Trafalgar And Jutland A Study In The Principles Of War

This paper is written as part of a book-length study, currently in progress, of the origins and development of naval offensive thinking during the five decades or so leading up to the First World War. Its particular focus is the idea of the "decisive battle," i.e., the belief that dominated naval thinking in the Victorian and Edwardian periods that the goals of war at sea could, would, and ought to be settled by a single, all-destructive clash between massed battle fleets. The Great War would demonstrate, of course, that "real" war was a far cry from the "ideal" that had been promoted by the "pens behind the fleet." When the "second Trafalgar" failed to take place, apologists were quick to propose that this was only to be expected and that the "uneducated hopes" were disappointed because they had failed to grasp the distinction between what modern students of strategy call declaratory and action war planning. The implication was that the professional naval strategist did know the difference and had prepared all along to enjoy, as Churchill put it after the Battle of Jutland, "all the fruits of victory" without the need for the British to seek the battle at all.

This remarkable work is a comprehensive historiographical and bibliographical survey of the most important scholarly and printed materials about the naval and maritime history of England and Great Britain from the earliest times to 1815. More than 4,000 popular, standard and official histories, important articles in journals and periodicals, anthologies, conference, symposium and seminar papers, guides, documents and doctoral theses are covered so that the emphasis is the broadest possible. But the work is far, far more than a listing. The works are all evaluated, assessed and analysed and then integrated into an historical narrative that makes the book a hugely useful reference work for student, scholar, and enthusiast alike. It is divided into twenty-one chapters which cover resource centres, significant naval writers, pre-eminent and general histories, the chronological periods from Julius Caesar through the Vikings, Tudors and Stuarts to Nelson and Bligh, major naval personalities, warships, piracy, strategy and tactics, exploration, discovery and navigation, archaeology and even naval fiction. Quite simply, no-one with an interest and enthusiasm for naval history can afford to be without this book at their side.

The English/British have always been known as the sailor race with hearts of oak: the Royal Navy as the Senior Service and First Line of Defense. It facilitated the motto: The sun never set on the British Empire. The Royal Navy has exerted a powerful influence on Great Britain, its Empire, Europe, and, ultimately, the world. This superior annotated bibliography supplies entries that explore the influence of the English/British Navy through its history. This survey will provide a major reference guide for students and scholars at all levels. It incorporates evaluative, qualitative, and critical analysis processes, the essence of historical scholarship. Each one of the 4,124 annotated entries is evaluated, assessed, analyzed, integrated, and incorporated into the historiographical scholarship.

The author illuminates naval history, offering a brilliant dissection of four landmark sea battles, each featuring a different type of warship: the Battle of Trafalgar, the Battle of Jutland in World War I, the Battle of Midway in World War II, and the Battle of the Atlantic.

Winner of the Longman's History Today Book of the Year Award and the inaugural Westminster Medal for Military Literature More than a century had gone by since the Battle of Trafalgar. Generation after generation of British naval captains had been dreaming ever since of a 'new' Trafalgar - a cataclysmic encounter which would decisively change a war's outcome. At last, in the summer of 1916, they thought their moment had come... Andrew Gordon's extraordinary, gripping book brilliantly recreates the atmosphere of the British navy in the years leading up to Jutland and gives a superb account of the battle itself and its bitterly acrimonious aftermath.