Warships (19th Century) - Great Britain: Books (2/2)

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.

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.

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Illustrated with 200 official admiralty photographs, many of them previously unpublished, this book traces the development of Royal Naval ship design in a period of immense change.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

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.

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.

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.