provoking Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812; and that in 1914 Kaiser Wilhelm set the First World War in motion at a desk made from her timbers. The book also tells the story of Horatio Nelson, who was born a few weeks before his most famous ship was ordered, and whose career paralleled hers in many ways. It does not ignore the battle of Trafalgar, and indeed it offers new insights into the campaign which led up to it. But it says much more about the other lives of the ship, which at different times was a flagship, a fighting ship, a prison hospital ship, a training ship for officers and boys, a floating courtroom, a signal school in the early days of radio, tourist attraction and national icon. It looks at her through many eyes, including Queen Victoria, admirals, midshipmen and ordinary seamen, and Beatrix Potter who visited as a girl. It is simply a 'must-have' work for historians and enthusiasts, and a compelling new narrative for the general reader."--Provided by the publisher. 2015. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 623.82VICTORY

America, sea power, and the world / edited by James C. Bradford. 2016. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.02(73)"17/21"

Hornblower's historical shipmates : the young gentlemen of Pellew's Indefatigable /Heather Noel-Smith. "This book sets out the lives of seventeen 'young gentlemen' who were midshipmen under the famous Captain Sir Edward Pellew. Together, aboard the frigate HMS Indefatigable, they fought a celebrated action in 1797 against the French ship of the line Les Droits de l'Homme. C. S. Forester, the historical novelist, placed his famous hero, Horatio Hornblower, aboard Pellew's ship as a midshipman, so this book tells, as it were, the actual stories of Hornblower's real-life shipmates. And what stories they were! From diverse backgrounds, aristocratic and humble, they bonded closely with Pellew, learned their naval leadership skills from him, and benefited from his patronage and his friendship in their subsequent, very varied careers. The group provides a fascinating snapshot of the later eighteenth-century sailing navy in microcosm. Besides tracing the men's naval lives, the book shows how they adapted to peace after 1815, presenting details of their civilian careers. The colourful lives recounted include those of the Honourable George Cadogan, son of an earl, who survived three courts martial and a duel to retire with honour as an admiral in 1813; Thomas Groube, of a Falmouth merchant family, who commanded a fleet of boats which destroyed the Dutch shipping at Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies, in 1806; and James Bray, of Irish Catholic descent, who was killed commanding a sloop during the American war of 1812."--Provided by the publisher. 2016. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.335.34

The war against the pirates : British and American suppression of Caribbean piracy in the early nineteenth century /Barry Gough, Charles Borras. "Based on hitherto unused sources in English and Spanish in British and American archives, in this book naval historian Barry Gough and legal authority Charles Borras investigate a secret Anglo-American coercive war against Spain, 1815-1835. Described as a war against piracy at the time, the authors explore how British and American interests - diplomatic and military - aligned to contain Spanish power to the critically influential islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, facilitating the forging of an enduring but unproclaimed Anglo-American alliance which endures to this day. Due attention is given to United States Navy actions under Commodore David Porter, to this day a subject of controversy. More significantly though, through the juxtaposition of British, American and Spanish sources, this book uncovers the roots of piracy - and suppression - that laid the foundation for the tortured decline of the Spanish empire in the Americas and the subsequent rise of British and American empires, instrumental in stamping out Caribbean piracy for good."--Provided by the publisher. 2018 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 341.362.1(42:73)"18"

New interpretations in naval history : selected papers from the eighteenth McMullen Naval History Symposium held at the United States Naval Academy 19-20 September 2013 /edited by Lori Lyn Bogle and James C. Rentfrow. McMullen Naval History Symposium 2018. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.49"17/19"

