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 period [...]
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 to [...]
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 here [...]
Naval Hero Sir James Lucas Yeo – Part 1 James Lucas Yeo - a dashing captain over whom Jane Austen heroines would have swooned When reading of action by the Royal Navy in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic War period one is struck not just by the commitment in carrying the fight into [...]
2019 Retrospective: A Blog Miscellany Best wishes to you and yours for a Happy, Healthy and Successful 2020 and the decade thereafter from me, Antoine Vanner. Many thanks for your support and for the enjoyable discussions that my writing has so often triggered. 2019 was a busy year in the Dawlish Chronicles front, including publication [...]
An epic stand against French oared-galleys in British Waters – 1707 When one thinks of battles involving oared galleys one thinks automatically of actions in the Mediterranean. The lot of a galley-slave chained to an oar must have been dreadful enough in the warm and usually calm waters of that sea, but it must have [...]
The Franco-Prussian Battle of Havana, 1870 The Prussian navy, a weak force composed mainly of gunboats, played an insignificant, if sometimes heroic, role in the three wars that led to proclamation of the German Empire in 1871. These were against Denmark (1864), Austria, Bavaria and other German States (1866) and France (1870-71). Small as it [...]
A ruse to escape annihilation: HMS Phaeton, 1795 Cornwallis The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars saw very large numbers of battles at sea between small numbers of ships, but few in which entire squadrons engaged and yet fewer fleet actions on the scale of the Nile, Camperdown or Trafalgar. On one occasion however a medium-sized Royal Navy squadron escaped [...]
From Rebel to Samurai – the epic career of the Confederate ironclad Stonewall - Part 2 Part 1 of this article told of the genesis of the ironclad, CSS Stonewall. To read it, click here. The Alabama/Kearsarge action by Édouard Manet A major role is played in my new novel, Britannia’s Innocent, [...]
