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British Ironclads 1860-75 : HMS Warrior and the Royal Navy's 'Black Battlefleet' (Osprey)

In November 1859, the French warship La Gloire was launched. She was the world's first seagoing ironclad - a warship built from wood, but whose hull was clad in a protective layer of iron plate. Britain, not to be outdone, launched her own ironclad the following year - HMS Warrior - which, when she entered service, became the most powerful warship in the world.
Just like the Dreadnought half a century later, this ship changed the nature of naval warfare forever, and sparked a frantic arms race. The elegant but powerful Warrior embodied the technological advances of the early Victorian era, and the spirit of this new age of steam, iron and firepower.

Fully illustrated with detailed cutaway artwork, this book covers the British ironclad from its inception and emergence in 1860, to 1875, a watershed year, which saw the building of a new generation of recognisably modern turreted battleships.

Contents: Introduction - Design & Development - Tactical Requirements - Armour - Ordnance - Propulsion - Life on Board - Ironclads in Action - Specifications - Bibliography.

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British Warship Recognition: The Perkins Identification Albums (Volume 4, Part 2) - Cruisers 1865-1939

The Richard Perkins warship identification albums form one of the most detailed studies ever undertaken of the changes to the appearance of Royal Navy ships. However, it is a unique hand-drawn manuscript artefact in the care of the National Maritime Museum, so despite its value it is rarely seen by anyone besides the museum's curators, for whom it is a precious resource, used on an almost daily basis.

In collaboration with the Museum, Seaforth is undertaking the first publication of this monumental work in a superbly produced multi-volume edition that captures all the qualities of the original. Every page is reproduced at full size, making the extensive hand-written annotation readable, while the fine-line drawings retain all the colours that Perkins used to denote appearance differences and alterations.

Following the Museum's binding arrangement, the fourth volume of the series completes the coverage of all cruiser-type ships down to the Belfast class of 1939 begun in Volume III. This second part includes most of the smaller cruisers from about 1916 back to the Amazon class corvettes of 1865.

This is a publishing event of the utmost importance for every enthusiast and ship modeller, who for the first time will be able to own a copy of a unique and invaluable reference work.

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British Warships 1860-1906 - A Photographic Record

Illustrated with 200 official admiralty photographs, many of them previously unpublished, this book traces the development of Royal Naval ship design in a period of immense change.

Opening with the Crimean War, this period saw the gradual transition from sail to steam and screw propulsion; from wood to steel construction; from fixed broadside armaments of bronze muzzle-loaders to turret-mounted steel breech-loaders and torpedoes.

The period covered in this volume closes with the launch of HMS Dreadnought, which overnight rendered all existing ships obsolete and signalled the start in earnest of the Anglo-German naval arms race which contributed to the outbreak of WW1.

Each photograph is accompanied by full specifications (where available) and a caption detailing any significant design features, while the main text gives an overview of naval developments across the period under discussion, setting the selected ships in context.

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British Warships in the Age of Sail 1817-1863 - Design, Construction, Careers and Fates

The publication of this book sees the completion of a monumental work listing the technical details and career histories of every significant British warship between 1603 and 1863. Following three earlier volumes, this one carries forward the story from the post-Napoleonic War reorganisation of the Royal Navy's rating system to the end of sail as the principal mode of propulsion.

Although apparently well documented, this is a period of great complexity in the procurement and naval architecture of ships. The introduction of steam radically altered the design of vessels under construction and was later retro-fitted to others, while many 'names' lived a ghostly existence on the Navy List: ships ordered but not started, and in some cases having their intended draughts altered more than once before being cancelled entirely.

This book meticulously sorts out and clarifies these confusions - a major contribution in itself - but for the first time it also provides outline service histories for an era that is largely neglected.
Like its companion volumes, the book is organised by Rate, classification and class, with significant technical and building data, followed by a concise summary of the careers of each ship in every class. With its unique depth of information, this is a work of the utmost importance to every naval historian and general reader interested in the navy of the sailing era and the formative years of the steam navy that supplanted it.

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Constitution vs Guerriere - Frigates during the War of 1812 (Osprey)

Famed as a classic naval duel, a one-on-one clash between two sailing frigates offered the victor immeasurable fame and glory. During the War of 1812, the Royal Navy and United States Navy squared off in four such duels, the most famous that between the USS Constitution and HMS Guerrière.
Ships and tactics between the two nations varied enormously, with the American navy favouring a revolutionary design of frigate, with twenty-four pounder guns and heavy structural timbers, while the British, used to fighting the French and Spanish navies, relied on smaller, eighteen-pounder frigates.

Through first-hand accounts of these four single-ship actions and fascinating comparisons of artillery, crew ability and tactical achievements, this book offers an unparalleled insight into the ruthless reality of frigate battles in the War of 1812.

