British Naval Research Articles

Operation Overlord: Civilian Photography and Artistic Mediation

In March 1942, the Director of British Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Godfrey made a public appeal via the BBC Radio. Godfrey requested listeners to send in holiday photographs and postcards of Europe, particularly places of potential military interest. Over 80,000 people responded with holiday snaps forming a comprehensive library that by 1944 totaled ten million images. Relevant photographs garnered from the public for Operation Overlord were incorporated into military briefing materials, along with maps and zero-elevation aerial photographs, then issued to assault troops in preparation for the invasion of France in June 1944. While the material was largely returned to the British public, over 750,000 images were reproduced and remain in British archives. Over seventy years later, German photographer Simon Menner accessed the Imperial War Museum archive to digitize part of the collection for a photographic project that was not fully realized. This article considers Menner’s engagement with these records as a means by which this obscure national achievement has come to light beyond military history research. It also foregrounds the tension between political conflict surrounding digitization of declassified state and vernacular material, and Menner’s photographic intervention as a protagonist in the ongoing efforts to access formerly secret or confidential government material.

Equiano’s World: Chronicling the Life and Times of Gustavus Vassa

Equiano’s World (www.equianosworld.org) is a website that chronicles the life and times of Gustavus Vassa (c. 1741–1797), who is known most frequently by his birth name, Olaudah Equiano. Vassa became well known in Britain after the publication of his autobiography in 1789 and for his prominent role in the movement for abolition of the British slave trade, which was only finally enacted in 1807, ten years after his death. The associated database includes all known documentation on Vassa and information relevant to the study of his life. Foremost among these materials is his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, which was republished nine times in his lifetime. Other documentation includes contemporary newspaper accounts, legal documents, and images from his life experiences. The website addresses issues arising from the context of Vassa’s life, including his place of birth, his name, and his influence on the abolition movement. It demonstrates that he only wanted to be known by the name he was given when he was enslaved rather than by his birth name; even today he is best known as Olaudah Equiano or even simply Equiano, even though Equiano was not a surname. His unusual experience as an enslaved servant to a British naval officer during the Seven Years’ War and afterwards to a merchant in the Caribbean gave him particular insight into the horrors of slavery and his commitment to its abolition. Because of the education he received on British ships and subsequently in London after he purchased his own freedom, he stands out as a prominent and literate intellectual and political activist. His autobiography continues to be read widely and taught in university courses. The project is part of a broader initiative that explores the testimonies and personal profiles of Africans who were enslaved during the era of slavery, most of whom were taken to the Americas.The article outlines the structure of the website into seven sections: first, a Home page that includes a project history, acknowledgements, technical details, and a discussion of the “Best Practices” that underlie the project. The second section focuses on Context, examining key settings from the interior of the Bight of Biafra where Vassa was born, the slave trade of the late eighteenth century, the Middle Passage across the Atlantic, the Seven Years’ War, and London and Britain in the late eighteenth century. The section on his travels has a chronological timeline and maps relating to them. The Associates section contains biographical sketches and images of his family, those whom he knew while he was enslaved, his associates in the Abolition movement, his co-religionists, and his connections in scientific and military circles. It also includes a list of individuals who subscribed to his autobiography. The section on Studying Equiano includes his autobiography, a list of its editions, and over 200 legal documents, letters, and newspaper notices and accounts. The Resources section includes a bibliography of several hundred items that discuss Vassa and his work, as well as audio and visual resources, links to websites on Vassa, slavery and diaspora. This article discusses technical details of website construction, which uses a backend known as Regenerated Identities (RegID). The website relies on open-source content and has a search function that enables location of people, places, and periods relevant to Vassa’s life.

The Liberty and the London: Fishing for guns, 1650–1665

Little has been written about the history of English underwater salvage in the mid-seventeenth century. The navy of the 1650s and the 1660s needed divers and salvagers for their expanded operations, especially during wars against the Dutch. Ships sunk deep at sea were irretrievable, but vessels lost near shore in tidal waters could yield recoverable materials. This article offers new insights into wreck recovery during the period of the Interregnum and the Restoration. It investigates the archival evidence of efforts to recover ordnance from the English naval vessels Liberty (also named Charles) that sank in the North Sea in 1650, and the London that blew up in the Thames in 1665. Despite difficult tidal and weather conditions, Robert Willis and others were able to recover several tons of bronze guns for re-use.

New Research into the History, Theory and Practice of Naval Wargaming

It is largely overlooked today that naval war- gaming was a major contributing factor not only to the development of British naval thought but also to strategic theory. In academia and in governmen...

Bombing and the geography of Admiralty administration in two world wars

ABSTRACT The construction of so many temporary Admiralty offices in St James's Park during the First World War, despite the threat of enemy bombing, shows that British naval administrative efficiency then depended significantly on the close physical proximity of offices, albeit supplemented where necessary by additional liaison mechanisms. Subsequently, however, changing office practices, and advances in communications infrastructure and technology, made it possible for the administration to stretch itself very considerably. That was fortunate, since developments in warfare, including a great increase in the accuracy and weight of bombing attacks, demanded dispersion. By the Second World War, it can be argued there were four different Admiralties in the country, London, Bath, and Western Approaches and Rosyth Commands. They were not quite separate, however, but functionally linked with each other and with numerous other naval establishments, to the degree one could no longer identify Admiralty headquarters geographically; instead, it existed wherever there were officials and officers who carried out Admiralty functions.

