Life at sea in the Royal Navy, late 1860s               Scott, 1903 I’ve recently been dipping again into the memoirs of Admiral Sir Percy Scott (1853 -1924), one of the key figures in the modernisation of the Royal Navy in the late 19th and early 20th [...]

Guest Blog by Alan Wren The Ambush of SS Persia, 1915 Introduction by Antione Vanner: I wrote a blog article some time ago (click here) about two tragedies that happened on the same day, December 30th 1915. One was the loss by accidental magazine explosion of the Royal Navy armoured cruiser HMS Natal at [...]

HMS Black Joke engages a slaver, 1831 Following Britain’s abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807 and end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the Royal Navy was to be involved in suppression of the trade in the North and South Atlantic until about 1860. Earlier blogs (Click here and here) have illustrated the hazards [...]

Guest Blog by Penelope Fisher "Sea Lord and Me" Introduction by Antoine Vanner:    Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Fisher Copyright R.Fisher I have been fascinated for decades by the character and achievements of Admiral Lord John “Jacky” Fisher (1841 - 1920). A human whirlwind who revolutionized not just the Royal [...]

A British cruiser 2000 miles up the Amazon: HMS Pelorus 1909 As a prisoner on HMS Bellerophon, prior to his exile on St. Helena, Napoleon told its commander, Captain Maitland, that, "If it had not been for you English, I should have been Emperor of the East; but wherever there is water to float [...]

Nightmare in the Baltic 1874 Merchant Service in the mid-19th Century Baron Walter Runciman In a recent bog (click here to read it) I drew on the memoirs of Baron Walter Runciman (1847 –1937), a classic case of a poor boy of high initiative “making good”. Born in Dunbar, Scotland, he ran away [...]

Admiral Charles Wager’s first step in a meteoric career I dipped some time ago into a magnificently titled 19th Century book called: “THRILLING NARRATIVES OF MUTINY, MURDER AND PIRACY, a weird series of tales of shipwreck and disaster,from the earliest part of the century to the present time,with accounts of providential escapes and heart-rending fatalities” [...]

Guest Blog by J.D. Davies One of the pleasures for me of having embarked on historical naval fiction has been meeting so many interesting people who are active in the same genre. Of these, D.D. Davies is one of the most fascinating, for he not only writes enjoyable novels but is also a distinguished [...]

The Novara scientific expedition, 1857-59 Title page of the official report on the Novara Expedition The Natural History (Naturhistorisches) museum in Vienna, Austria, is one of the largest – and most impressive – institutions of its type in the world. My wife and I spent two days there in September 2016 and we could [...]

HMS Bellona vs. Courageux Duel: 1761 Devotees of naval history and fiction will know that the “74”, the so-called Third- Rate ships of the line, were the backbone of the fleets of the major European powers in the period 1756-1815. Though the type is primarily thought of as British, the original concept, dating from the 1740s, [...]