Children at sea : lives shaped by the waves /Vyvyen Brendon. "Children at sea faced even more drastic separations from loved ones than those sent 'home' from India or those packed off to English boarding schools at the age of seven, the subjects of Vyvyen Brendon's previous books. Captured slaves, child migrants and transported convicts faced an ocean passage leading nearly always to life-long exile in distant lands. Boys apprenticed as merchant seamen, or enlisted as powder monkeys, or signed on as midshipmen, usually progressed to a nautical career fraught with danger and broken only by fleeting periods of home leave. Solitary among numbers, as Admiral Collingwood described himself, they could be not just physically at risk but psychologically adrift - at sea in more ways than one. Rather than abandoning seaborne children as they approached adulthood, therefore, Vyvyen follows whole lives shaped by the waves. She focusses on eight central characters: a slave captured in Africa, a convict girl transported to Australia, a Barnardo's lass sent as a migrant to Canada, a foundling brought up in Coram's Hospital who ran away to sea, and four youths from contrasting backgrounds despatched to serve as midshipmen. Their social origins as well as their maritime ventures are revealed through a rich variety of original source material discovered in scattered archives. These brine-encrusted lives are resurrected both for their intrinsic interest and because they speak for thousands of children, cast off alone to face storms and calms, excitement and monotony, fellowship and loneliness, kindness and abuse, sea-sickness and ozone breezes, loss and hope. This book recounts stories never before told, stories that might otherwise have sunk without trace like so much juvenile flotsam. They are sometimes inspiring, sometimes heart-rending and always compelling."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.45

Broadsides : caricatures and the Navy 1756-1815 /James Davey & Richard Johns. "Broadsides explores the history of the Royal Navy during the second half of the eighteenth centuries through the lens of contemporary caricature. This was a period of intense naval activity encompassing the Seven Years War, the American War of Independence, the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and the War of 1812. Naval caricatures were utilised by the press to comment on events, simultaneously reminding the British public of the immediacy of war, whilst satirising the same Navy it was meant to be supporting. The thematic narrative explores topics from politics to invasion, whilst encompassing detailed analysis of the context and content of individual prints. It explores pivotal figures within the Navy and the feelings and apprehensions of the people back home and their perception of the former. The text, like the cariactures themselves, balances humour with the more serious nature of the content. The emergence of this popular new form of graphic satire culminated in the works of James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, both here well represented, but a mass of other contemporary illustration makes this work a hugely important source book for those with any interest in the wars and history of this era."--From publisher. 2012. • FOLIO • 4 copies available. 7.049.2:355.49(42)

Britain against Napoleon : the organisation of victory, 1793-1815 /by Roger Knight. "For more than twenty years after 1793, the French army was supreme in continental Europe. Only at sea was British power dominant, though even with this crucial advantage the British population lived under fear of a French invasion for much of those two decades. How was it that despite multiple changes of government and the assassination of a Prime Minister, Britain survived and eventually won a generation-long war against a regime which at its peak in 1807 commanded many times the resources and manpower? There have been innumerable books about the battles, armies and navies of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This book looks beyond the familiar exploits (and bravery) of the army and navy to the politicians and civil servants, and examines how they made it possible to continue the war at all. It shows the degree to which, because of the magnitude and intensity of hostilities, the capacities of the whole British population were involved: industrialists, farmers, shipbuilders, cannon founders, gunsmiths and gunpowder manufacturers all had continually to increase quality and output as the demands of the war remorselessly grew. The intelligence war was also central: Knight shows that despite a poor beginning to both gathering and assessment, Whitehall's methods steadily improved.No participants were more important, he argues, than the bankers and international traders of the City of London, who played a critical role in financing the wars and without whom the armies of Britain's allies could not have taken the field. Knight demonstrates that despite these extraordinary efforts, between 1807 and 1812 Britain came very close to losing the war against Napoleon - not through invasion (though the danger until 1811 was very real) but through financial and political exhaustion. The Duke of Wellington famously said that the battle which finally defeated Napoleon was 'the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life': this book shows how true that was for the Napoleonic War as a whole."--Provided by the publisher. 2013. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.49"1793/1815"(42:44)

