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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...
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Honour insulted, Disobedience triumphs – Guadeloupe 1759
The incident at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 when Nelson put his telescope to his blind eye and stated “I really do not see the signal!” is the most famous case of a Royal Navy officer disobeying...
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The USA’s First Korean War, 1871
The Daewongun, 1869A recent blog, “The French Navy in Korea, 1866”, described Korean attempts in the 1860s to retain its status as “The Hermit Kingdom”, cut off from contacts with the world outside....
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Guest Blog by Chris Sams
I am glad to welcome naval-historian Chris Sams as guest on my blog. I hope you'll enjoy this story of warfare in the North Sea in 1917 - Antoine Vanner A bloody encounter in the North Sea, 1917 by...
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The Ram Triumphant: Lissa 1866
In 1864 the Austro-Hungarian Empire joined with the Kingdom of Prussia to inflict a crushing defeat on the small nation of Denmark. This was to be the first of three wars, escalating in scale, which...
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HMS Polyphemus – The original of H.G. Wells’ Thunder Child
Martian Fighting Machine in 1906 EditionH.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds” first appeared in 1897 and described in terrifying detail how late-Victorian Britain was powerless to resist the devastation...
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The Iéna and Liberté Disasters, 1907 and 1911
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries all major navies, other than the German, lost large ships through magazine explosions of unstable ammunition. The first of such tragedies was in the...
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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...
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The Loss by Fire of the RMS Amazon 1852
Ships are still lost at sea in our own time, frequently as a result of regulations and standards being ignored rather than standards being established in the first place to ensure safe operation. When...
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The Convergence of the Twain: English Channel, June 1916
I have always admired – and been somewhat disturbed by – Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Convergence of the Twain” in which he meditated on how the Titanic and the iceberg that was to sink her were brought...
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Privateer Action off Peru 1801
Accounts of the Age of Fighting Sail, whether factual or fictional, are noticeably sparse as regards the activities of privateers, yet they played a vital role in the wars of the period. Essentially...
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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...
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Guest Blog by Tom Williams: Indian Mutiny
Here’s a fascinating and erudite article by my friend, the novelist, Tom Williams who writes about the Napoleonic and Victorian eras. His most recent novel Back Home is set in Britain in 1859 and its...
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The ramming of the Forfait by the Jeanne d’Arc, 1875
A number of postings on this blog have dealt with naval ramming accidents in the late 19th Century (see references at end of article). Ram bows had been seen as desirable feature of warships of any...
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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...
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The Dutch East Indies Ulcer – the Aceh Wars begin 1873-74
The history of the Netherlands in the 19thCentury is a closed book for most non-Dutch, not least because of the incorrect perception that “little happened” and as the country was at peace in Europe...
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A Ruse to Escape Annihilation: 1795
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...
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The Arrival of the Naval Mine
From the mid-19th Century onwards the naval mine developed in the general from we know today and which was to play a significant role in the American Civil War, the Russ-Japanese War of 1904-05, both...
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Guest Blog: A Treasure Trove of Naval Art
I was recently approached by a Dutch reader of my blog who is interested, among much else of a nautical nature, in the art of the great Age of Fighting Sail. He told me something of what he was...
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The Natal Mutiny, 1889 - how much to believe?
Mutiny at sea is an inherently dramatic subject and few were as dramatic – because of the small size of the crew involved, and the small craft on which it played out – than that on the brigantine Natal...
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