Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

Boy seaman R N : the true story 1790 to 1976 "A timely publication in that, until now, there has been no description or information about this element of the Royal Navy. The trials, tribulations, pleasures and contributions of these young lads have ever been a behind-the-scenes aspect of the Senior Service. Prior to development of organised training, young men choosing a career in the Navy served as "cabin boys". In 1790 a more structured form of training was established and these young men served on wooden vessels. Finally in 1985 HMS Ganges was the first of seven Boys Training Shore Establishments opened capable of training up to 2000 boys at a time."--Provided by the publisher. 1996 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.231(42)"17/19"

German naval history : the U-boat war in the Atlantic 1939-1945 : volume 1 Hessler, Gunter 1989 • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 940.545.1

Sea officer / Michael Penney with Leslie Viney. Autobiography recounting the author's career as a sailor with P&O and the Royal Navy Reserve from 1945 until 1980. The book includes detailed descriptions of the author's education and apprenticeship on board mail ships in the latter days of the Second World War, his experiences in the Royal Navy Reserve, and his long career with P&O, first as a sailor, and then later as a manager in both London and Hong Kong. Includes 24 pages of black and white plates. 2008. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92Penney

Royal naval dockyards officers : index of names /compiled by W May. May, W ca. 1960 • FOLIO • 2 copies available.

Italian Cruisers of World War II / Mark Stille; illustrated by Paul Wright. "The Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marina) operated one of largest cruiser forces of World War II. As a signatory to the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, the Regia Marina immediately attempted to reinforce its treaty-limited battleship force by building seven large 10,000-ton heavy cruisers. Italian light cruisers also possessed an interesting design history and were involved in every major fleet engagement in the Mediterranean, as well as several smaller encounters with units of the British Royal Navy. Fully illustrated with specially commissioned artwork, this fascinating volume examines the history of the Regia Marina's cruisers during World War II where they came up against the might of the British Royal Navy."--Provided by the publisher. 2018. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 623.822.3(45)"1939/1945"

Seaforth world naval review 2022 / edited by Conrad Waters. "For over a decade this annual has provided an authoritative summary of all that has happened in the naval world in the previous twelve months, combining regional surveys with one-off major articles on noteworthy new ships and other important developments. Besides the latest warship projects, it also looks at wider issues of significance to navies, such as aviation and weaponry, and calls on expertise from around the globe to give a balanced picture of what is going on and to interpret its significance. This year the 'Significant Ships' series includes its first detailed analysis of a Russian design, the Steregushchiy class corvettes now being built in sizeable numbers. Two contrasting OPVs, the French-designed Bouchard class for the Argentine Navy and the British Batch 2 'Rivers', are also covered, along with an assessment of the US Navy's new Ship to Shore Connector, a replacement for the LCAC amphibious assault hovercraft. Technology subjects include electro-optics at sea, new 'off-board' mine clearance systems, and the annual review of world naval aviation. In this issue the in-depth Fleet Reviews focus on the changing role of the Skri Lankan Navy, qualitative improvements in the Spanish Navy, and the latest British naval developments. Now well established as the only affordable annual overview of its type, World Naval Reviews is essential reading for anyone with an interest in contemporary maritime affairs, whether enthusiast or defence professional."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.03

Life and death on the Greenland Patrol, 1942 / by Thaddeus D. Novak, edited by P.J. Capelotti. "One of the untold stories of World War II is the guarding of Greenland and its coastal waters, where the first U.S. capture of an enemy ship took place. For six months in 1942 and against standing orders of the time, Thaddeus Nowakowski (now Novak) kept a personal diary of his service on patrol in the North Atlantic. Supplemented by photos from his last surviving shipmates, Novak's diary fills a void in the story of American sailors at war in the North Atlantic. It is the only known diary of an enlisted Coast Guard sailor to emerge from WWII. Though the Greenland coast was of vital importance to Allied forces, U.S. Coast Guard crews serving there were relegated to converted fishing vessels known as 'wooden shoes'. Hastily commissioned in Boston to serve as escorts for supply routes to new air bases in Greenland, ten Arctic trawlers were transformed into the basis of the Greenland Patrol, transporting young men who had never been away from home into a realm of mountainous icebergs, lurking U-boats, and the alien culture of native Greenland Eskimos. This story of the Nanok's 1942 patrol is a remarkable account of a sailor thrown into a global war in a remote area full of environmental hardships that few endured in World War II. Between the sudden excitements and mind-numbing boredom of military life, Novak records the routine details of day-to-day patrol, contacts with the native Greenlanders and their impenetrable way of life, and actions such as the loss of the cutter Natsek and its entire crew on the night of December 17,1942. Not an account of grand strategy or hand-to-hand combat, this story of a twenty-year-old petty officer on duty in the Arctic is rather the life of an ordinary individual at war, coping with rigorous hardships during a time of great crisis. Novak's account will be of significant value to students of the U.S. Coast Guard and of naval service in wartime. His illumination of the small details of a sailor's life and perceptive observation of the arctic region and its little-known people will appeal to anyone interested in maritime history."--Provided by the publsiher. 2014 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.353.5(73)"1942"