Contents: Introduction - Chronology - Design and development - Strategic situation - Technical Specifications - Combatants - Combat - Aftermath - Bibliography.

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HMS Warrior, 1860 - Victoria's Ironclad Deterrent

Built to underline Victorian Britain's supremacy at sea, HMS Warrior was the world's first iron-hulled, armoured warship. In 1979 she was rescued from ignominy as an oil jetty in Milford Haven to become the subject of an ambitious restoration programme, and for the last twenty years has been open to the public at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
The story of her revolutionary design, career history and the strange twists of fate that enabled her to survive into an age when her significance in naval architecture would be fully recognised, is described in detail together with the meticulous research that went into faithfully restoring every aspect of the ship.

Complete with archival illustrations and photographs, specially commissioned photography, lines plans and diagrams, this is a comprehensive and elegantly produced commemorative volume of a remarkable ship.

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Nautical Training Ships - An Illustrated History

For well over a hundred years all around the coast of Britain there were located a series of nautical training ships. Often surplus navy wooden walls, the ships provided a means of educating boys and young men, while preparing them for a lifetime at sea.

The more famous of the schools included HMS Conway, initially on the Mersey, and then at Menai; the TS Mercury, at Hamble, Hampshire; the Mars on the Tay, at Dundee; the Vindicatrix at Sharpness Docks on the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal; the Worcester on the Thames and the Arethusa at Greenhithe.
The Arethusa, converted from a sailing vessel, lasted until 1974 before she was purchased and sailed to America to be restored as a typical sailing vessel of the late nineteenth century.

Phil Carradice tells the story of the training ships that helped keep Britain a maritime nation from their foundation to their demise as Britain's once-proud merchant marine declined in the latter years of the twentieth century.

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Nemesis : The First Iron Warship and Her World

The Nemesis was the first of a generation of iron-clad, steam-powered naval vessels that established British dominance in Asian waters in the nineteenth century. The world's first iron warship, the first vessel with truly watertight compartments, and the first iron vessel to round the Cape of Good Hope, Nemesis represented a staggering new level of military superiority over the oar-and-sail-powered forces of Britain's Asian rivals.

Yet strangely her story has never been told to modern audiences, and her origins and actions have until now been shrouded in mystery.
This lively narrative places her in the historical context of the last years of the East India Company, and in the history of steam power and of iron ships. It tells of her exploits and in the first Opium War, in pirate suppression upriver and naval actions across Asia, from Bombay to Burma the Yangtze River and beyond.

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Nile River Gunboats 1882-1918 (Osprey)

For more than 30 years the Nile river gunboat was an indispensable tool of empire, policing the great river and acting as floating symbols of British imperial power. They participated in every significant colonial campaign in the region, from the British invasion of Egypt in 1882 to the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, when Britain finally won control of the Sudan.
After that, the gunboats helped maintain British control over both Egypt and the Sudan, and played a key role in safeguarding British interests around the headwaters of the Nile - a region hotly contested by several European powers.

Featuring specially commissioned artwork, this comprehensive volume offers a detailed analysis of the Nile river gunboats' entire career, from policing British colonial interests along the great river to defending Egypt against the Ottoman Turks in World War I.

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The Royal Navy 1793-1815 (Osprey)

By the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 Britain was the undisputed master of the seas, owing to the power and strength of the Royal Navy. Its fleets, comprising ships of the line, frigates, and gunboats, had doubled in size since the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793, totalling almost a thousand capital vessels.

This book examines the commanders, men, and ships of the Royal Navy during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, and discusses the Navy's command structure (from the Admiralty down to ship level) and its organization at sea. The tactics employed in action by a fleet, squadron, and individual ship, respectively are also discussed, as are the medical services providing a fascinating insight into the navy that ruled the waves.

Contents: Introduction - Combat mission - Organization - Command, control and communications - Weapons and equipment - Tactics - Conclusion - Orders of battle - Chronology - Bibliography - Index.

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USS Lawrence vs HMS Detroit - The War of 1812 on the Great Lakes (Osprey)

The most critical naval fighting during the War of 1812 took place, not on the high seas, but on the inland lakes of North America: the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.
Carrying between 12 and 22 cannon, the British and American sloops-of-war were ship-rigged, brig-rigged or schooner-rigged vessels.
Lakes actions often involved two ships facing each other broadside to broadside, the best example of which was the battle of Lake Erie in 1813 where HMS Detroit led a Royal Navy squadron against the USS Lawrence-led US Navy.

Featuring full-colour artwork, this lively study investigates the prolonged struggle between British and US sloops-of-war, highlighting the differences between the war on the lakes and the war on the oceans during the Age of Fighting Sail.
It reveals the circumstances under which these ships were built, how they were armed, and the human story behind their construction and use in battle.

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