The capture of U-505 : the US Navy's controversial Enigma raid, Atlantic Ocean 1944 /Mark Lardas ; illustrated by Irene Cano Rodrâiguez. "U-505 was the first enemy warship the US Navy captured at sea since 1812. This is a new account of how Captain Gallery planned and executed the raid on his own initiative, and how his success almost endangered the war against the U-boats. On June 4, 1944 a US Navy antisubmarine task group in the Atlantic captured an enemy U-boat on the high seas. It was not the first time the Allies had taken a German U-boat as a prize, but the capture of U-505 was different. Captain Gallery and his Task Group 22.3 devised a risky plan to capture scuttled U-boats. his book analyses in detail Gallery's dangerous strategy, using contemporary sources to explore why he thought the reward was worth the risk- instead of attempting to sink the next U-boat that surfaced among them, a destroyer escort would send off its whaleboat. Everyone else was to smother the U-boat with light gunfire to encourage its crew to abandon quickly. Unaware that the Allies had already cracked the German's codes and the capture of a U-boat could endanger that secret, Gallery hoped to capture the vessel's codes and coding equipment to read U-boat message traffic. The plan culminated in the capture of U-505 in early June, which nearly caused the exposure of the Bletchley Park codebreaking secret. Featuring contemporary photographs, specially commissioned artwork and 3D maps, this book is a fascinating exploration of one of the most controversial and dangerous raids, which could have changed the outcome of World War II as we know it"--Publisher's description. 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.54293

Gender, war and politics : transatlantic perspectives, 1775-1830 /edited by Karen Hagemann, Gisela Mettele, Jane Rendall. "This volume addresses war, developing political and national identities and the changing gender regimes of Europe and the Americas between 1775 and 1820. Military and civilian experiences of war and revolution, in free and slave societies, both reflected and shaped gender concepts and practices, in relation to class, ethnicity, race and religion"-- 2010. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.02(261)-055.2

Navies of the Napoleonic era / Otto von Pivka. Pivka, Otto von, 1980. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.49"1792/1815"

Favourite of fortune : Captain John Quilliam, Trafalgar hero /Andrew Bond, Frank Cowin and Andrew Lambert. "The Royal Navy of Nelson's time was not short of heroes, nor of outstanding achievements, but even in this crowded field the career of Captain John Quilliam stands out - so often the right man in the right place at the right time, he was justly described by a contemporary as 'the favourite of fortune'. Born on the Isle of Man 250 years ago, Quilliam has until now evaded detailed study of his extraordinary life. Indeed, while celebrated as a Manx hero, in the wider world beyond the Island one of the most important men on the quarterdeck of HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar remains largely unrecognised. Trafalgar, however, was not even the high point of Quilliam's professional journey. From the lowest rung of the ladder in the dockyard at Portsmouth he climbed to become Victory's First Lieutenant, having already survived two of the bloodiest sea-battles of the era at Camperdown and Copenhagen. In the process he won a share in undreamed of wealth through the seizure of one of the largest hauls of Spanish gold ever taken by the Georgian navy. Promoted Post-Captain, Quilliam reached the apogee of his profession, commanding frigates in the Balitc and on the Newfoundland station in the War of 1812. There, in a bizarre twist worthy of an O'Brian or Forester novel, he defeated an accusation of shirking an engagement with the American super-frigate President in a COurt Martial brought by his own First Lieutenant. This first fully biography of a far-from-ordinary naval officer is itself an unusual collaboration between three writers, each interested in different aspects of Quilliam's career, but united by a belief that it deserves a wider audience."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 941.073092

The life and times of Augustine Tataneuck : an Inuk hero in Rupert's Land, 1800-1834 /Renee Fossett. "One of the few biographies of an Inuk man from the 19th century--separated from his family, community, and language--finding his place in history. Augustine Tataneuck was an Inuk man born near the beginning of the 19th century on the northwestern coast of Hudson Bay. Between 1812 and 1834, his family sent him to Churchill, Manitoba, to live and work among strangers, where he could escape the harsh Arctic climate and earn a living in the burgeoning fur trade. He was perhaps the first Inuk man employed by the Hudson's Bay Company as a labourer, and he also worked as an interpreter on John Franklin's two overland expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage. Tataneuck's life was shaped by the inescapable, harsh environments he lived within, and he was an important, but not widely recognized, player in the struggle for the possession of northwest North America waged by Britain, Russia, and the United States. He left no diaries or letters. Using the Hudson's Bay Company's journals and historical archives, historian Renee Fossett has pieced together a compelling biography of Augustine and the historical times he lived through: climate disasters, lethal disease episodes, and political upheavals on an international scale. While The Life and Times of Augustine Tataneuck is a captivating portrait of an Inuk man who lived an extraordinary life, it also is an arresting, unique glimpse into the North as it was in the 19th century and into the lives of trappers, translators, and labourers who are seldom written about and often absent in the historical record."--Provided by publisher. [2023] • BOOK • 1 copy available. 971.9/01092