Southern thunder / Steve Dunn. "During World War One the Scandinavian countries played a dangerous and sometimes questionable game; they proclaimed their neutrality but at the same time pitched the two warring sides against one another to protect their import and export trades. Germany relied on Sweden, Norway and Denmark for food and raw materials, while Britain needed to restrict the flow of these goods and claim them for herself. And so the battle for the North Sea began. The campaign was ferociously fought, with the Royal Navy forced to develop new tactical thinking, including convoy, to combat the U-boat threat. Many parts of Scandinavia considered that the War had 'missed' the region, and that it was just a distant 'southern thunder'; Much of that thunder was over the North Sea. This new book tells this little-known, and often ignored, story from both a naval and a political standpoint, revealing how each country, including the USA, tried to balance the needs of diplomacy with the necessities of naval warfare. Starting from the declaration of a British blockade and its impact and reception in Scandinavia, the narrative progresses to cover the struggle to prevent supplies reaching Germany, the negotiations to gain preferential British access to Scandinavian trade and the work of the sailors, both of the merchant marine and Royal Navy who had to make the system function. By the end of 1916, the British-Scandinavian trade was so important that a new system of convoyed vessels was developed, not without much Admiralty infighting, leading to the growth of naval operations all along the East Coast of Britain in places such as Immingham, Lerwick and Mehil. Two years later, the Germans, desperate to break the tightening stranglehold, even brought out their big-gun ships to hunt and disrupt the Scandinavian convoys, and at one point US Navy battleships were perilously close to engaging with the High Sea Fleet as a result. Detailed analysis and first-hand accounts of the fighting from those who took part create a vivid narrative that demonstrates how the Royal Navy helped to bring about Germany's downfall and protect Britain's vital Scandinavian supply lines."--Provided by the publisher. 2019. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.459(42:48)

A dangerous enterprise : secret war at sea /Tim Spicer. "Between 1942 and 1944 a very small, very secret, very successful clandestine unit of the Royal Navy, operated between Dartmouth in Devon, and the Brittany Coast in France. It was a crossing of about 100 miles, every yard of it dangerous. The unit was called the 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla: crewed by 125 officers and men, it became the most highly decorated Royal Naval unit of the Second World War. The 15th MGBF was an extraordinary group of men thrown together in the most secret of adventures. Very few were regular Royal Naval officers: instead the unit was made up of mostly Royal Naval Volunteer Officers and 'duration only' sailors. Their home was a converted paddle steamer and luxury yacht, but their work could not have been more serious. Their mission was to ferry agents of SIS and SOE to pinpoint landing sites on the Brittany coast in Occupied France. Once they had landed their agents, together with stores for the Resistance, they picked up evaders, escaped POWs who had had the good fortune to be collected by escape lines run by M19, as well as returning SIS and SOE agents. It is a story that is inextricably entwined with that of the many agents they were responsible for - Pierre Hentic, Yves Le Tac, Virginia Hall, Albert Huâe, Jeannie Rousseau, Suzanne Warengham, Franðcois Mitterrand and Mathilde Carrâe, as well as many others. Without the Flotilla, such intelligence gathering networks as Jade Fitzroy and Alliance would never have developed, and SOE's VAR Line and MI9's Shelburne Escape Line would never have been realised. Drawing on a huge amount of research on both sides of the Channel, including private archives of many of the families involved, A Dangerous Enterprise brings the story of this most clandestine of operations brilliantly to life."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.545941

The naval achievements of Great Britain from the year 1793 to 1817. Jenkins, James. 1817 • RARE-FOLIO • 5 copies available. 76.047(26:42)"18"

