Keepers of the Sea Books
During the last four years of the Second World War, the Western Allies secured Russian defenses against Germany by supplying vital food and arms. The plight of those in Murmansk and Archangel who benefited is now well known, but few are aware of the courage, determination and sacrifice of Allied merchant ships, which withstood unremitting U-boat attacks and aerial bombardment to maintain the lifeline to Russia. In the storms, fog and numbing cold of the Arctic, where the sinking of a 10,000 ton freighter was equal to a land battle in terms of destruction, the losses sustained were huge. Told from the perspective of their crews, this is the inspiring story of the long-suffering merchant ships without which Russia would almost certainly have fallen to Nazi Germany.
From the day Mussolini's Italy declared war on Britain in June 1940, the island of Malta was under siege. Its strategic importance was obvious to both sides, standing as it did in the central Mediterranean, athwart the supply route between Italy and the Axis armies in North Africa. It had therefore to be bombed out of existence by the Axis powers, and preserved at all costs by the British. That Malta survived was due in part to the courage and fortitude of the Maltese population and the airmen and soldiers who endured the Axis' bombing, contested the air-space above the island and maintained its defences. But without food, aircraft, ammunition and all the impedimenta necessary to warfare in a modern era, courage and fortitude would have counted for little. The expenditure of vast resources to keep Malta alive and capable of acting offensively has attracted much criticism from historians armed with the wisdom of hindsight. But the fact remains that it was done by the exertion of sea-power, of men-of-war and merchant ships acting as a single arm of British policy. It is this stark and determined effort that is detailed here. This review of the contest of air-power against sea-power by a professional seafarer, emphasizing the part played by the Merchant Navy, has new resonance in the light of recent events in Europe.
A spellbinding true story traces the lives of the greatest sea captains of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries including Lord Cochrane, Charles Brisbane, and Nisbet Willoughby, whose daring exploits such as blockading ports, intercepting the enemy's trade, and protecting merchant ships from attacks, had a profound impact on maritime history.
For the British, the Battle of the Atlantic was a fight for survival, as they depended entirely upon the safe transit of hundreds of convoys of merchant ships laden with food, raw materials and munitions from America to feed the country and to keep the war effort going. The ultimate success of these convoys is much more than the triumph of one side's naval technology over the other, or of the revelations of the enemy's encoded orders assiduously teased out by the brilliant young decrypters at Bletchley Park; it is more too than the simple assertion that victory went to the Allies because they built more ships and therefore shipped more cargoes, than the Germans could sink.A national decline had left Great Britain desperately vulnerable in 1939, when she had to mobilise her civilian ships and revive the notion of a 'merchant navy'. It was this disparate collection of private vessels which endured the onslaught of the German U-boat offensive until Allied superiority overwhelmed the enemy.In this important, moving and exciting book, drawing extensively on first-hand sources, acclaimed historian Richard Woodman establishes the importance of the British, and Allied merchant fleets to the war effort, elevating the heroic civilians who manned them to their rightful place in the history of the Second World War.
Perhaps even more than the waves and weather, sea officers of the past feared the ever-present risk of mutiny. Functioning as a microcosm of dissent in our society at large, the steep hierarchy and deep social divisions between the crew and their commanders, the misery and monotony of very hard work and little sleep, and the constant threat of death from shipwreck, disease, or the enemy often led to an anarchic breakdown of any semblance of stability or order at sea. The notorious mutiny on the Bounty in 1787 has been elevated to iconic status by Hollywood, yet Richard Woodman describes it here as a mere “pup” among mutinies. Despite the usual portrayal, Captain Bligh was neither tyrant nor sadist—whereas Pigot of the Hermione was both, and his crew was probably justified in throwing him overboard. Woodman brings a seaman’s perspective to this compelling history, which stretches from Magellan’s successful handling of an uprising that took place on his great voyage of discovery in 1519, to the “sordid crimes” that mutinies had become by the end of the Second World War.
This title tells the epic story of Britain's merchant shipping, carrying exotic goods from all quarters of the world. At one time, British ships carried half of the world's trade. It reveals how two world wars nearly destroyed our merchant shipping, but convoys battled on to save Britain from starving to death. We see what life was like at sea for merchant seamen and get a first-hand glimpse of them at work.