The illustrated slave : empathy, graphic narrative, and the visual culture of the transatlantic abolition movement, 1800-1852 /Martha J. Cutter. "The Illustrated Slave analyzes some of the more innovative works in the archive of antislavery illustrated books published from 1800 to 1852 alongside other visual materials that depict enslavement. Martha J. Cutter argues that some illustrated narratives attempt to shift a viewing reader away from pity and spectatorship into a mode of empathy and interrelationship with the enslaved. She also contends that some illustrated books characterize the enslaved as obtaining a degree of control over narrative and lived experiences, even if these figurations entail a sense that the story of slavery is beyond representation itself. Through exploration of famous works such as Uncle Tom's Cabin, as well as unfamiliar ones by Amelia Opie, Henry Bibb, and Henry Box Brown, she delineates a mode of radical empathy that attempts to destroy divisions between the enslaved individual and the free white subject and between the viewer and the viewed."--Provided by the publisher. 2017 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326(084)

Commerce raiding : historical case studies, 1755-2009 /Bruce A. Elleman and S.C.M. Paine, editors. The sixteen case studies in this book reflect the extraordinary diversity of experience of navies attempting to carry out, and also to eliminate, commerce raiding. Because the cases emphasize conflicts in which commerce raiding had major repercussions, they shed light on when, how, and in what manner it is most likely to be effective. The authors have been asked to examine the international context, the belligerents, the distribution of costs and benefits, the logistical requirements, enemy countermeasures, and the operational and strategic effectiveness of these campaigns. 2013. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.462"1755/2009"

Left for dead : shipwreck, treachery, and survival at the edge of the world /Eric Jay Dolin. "In Left for Dead, Eric Jay Dolin - "one of today's finest writers about ships and the sea" (American Heritage) - tells the true story of a wild and fateful encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a British warship in the Falkland archipelago during the War of 1812. Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans, including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard, abandoned in the barren, windswept, and inhospitable Falklands for a year and a half. With deft narrative skill and unequaled knowledge of the very pith of the seafaring life, Dolin describes in vivid and harrowing detail the increasingly desperate existence of the castaways during their eighteen-month ordeal - an all-too-common fate in the Great Age of Sail. A tale of intriguing complexity, with surprising twists and turns throughout - involving greed, lying, bullying, a hostile takeover, stellar leadership, ingenuity, severe privation, endurance, banishment, the great value of a dog, the birth of a baby, a perilous thousand-mile open-ocean journey in a seventeen-foot boat, an improbable rescue mission, and legal battles over a dubious and disgraceful wartime prize - Left for Dead shows individuals in wartime under great duress acting both nobly and atrociously, and offers a unique perspective on a pivotal era in American maritime history."--Provided by the publisher. [2024] • BOOK • 1 copy available. 973.52

The diary of Joseph Farington / edited by Kenneth Garlick and Angus Macintyre "Joseph Farington (1747-1821) was a professional topographical artist and lived most of his life in London. Through his extensive involvement in the affairs of the Royal Academy, his wide circle of friends, and his membership in several clubs and societies, he touched the life of his time at many points. This diary, which he kept from 1793 until his death, provides a meticulous record of his actions and observations and is an invaluable source for the history of English art and artists. It also constitutes an absorbing record of this period's social, political, and literary developments."--Provided by the publisher. 1978-84 • BOOK • 17 copies available. 92FARINGTON, Joseph

Sexual and gender difference in the British Navy, 1690-1900 / edited by Seth Stein LeJacq. "This volume is a collection of a variety of important records that will give readers insight into key themes into the history of what its criminal code called "the unnatural and detestable sin of buggery"- sex between males - in the Royal Navy."--Provided by publisher. 2024. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.1094209033

Tracts on mathematical and philosophical subjects : comprising among numerous important articles, the theory of bridges, with several plans of recent improvement : also the results of numerous experiments on the force of gunpowder, with applications to the modern practice of artillery. In three volumes /by Charles Hutton LL.D. and F.R.S. &c. Late professor of mathematics in the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich Hutton, Charles, 1812. • RARE-BOOK • 3 copies available. 51:094

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