A History of the British Merchant Navy Books

The first complete study of Great Britain's merchant navy

The second book in a wide-ranging and comprehensive five-volume series carries the reader through the difficulties of the American Rebellion, a war in which the maritime states of Europe combined against Britain, the long conflict with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and a 10-year war to maintain trade. Throughout, Britain's Merchant Navy was of supreme importance and had to fight for its very existence. The first complete study of Great Britain's Merchant Navy restores it to its rightful place in the nation's history, alongside—but hithero eclipsed by—the Royal Navy.

By the end of the nineteenth century the British Merchant Navy had become the world's largest carrier of people, manufactured goods and raw materials, supporting the growing populations of Canada, Australia and New Zealand within the British Empire and providing a universal service to all parts of the world. Almost every British family had a member serving in merchant ships whose variety and type are bedazzling in these last years of sail and the final coming of age of both the ocean liner and the deep-sea tramp-ship. All this was achieved against a ceaseless struggle against the elements and then, after 1914, against the malice of a new enemy, the German U-Boat, which brought Britain close to surrender in 1917. Only the dogged courage of an almost defenceless Merchant Navy avoided this catastrophe. The fourth in Richard Woodman's ground-breaking five-volume series is as richly illustrated as the previous three and provides a fascinating insight into the development of the merchant navy.

Plunged into depression after a brief, post-war boom, the ships and men of the British merchant navy found themselves called upon to repeat their sacrifice to the menace of German hostility within 20 years of the end of the "war to end all wars." For over three years, until the Royal Navy bettered the German U-Boat, the merchant navy maintained the supply of food, raw materials, and the sinews of war against appalling odds until victory ushered in a new age of peace and prosperity. It was not to last for long. Within a generation the merchant navy had all but vanished, its companies wound up, its men and women cast aside, its loss to the nation yet to be appreciated in one of the quietest yet most fundamental changes to affect this country at the end of the millennium. The final installment in Richard Woodman's ground-breaking five-volume series is as richly illustrated as the previous four and draws to a conclusion this critically acclaimed study into the history and development of the merchant navy.