Benito de Soto, Pirate of the Post-Napoleonic Era – Part 1          The Pirate of the early 19th                          Century - a brutal thug I’ve always been surprised how a romantic aura has built up around pirates, ignoring [...]

On the Royal Navy List for 96 Years - Sir Provo Wallis     Wallis in 1813 I am always amazed at just what change – political, technical, economic, scientific – can occur in a single human lifetime. I was reminded of this when I saw a reference in an 1895 book [...]

Vitus Bering: a Forgotten Hero of Exploration Soviet Stamp: 300th Anniversary of Bering When thinking of the exploration of the Pacific the name that most immediately comes for mind is that of Captain James Cook (1728 – 1779) whose three voyages in the 1760s and 70s added immensely to knowledge of that [...]

The Royal Navy’s emergency purchases, 1877/78   and the Mesrutiyet, a heroine of “Britannia’s Wolf” A key role is played in the first of the Dawlish Chronicles, “Britannia’s Wolf”, by the Ottoman-Turkish ironclad Mesrutiyet (“Constitution”) which was built by Samuda’s, a British shipyard at Poplar, on the Isle of Dogs, London. Ship-building was at that time a major industry [...]

An Unequal Duel: Trader vs. Privateer 1744 The story of war against maritime trade in the Age of Fighting Sail is usually told, whether in fact or in fiction, from the viewpoint of the naval commerce-raider intent on prize-money. One finds few accounts which view these contests from the side of the victims. I [...]

War in the North Sea, 1864 – The Battle of Heligoland            Tegetthoff In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries the “K.u.K” – “Imperial and Royal” – Navy was probably the most efficient and well-equipped part of the Austro-Hungarian armed services. Operating out of bases on the [...]

A liner turned raider: Prinz Eitel Friedrich 1914 – 15 In the late 19th and early 20th Century the French and German navies became fixated on the idea of “Cruiser Warfare” – the individual ships operating far from home on the world’s oceans and striking at enemy seaborne trade. Britain, with enormous merchant fleet and the dependence of [...]

Three Sisters Merchantman vs. a French Privateer, 1811  Throughout the Age of Fighting Sail merchant shipping – from small coastal craft to large vessels engaged in interoceanic trade - were at the mercy of privateers. These were privately owned vessels issued with “letters of marque” that authorised them to attack and capture enemy shipping. If [...]