Mutiny On The High Seas

Rip and her two sisters, Lu and Preen, survived storms and conflict on the voyage to Jamaica. But trouble is on the horizon when they meet a crew who are not what they seem... Stranded on a strange vessel, can Rip adapt to life on a pirate ship escaping the shadow of the slave trade, save the rats on board and find a way back to her family? To do so, she will have to become a Pirat! Sequel to the Wishing Shelf Award-winning Ship Rats. Profits go to the APOPO HeroRATs anti land-mine organisation.

“Much fresh material . . . an excellent historical narrative of the events leading up to the Great Scuttle, the terrible day itself and its aftermath.” —Warships: International Fleet Review On June 21, 1919, the ships of the German High Seas Fleet—interned at Scapa Flow since the Armistice—began to founder, taking their British custodians completely by surprise. In breach of agreed terms, the fleet dramatically scuttled itself, in a well-planned operation that consigned nearly half a million tons, and 54 of 72 ships, to the bottom of the sheltered anchorage in a gesture of Wagnerian proportions. This much is well-known, but more than a century after the “Grand Scuttle” many questions remain. Was von Reuter, the fleet’s commander, acting under orders or was it his own initiative? Why was June 21 chosen? Did the British connive in or even encourage the action? Could more have been done to save the ships? Was it legally justified? And what were the international ramifications? This new book analyzes all these issues, beginning with the fleet mutiny in the last months of the war that precipitated a social revolution in Germany and the eventual collapse of the will to fight. The Armistice terms imposed the humiliation of virtual surrender on the High Seas Fleet, and the conditions under which it was interned are described in detail. Meanwhile the victorious Allies wrangled over the fate of the ships, an issue that threatened the whole peace process. Using much new material from German sources and a host of eyewitness testimonies, the circumstances of the scuttling itself are meticulously reconstructed, while the aftermath for all parties is clearly laid out. The story concludes with “the biggest salvage operation in history” and a chapter on the significance of the scuttling to the postwar balance of naval power. This is an important reassessment of the last great action of the First World War.

In 1816, a fleet of ships left France to accept the British hand-over of the port of Saint-Louis in Senegal. Among them was the frigate Medusa. A month after it set sail, she shank miles off of Africa's west coast, leaving the passengers to flee on lifeboats and a raft cobbled together from parts of the sinking ship. After a failed attempt by those in the lifeboats to tow the raft, it—and the more than 150 people aboard—were abandoned. This is the horrific tale, filled with suicide, murder, and cannibalism, of those left behind.

Mutiny is an act of open revolt by those expected to serve without question, by those working in the most disciplined and demanding of conditions, in the crews of ships, both naval and privately owned. Mutiny on the High Seas examines the circumstances that have driven sailors (and officers) to reject or betray their code, to overthrow authority, to commit extreme and lethal acts of insubordination. Each episode discusses the people who provoked the mutiny (including brutal commanders; poor living conditions; poor pay; untrained and unwilling men; the occasional psychopath), how the mutiny was quelled, the fate of the mutineers, and whether the mutiny achieved any broader institutional, political or social change. The stories range from the mutiny against circumnavigator Ferdinand Magellan in 1520, to the 1797 mutiny of the British Fleet, through to the 1975 Storozhevoy mutiny led by an officer of a Soviet antisubmarine frigate to protest the corruption of the Brezhnev regime.