Derek Nudd's Blog - Posts Tagged "royal-navy"

The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649 ­- 1815 by N.A.M. Rodger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the middle book of Rodger's three-volume history of the Royal Navy, covering 166 formative years of almost continuous warfare. It begins with the execution of Charles I and ends with the Royal Navy undisputed master of the world's oceans. He ends with Marshal Gneisenau's scathing assessment of Bonaparte:
"for it is the events which he has brought about which have raised England's greatness, security and wealth so high. They are lords of the sea, and neither in this dominion nor in world trade have they any rivals left to fear."
Beginning with the Civil War and ending with the Napoleonic wars and the American war of 1812-14, the author devotes chapters for each natural time break to operations, administration, social history and ships. He thus places the purely naval business in its political, social and technological context. A conclusion debates the different explanations for the rise of Britain's naval dominance, and to my mind strongly challenges the reader to ask whether Britain can afford not to maintain a strong navy.
The text is amplified by seven appendices, notes, glossary, maps and index. There are useful plate sections which reproduce contemporary paintings. In a perfect world I would have wished them to be in colour but no doubt the cost impact would have been prohibitive.
Rodger's series has justly gained enthusiastic reviews. We should bear in mind though that, in order to cover the ground, he has to keep up the pace. Whole books have been written about some of his paragraphs. As a cruise through the period, though it's difficult to beat (but for a shorter read try Wilson's Empire of the Deep: The Rise and Fall of the British Navy)



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The Price of Victory: A Naval History of Britain: 1815-1945 by N.A.M. Rodger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


We have been waiting some time for Rodger to complete his survey of British naval history since The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649 ­- 1815 was published in 2004. It was worth the wait, which he explains in the foreword.
As with previous volumes the author develops his argument by considering policy & operations, government & administration, ships & weapons, and social history as parallel threads. The book thus addresses navy, nation and their global context as an integrated whole.
The much-overworked phrase 'panoramic scope' is wholly appropriate here and it would be unreasonable to expect deep analysis of individual events from primary sources. We don't find it. Instead we meet well-written, impressive scholarship based on a lifetime's research (the bibliography is 70 pages long) looking at events from a refreshingly different angle.
Which is not to say that Rodger avoids controversy. Some famous British admirals receive an entertainingly caustic assessment of their ability, while his view of US skills and behaviour in WW2 is positively biting.
The book's title refers to the challenge new enemies and weapons posed to Britain's nineteenth century dominance. Their defeat came at a heavy and permanent cost to the country's economy. This is a theme the author returns to in the Epilogue where he asserts, 'British people were already well disposed towards the United States, and largely unaware of the extent to which dislike of Great Britain was a core element of American patriotism. While the war lasted, the Englishman in the street had little sense of the degree to which American assistance had sustained the common war-effort on terms that deliberately undermined the British economy.' He goes on to quote data in support of this thesis.
The book is illustrated with 10 useful and well-drawn maps, 64 generally well-chosen illustrations, and amplified by five appendices. There will be disagreements but it deserves a place in any library.



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