Mastermind of Dunkirk and D-Day : The vision of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay /Brian Izzard. "This is the first major biography of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay in fifty years. Ramsay masterminded the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in 1940. Initially, it was thought that 40,000 troops at most could be rescued. But Ramsay's planning and determination led to some 338,000 being brought back to fight another day, although the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy paid a high price in ships and men. Ramsay continued to play a crucial role in the conduct of the Second World War - the invasion of Sicily in 1943 was successful in large part due to his vision, and he had a key role in the planning and execution of the D-Day invasion - coordinating and commanding the 7,000 ships that delivered the invasion force onto the beaches of Normandy. After forty years in the Royal Navy he was forced to retire in 1938 after falling out with a future First Sea Lord but months later, with war looming, he was given a new post. However he was not reinstated on the Active List until April 1944, at which point he was promoted to Admiral and appointed Naval Commander-in-Chief for the D-Day naval expeditionary force. Dying in a mysterious air crash in 1945, Ramsay's legacy has been remembered by the Royal Navy but his key role in the Allied victory has been widely forgotten. After the war ended his achievements ranked alongside those of Sir Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery and General Dwight Eisenhower, yet he never received the public recognition he deserved. Brian Izzard's new biography of Ramsay puts him and his work back centre-stage, arguing that Ramsay was the mastermind without whom the outcome of both Dunkirk and D-Day - and perhaps the entire war - could have been very different."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92RAMSAY, B H

Mutiny on the Spanish Main : HMS Hermione and the Royal Navy's revenge /Angus Konstam. "In 1797 the 32-gun Royal Navy frigate HMS Hermione was serving in the Caribbean, at the forefront of Britain's bitter sea war against Spain and Revolutionary France. Its commander, the sadistic and mercurial Captain Hugh Pigot ruled through terror, flogging his men mercilessly and pushing them beyond the limits of human endurance. On the night of 21 September 1797, past breaking point and drunk on stolen rum, the crew rebelled, slaughtering Pigot and nine of his officers in the bloodiest mutiny in the history of the Royal Navy. Handing the ship over to the Spanish, the crew fled, sparking a manhunt that would last a decade. Seeking to wipe clean this stain on its name, the Royal Navy pursued the traitorous mutineers relentlessly, hunting them across the globe, and, in 1801, seized the chance to recover its lost ship in one of the most daring raids of the Age of Fighting Sail. Anchored in a heavily fortified Venezuelan harbour, the Hermione - now known as the Santa Cecilia - was retaken in a bold night-time action, stolen out from under the Spanish guns. Back in British hands, the Hermione was renamed once more - its new identity a stark warning to would-be mutineers: Retribution. Drawing on letters, reports, ships' logs, and memoirs of the period, as well as previously unpublished Spanish sources, Angus Konstam intertwines extensive research with a fast-paced but balanced account to create a fascinating retelling of one of the most notorious events in the history of the Royal Navy, and its extraordinary, wide-ranging aftermath."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 2 copies available. 359.1334

Surviving the Arctic Convoys : the wartime memoir of leading seaman Charlie Erswell /John R. McKay. "Leading Seaman Charlie Erswell saw much more than his fair share of action during the Second World War. He was present at the 1942 landing in North Africa (Operation TORCH), D-Day and the liberation of Norway. But his main area of operations was that of the Arctic Convoys, escorting merchant ships taking essential war supplies to the Russian ports of Murmansk and Archangel. In addition to contending with relentless U-boat and Luftwaffe attacks, crews endured the extreme sea conditions and appalling weather. This involved clearing ice and snow in temperatures as low as minus thirty degrees Celsius. No wonder Winston Churchill described it as 'the worst journey in the world'. Leading Seaman Charlie Erswell saw much more than his fair share of action during the Second World War. He was present at the 1942 landing in North Africa (Operation TORCH), D-Day and the liberation of Norway. But his main area of operations was that of the Arctic Convoys, escorting merchant ships taking essential war supplies to the Russian ports of Murmansk and Archangel. In addition to contending with relentless U-boat and Luftwaffe attacks, crews endured the extreme sea conditions and appalling weather. This involved clearing ice and snow in temperatures as low as minus thirty degrees Celsius. No wonder Winston Churchill described it as 'the worst journey in the world'. Fortunately, Charlie, who served on two destroyers, HMS Milne and Savage, kept a record of his experiences and is alive today to describe them. His story, published to coincide with the 80th Anniversary of the first convoy, is more than one man's account. It is an inspiring tribute to his colleagues, many of whom were killed in action. No-one reading Surviving The Arctic Convoys could fail to be moved by the bravery and endurance of these outstanding men."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.5429

