HMS Warrior: Britain’s first ironclad, today restored HMS Warrior, located today at the Portsmouth, United Kingdom was the Royal Navy’s first ironclad, revolutionary when launched in 1860 and now restored to how she then looked. Her active career was short – fifteen years – as she was quickly made obsolete by newer vessels as [...]
Hell and High Water: HMS Nautilus, 1807 Part 2 At the end of Part 1 of this article (Click here to read it if you missed it) we left Captain Palmer and the remaining survivors of the brig-of-war HMS Nautilus, starving and exposed on a low and storm-lashed rocky islet close to the Greek [...]
Hell and High Water: HMS Nautilus, 1807 Part 1 In November 1806 a Royal Navy squadron commanded by Admiral Sir John Duckworth (1748 – 1817) was sent to reconnoitre the Dardanelles as a preliminary for a move against Constantinople (now Istanbul) in what would be the Anglo-Turkish War of 1807-1809. Attached to the force [...]
Guest Blog by Chris Durbin Author of the Carlisle and Holbrooke series Introduction by Antoine Vanner: As author Chris Durbin tells in the introduction to the article he contributes below, I met him at the Weymouth Leviathan Literary Festival in 2016, at which I ran a workshop on plotting of historical novels and he was [...]
The Chesapeake – Leopard Incident, 1807 The three-year “War of 1812“between Britain and the United States, brought no great benefit to either nation. Though the issues involved were complex, one in particular, the British claim of the right to search neutral vessels for deserters from the Royal Navy, had the power to trigger American [...]
A survivor’s account - the loss of HMS Namur, 1749 Two conflicts – the War of Jenkin’s Ear and the War of Austrian Succession - merged into one and lasted from 1739 to 1749. The various international alliances involved were complex, but for Britain the main enemies were to be – as usual! – France [...]
A Flawed Concept – The Imperial Chinese Navy's doomed "Rendel Cruisers" In my novel Britannia’s Spartan, set in 1882, an important role is played by a cruiser of the Imperial Chinese Navy, the Fu Ching. She is the fictional sister of two warships the Yang Wei and the Chao Yung, that did indeed serve in that navy. For a short [...]
Naval Hero Sir James Lucas Yeo – Part 3 Parts 1 and 2 of this blog introduced us to the real-life naval hero Sir James Lucas Yeo (1782 – 1818), a handsome and dashing officer who might seem overdone were he to step from the pages of a Jane Austen novel. ( Click here [...]
Naval Hero Sir James Lucas Yeo – Part 2 Part 1 of this blog introduced us to the real-life naval hero Sir James Lucas Yeo (1782 – 1818), a handsome and dashing officer who might seem overdone were he to step from the pages of a novel. At the end of that first article (Click [...]
