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showing 4,201 library results for 'navy'

That Hamilton woman : Emma and Nelson /Barry Gough "Emma Hamilton, much maligned by her contemporaries and later by historians and commentators, rose from the most humble beginnings to play a startling role in Britain's naval victory over France and Spain in 1805. In this new book Barry Gough, employing the letters between the protagonists, and the unpublished examination of her career by famed American historian of the Royal Navy Arthur Marder, strongly defends Emma. He shows how this most talented of women and the beauty of her age fell victim to innuendo, slander and cruel caricature. She was to die in poverty in Calais in 1815, just months before Napoleon's final defeat. England's greatest sailor fell deeply in love with Emma in the years before Trafalgar. This, together with his quest for glory and victory entangled him in an inescapable web of circumstances and calumny. The author explores the evolving scandal, the high political stakes that were involved, and the love affair itself which so influenced the fortunes of England's glory and the fate of her Wooden Walls. No novelist could have created such a tortuous scenario, charged as it was with high emotions, slurs, insults and slander. Richly illustrated throughout, the book shows Emma, probably the most painted woman of her age, in all her glories; it also shows how heartlessly caricaturists treated her. 'That Hamilton woman' will long remain a controversial figure but here the author places her as one of the forces that gave the Royal Navy its will to fight and conquer. He depicts sympathetically a woman entrapped in circumstances of her own making, her saga reminding us of how frail is human fortune."--Provided by the publisher 2016. • BOOK • 2 copies available. 92HAMILTON
Isles of Scilly in the Great War / Richard Larn OBE "The Isles of Scilly, five inhabited islands 24 miles west of Lands End, were of low priority to the War Department when the First World War was declared. With no manufacturing capability, no industry other than flower growing and agriculture, no electricity or gas, no mains water supply, no wireless station, and a population of only 2,000, the islands did have one feature in their favour their location. Sitting at the cross roads of six major shipping routes, Scilly had been a recognised ship-park since 1300AD, where sailing ships anchored to safetly awaiting a suitable wind, to re-victual, pick up water or effect repairs. The Admiralty sought to make it a harbour for the Channel Fleet in the mid-1800s, and in 1903 spent 25,000 defending the islands with 6-inch gun batteries, only to take them away seven years later. When, in 1915, German U-boats moved from the North Sea into the Western Approaches, sinking large numbers of merchant vessels, Scilly was chosen to become a Royal Navy Auxiliary Patrol Station, and over time was sent 20 armed trawlers and drifters as escorts, mine-sweepers, mine-layers or anti-submarine vessels, along with 500 Royal Navy personnel. In 1917 Tresco Island became a Royal Naval Air Station, with 14 flying boats and over 1,000 personnel. The islands were suddenly at the forefront of the submarine war. This book details Scilly's contribution to the war effort, with attention to its civilian population, the heartbreak of losing forty-five of its sons, and the trauma of countless seamen rescued from torpedoed ships."--Provided by the publisher. 2017. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 914.237"1914/1918"