Science, Utility and British Naval Technology, 1793–1815: Samuel Bentham and the Royal Dockyards by Roger Morriss

Reviewed by: Science, Utility and British Naval Technology, 1793–1815: Samuel Bentham and the Royal Dockyards by Roger Morriss Phillip Reid (bio) Science, Utility and British Naval Technology, 1793–1815: Samuel Bentham and the Royal Dockyards By Roger Morriss. London: Routledge, 2021. Pp. 404. Science, Utility and British Naval Technology, 1793–1815: Samuel Bentham and the Royal Dockyards By Roger Morriss. London: Routledge, 2021. Pp. 404. Samuel Bentham, with his more famous brother Jeremy, helped develop the moral philosophy known as utilitarianism. While Jeremy focused his intellect primarily on social theory, Samuel devoted his to solving practical and technical problems. He apprenticed himself to shipwrights, learned the principles of ship design and construction, and served as an advisor to the Russian government on naval construction and improvements. In 1796, he was appointed by Britain's Admiralty, the highest governing board of the Royal Navy, to a position created for him: Inspector General of Naval Works. In that capacity, as Roger Morriss details in this thorough account, he conceived, advocated, and implemented innovations in diverse aspects of operations in the Royal Dockyards, where naval vessels were built and repaired during the French Revolutionary and [End Page 937] Napoleonic Wars, when Britain needed her navy as never before. In doing so, he confronted an established industrial culture, vested interests, and an approach to technology based on established precedent. Much of this book is a blow-by-blow account of the conflict between the innovator and the dockyard establishment, a conflict that eventually led to Bentham's ouster in 1807, but not before he had effected significant change on how the dockyards were run and what they did. In first outlining his case, Morriss risks giving the uninitiated reader the sense that British ship design was backward, and that would be a gross oversimplification of a complex subject (N. A. M. Rodger, "Navies and the Enlightenment" (Essays in Naval History, Routledge, 2009); L. D. Ferreiro, Ships and Science, MIT Press, 2006). However, with the important exception of Bentham's experimental vessels, the subject of ship design is subordinate in this book to the social and political construction of a culture of work, and how the application of "utility" challenged an old system of hierarchy and interest in all aspects of dockyard operation. Bentham did, in fact, design some experimental vessels for the navy. He got them built and tested with notable success, but with difficulty and resistance from the Navy Board, the group of officers charged by the Admiralty with the day-to-day running of the yards. With the support of the Admiralty at the top and some talented shipwrights and other technical specialists under him, Bentham overcame objections and introduced a metal mill, a wood mill, and steam power. He oversaw the ambitious expansion and enlargement of wet docks to accommodate warships of increasing size and get them repaired and back in service more quickly. Finally, he advocated new systems of work incentives and compensation to combat fraud, corruption, and inefficiency, though these reforms were mostly implemented after his departure. Bentham's innovations were expensive and risky, at a time when the demands on the navy were relentless and Britain's security situation was dire. Morriss does not present the Navy Board as an obstreperous clique of reactionary dolts. He gives them their say. In fact, he gives the figures in the book far more ample say than most of us who write history give our subjects; the liberal use of long block quotes contributes much to the length of this book. For the reader unaccustomed to eighteenth-century prose, this could make for slow going. No one could accuse Morriss of putting words in the mouths of his subjects, but I do wonder if he would have been just as well served by paraphrasing much of this material. He writes well, and the book is well edited. I read an e-book edition, and as seems to be typical of the format, I found more typos than I would have liked (eleven), though that number is not egregious in a book of this length. Given the level of detail, the ideal reader will bring an interest in the specific subject...

Leadership in Anesthesia: Five Pioneers of the Deadly Quest for Surgical Insensibility