The French fleet : ships, strategy and operations, 1870-1918 /Ruggero Stanglini and Michele Cosentino. "At the end of the 1870-1 Franco-Prussian war, the French Navy began to reconstruct its fleet, but the process was slow and erratic principally because priority was initially given to the army. Nevertheless, French naval yards and private shipyards were tasked with building a fleet of ironclads, cruisers and minor vessels which led France to become the second European naval power, at least quantitatively. The rise of the 'Jeune áEcole' (Young School) strategic naval concept in the early 1880s then changed shipbuilding priorities, and emphasis was given to coastal torpedo boats and cruisers. As a consequence, the French Navy implemented the dreadnought concept later than Great Britain and Germany. The 1904 Entente Cordiale contributed to yet further radical changes to foreign, naval and shipbuilding policies, so that at the outbreak of World War One the French fleet comprised a limited number of dreadnoughts, many obsolete armoured cruisers, an impressive array of torpedo boats and a fleet of submarines whose efficiency was questionable. The book provides a complete overview of the French Navy during this long era, and the complex French foreign and naval policy, shipyards and industrial organisation, technology and operations are all described in the first part of the volume, while the second and larger part is focused on the different categories of warships, including their qualitative and quantitative evolution during the period of 1871?1918 and their employment during the Great War. A chapter is also dedicated to naval aviation. Superbly illustrated with rare and carefully selected photographs, this major new volume paints a clear and detailed overview of the French navy during this era and is destined to become a classic reference work for this period."--Provided by the publisher. 2022. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 359.00944

The Barrington papers : selected from the letters and papers of Admiral the Hon Samuel Barrington Barrington, Samuel 1937-1941 • BOOK • 5 copies available. 92Barrington

Asia y el Museo Naval / Miniterio de Defensa Museo Naval (Spain) 2018 • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 069(26:464:5)

The Battle of the Atlantic : the war against Allied shipping, 1939-1945 /Peter Gretton "Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Gretton - a distingushed Royal Navy escort commander - has written an authorative history of the war he fought. The subjects range from merchant shipping to intelligence, the role of Operational Research, the battle for maritime air in Whitehall, the contribution of the Royal Canadian Navy, and the strategies employed by the convoys to defeat the 'wolf pack' system of attack by the U-boats - interspersed with narrative chapters which illustrate the points he has been making. Above all, he describes the courage of the Allied merchant seamen who carried out their dangerous work with devotion."--Provided by the publisher. 2024 • BOOK • 1 copy available.

Australia pilot : vol 3 east coast of Australia from Outer North Head to Cape York, including the Great Barrier Reefs, islands and reefs of the Coral Sea, Great North East Channel, Torres Strait, and the south coasts of Papua and Irian Barat between Parama Island and the meridian of 140 deg 40' E Great Britain. Hydrographic Department 1973 • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 527.83

Guide to the naval review 1897 • FOLIO • 4 copies available. 623.82(42)"1897"

Interesting defence of Lieut J McArthur Low, ... of His Majesty's sloop Cameleon ... at a court martial, on board His Majesty's ship Queen Charlotte ... 10th and 11th day of April, 1817, to investigate serious charges against him by Mr George Spain ... relating to supposed cruelty in punishing his son ... Low, J McArthur 1817 • RARE-BOOK • 1 copy available. 094:344.4"1817"

An account of the arraignments and tryals of Col Richard Kirkby, Capt John Constable, Capt Cooper Wade, Capt Samuel Vincent and Capt Christopher Fogg on a complaint exhibited ... at a court-martial held on board the ship Breda in Port-Royal harbour in Jamaica in America, the 8th ... 12th days of October 1702 ... Great Britain. Royal Navy. Court-martial, Kirby : 1702 1703 • RARE-FOLIO • 1 copy available. 92Benbow

South America pilot : vol 4 comprising the islands of Tobago and Trinidad; north-eastern coast of Venezuela from Punta Penas to Cabo Orange, including Rio Orinoco; the northern coast of South America from Punta Penas to Punta Tirbi, including Nederlandse Antillen Great Britain. Hydrographic Department 1969 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 527.83

Pacific Islands pilot : vol 3 comprising the eastern groups, including Iles Australes, the Cook Islands, and Iles de la Societe; Archipel des Tuamotu; Iles Marquises; the Line Islands and scattered islands near the equator; and the Hawaiian Islands Great Britain. Hydrographic Department 1969 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 527.83

Mediterranean pilot : vol 2: the south coast of France from Cap Cerbere to the Franco-Italian frontier; the islands of Corse and Sardegna; the west coast of Italy from the Franco-Italian frontier to latitude 39 deg North, including Arcipelago Toscano Great Britain. Hydrographic Department 1978 • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 527.83

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