Rule Britannia: The Victorian and Edwardian Navy - Hardcover

Padfield, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0710007744 ISBN 13: 9780710007742

Publisher: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981

Synopsis

It is hard today to envisage the era when the Royal Navy ruled the seas, its cruisers and gunboats policing Britain's worldwide empire and trade, its battlefleet providing the force behind Britain's global power. It was a legendary service carrying an aura of invincibility from its victorious history culminating in Trafalgar even as its ships changed out of all recognition in response to the industrial age, Nelson's 'wooden walls' giving way to steel battleships, destroyers and submarines.

Peter Padfield describes this wholesale transformation and brings the lives of officers and men and the tasks they undertook vividly to the page. This classic account of a uniquely splendid service remains unsurpassed.

“The book is a must for anyone seeking to understand the eminence and the decline of British global power.”
BBC History

“This highly informative and lavishly illustrated volume by a naval historian who is also an experienced sailor describes the Navy’s many tasks and explores the lives and attitudes of the officers and men of a uniquely powerful force.”
The Sunday Telegraph

“Padfield’s book, first published in 1981, and still unsurpassed, shows how the Admiralty maintained supremacy by abandoning tradition. In effect, his book, for all its salty description of Jack Tars scurrying up to the top-gallants, describes a revolution.”
The Guardian

About this title

About the Author:

Peter Padfield is a leading naval historian and biographer. He trained for the sea as a cadet in H.M.S. Worcester, subsequently serving in the P & O Line. His biography of the U-boat admiral, Karl Dönitz, led him to a portrayal of submarine warfare in War Beneath the Sea, and to biographies of other leading Nazis, Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess. His Maritime Power and the Struggle for Freedom won the Mountbatten Maritime Prize, 2003.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge & Kegan Paul
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0710007744
• ISBN 13: 9780710007742
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 246