While there is a perennial interest in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars and in Nelson himself, there is no reference work that chronicles all the captains of his ships, their social origins, their characters and the achievements in their lives beyond their service under Nelson.This new book, researched and written by distinguished historians, descendants of some of Nelson's officers, and members of the 1805 Club, presents concise biographies of those officers who fought wit...

David Balme will be forever known as the 20-year-old hero who, on 9 May 1941, boarded a German U-boat in mid-Atlantic, and captured one of the greatest secrets of the Second World War. This capture – or ‘pinch’ as it was known within secret, inner circles – changed the course of the Battle of the Atlantic and shortened the war itself. Balme was part of a team comprising officers and men of the Third Escort Group ably led by Commander Joe Baker Cresswell, also commander of HMS Bulldog, who ...

Captain Mervyn Wingfield was one of the last of his generation of submariners who made their reputation in the Second World War. Pre-war he had served on the China station and lived the riotous life of a young officer; in the war he commanded three submarines, Umpire, Sturgeon and Taurus, survived a collision in the North Sea, spent a winter in the Arctic, penetrated the Norwegian fjords submerged through a minefield, surfaced off St Nazaire in view of German guns to act as a navigation ma...

The autobiography of Tony Bentley-Buckle, a child of the Empire who was left to grow up in the care of maiden aunts. Having joined the Royal Navy before the war, he found himself on the Northern Patrol during the blockade of Germany and as a teenager in command of captured ships. When he brought a ship through the minefields into Scapa Flow, the young Midshipman Bentley-Buckle was interviewed by the famously ferocious Admirax Max Horton who recommended him for advanced promotion. In a fit ...

The New York Times bestseller from master biographer Evan Thomas brings to life the tumultuous story of the father of the American Navy.John Paul Jones, at sea and in the heat of the battle, was the great American hero of the Age of Sail. He was to history what Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey and C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower are to fiction. Ruthless, indomitable, clever; he vowed to sail, as he put it, “in harm’s way.” Evan Thomas’s minute-by-minute re...

A magisterial work of gripping history, City of Fortune tells the story of the Venetian ascent from lagoon dwellers to the greatest power in the Mediterranean - an epic five hundred year voyage that encompassed crusade and trade, plague, sea battles and colonial adventure.In Venice, the path to empire unfolded in a series of extraordinary contests - the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, the fight to the finish with Genoa and a desperate defence against the Turks. Under th...

A gripping biography of Admiral Nelson, Napoleonic War hero and one of Britain's greatest naval tacticians.In the Battle of Trafalgar, Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson sent the signal from his flagship HMS Victory, "England expects that every man will do his duty." His defeat of the French that day in 1805 was a decisive turning point in the Napoleonic Wars, establishing British control of the seas. His death in that heroic battle gave those words immortal signi...

The New York Times –bestselling author of Unsinkable "recounts the disaster from the vantage point of nearby vessels" ( Publishers Weekly).A few minutes before midnight on April 14, 1912, the "unsinkable" RMS Titanic, on her maiden voyage to New York, struck an iceberg. Less than three hours later, she lay at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. While the world has remained fascinated by the tragedy, the drama of th...

The true story of how Britain's maritime power helped gain this country unparalleled dominance of the world's economy, Admirals celebrates the rare talents of the men who shaped the most successful fighting force in world history. Told through the lives and battles of eleven of our most remarkable admirals - men such as James II and Robert Blake - Andrew Lambert's book stretches from the Spanish Armada to the Second World War, culminating with the spirit which led Andrew Browne Cu...

An in-depth look at the United States Marine Corps-in the New York Times bestselling tradition of Submarine, Armored Cav, and Fighter WingOnly the best of the best can be Marines. And only Tom Clancy can tell their story--thefascinating real-life facts more compelling than any fiction. Clancy presents a uniqueinsider's look at the most hallowed branch of the Armed Forces, and the men and women...

The thrilling story of Britain's death-struggle with Revolutionary France, wherein Napoleon is checkmated by Nelson's brilliant naval exploits.In February 1793 France declared war on Britain, and for the next twenty-two years the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars raged. This was to be the longest, cruelest war ever fought at sea, comparable in scale only to the Second World War. New naval tactics were brought to bear, along with such unheard-of weapons as rockets, torpedoes, and su...

"The Storm" (1704) is a founding document of modern journalism. It tells of the events of November 1703, when a hurricane struck Britain. It is composed of verbatim eyewitness accounts, solicited from survivors through a newspaper advertisement that Defoe placed shortly after the hurricane struck.This account remains a required reading for journalism students to this day.