Concerned by the skull grinning from the foreground of this volume’s front-cover illustration, I was reassured by the anesthetic antiques in the background. The back cover introduces the author, Dr. Berend Mets, the Eric A. Walker Professor and Chair of Anesthesiology at the Penn State College of Medicine. So, judging this book by its cover(s), why should readers bother paging through it? Here is why—many physician-authors have penned histories of medicine littered with lionizing biographies and little substance. Some of these writers have lamented having to wade through bogs of footnotes inked by “Ph.D. historians” who swim through the social milieu but rarely dive into analyses of clinical leadership. As an anesthesiologist with a Ph.D. in pharmacology, Dr. Berend Mets has staked out an unapologetic island between these authorship extremes with this remarkable new book. To readers, Leadership in Anesthesia: Five Pioneers of the Deadly Quest for Surgical Insensibility simultaneously offers meaty biographies and a leadership primer.Serving on the board of the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists after lecturing on six continents, Dr. Mets is clearly a global educator with something to say. Had I been wise enough to begin reading his book earlier in the day, I would have finished it in one sitting. Fortunately for me, this one-inch thick octavo fits easily in the pocket of my white clinical jacket. (So, I finished it on day 2.) This 341-page hardback is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 1, “Surgery Before Anesthesia,” races its way to the book’s wonderful second chapter, “A Brisk History of Leadership.” The latter starts by examining Aristotle, Plato, Machiavelli, and Napoleon for leadership concepts up to 1840. From that year forward, Dr. Mets fuses his own concepts with those authored by Drs. Peter G. Northouse and J. Robert Clinton to yield “Seven Ages of Leadership.” These range sequentially through the Ages of Great Man, Domination, Trait, Group-Goal, Behavior, Leadership versus Management, and finally Rapid Change.Chapters 3 and 4 focus on “Great Man Age” individuals by using Dr. Mets’ biographies of Boston’s William Morton and London’s John Snow, respectively. Morton was the narcissistic sociopath of a dentist who, after the world’s first successful public demonstration of surgical etherization, promoted the art of anesthesia. Sciences explored by physician Snow included both anesthesiology, as Queen Victoria’s chloroformist, and epidemiology, which he fathered while pinpointing sources for London’s 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak. Chapters 5 through 7 are each a biographical gem including original archival research by Professor Mets into Dr. Arthur Guedel of Indiana and California, then Virginia Apgar of New York, and finally Bjørn Ibsen of Denmark. According to Dr. Mets, Morton crudely pursued the art; Snow, meticulously, the science; and Guedel, pragmatically, the practice of anesthesiology. Dr. Mets’ fourth biography subject, Apgar, assessed newborns using her namesake score to correlate outcomes. The final giant, Ibsen, “fathered” the intensive care unit.In his eighth and final chapter, Dr. Mets adds a seventh element to C. Northcote Parkinson’s six from that British naval historian’s Law of Delay to yield the following rubric for the art of leadership: Creative LEADER. This mnemonic captures the “seven key ingredients to successful leadership”: Creativity, Legitimacy, Emotional competence, Adaptability, Determination, Empathy, and Resilience. This handy tool also allows Dr. Mets to conduct a “leadership reckoning” of his biographees which proves quite fascinating.Remarkably, some professionals may order this book just as a primer in leadership, with all of this volume’s templates and analyses of what succeeded or failed for each of these heroes of anesthesiology. This book is certainly required reading for any aspiring anesthesiology leader or anybody hoping to maintain a leadership position. That is why I am ordering a copy as a gift for a dear colleague. A lot of facts and a load of wisdom are packed inside this volume. I am glad that I did not judge Leadership in Anesthesia entirely by its cover.

Exploration and mortification: Fragile infrastructures, imperial narratives, and the self-sufficiency of British naval "discovery" vessels, 1760-1815.

Eighteenth-century naval ships were impressive infrastructures, but subjected to extraordinary strain. To assist with their "voyage repairs," the Royal Navy gradually established numerous overseas bases, displaying the power, reach, and ruthless logistical efficiency of the British state. This article, however, is concerned with what happened where no such bases (yet) existed, in parts of the world falling in between areas of direct British administration, control, or influence. The specific restrictions imposed by technology and infrastructures have been studied by historians interested in naval strategy, but they can also help to reframe national narratives of power or observe the transnational interactions surrounding access to knowledge and resources. This paper discusses the material, cultural, and diplomatic constraints that could appear when vessels, and especially "discovery ships," sailed in strange waters or sought technical assistance in allied ports. I argue that the "mortification" of some commanders at their vessels' unfitness for service was an important - and often neglected - element on the palette of emotions undergone by voyagers, capturing their strong sense of ultimate material powerlessness. Such frustration even became embedded in imperial cartography, as shown by the case study of Matthew Flinders. This perspective highlights the limits of naval technology, complicating imperialistic "success stories" and better reintegrating the navy into the history of maritime travel and transportation, from which it is often singled out.

Book Review: Planning and Profits: British Naval Armaments Manufacture and the Military Industrial Complex, 1918-1941

Book Review: <i>Planning and Profits: British Naval Armaments Manufacture and the Military Industrial Complex, 1918-1941</i>

Continuity and Change: Strategy and Technology in the Royal Navy, 1890–1918

Abstract This article presents a new interpretation of the relationship between technology and warfare at sea before and during the First World War. It challenges existing accounts which view technological innovations as the primary driver of naval strategy during this period, and argues for a more contingent, incremental and contextualised approach to the relationship between technology and strategy. It illustrates these points with a specific example: the highly controversial topic of the Royal Navy’s so-called ‘Battle Cruisers’, three of which suffered catastrophic explosions at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. In doing so it forwards a new interpretation of British naval policy between 1890 and 1918, the Anglo-German naval arms race, and elements of the First World War at sea.

Space, sound and sedition on the Royal Naval ship, 1756-1815

This article examines sonic forms of protest aboard British naval ships between 1756 and 1815. During this period, naval seamen murmured, muttered, cheered, hissed and chattered as they congregated below and above deck. These sounds required constant interpretation on the part of officers, and a failure to do so correctly could have severe consequences. Maritime labourers, this article finds, well understood the potential ambiguity of shipboard soundscapes as well as the acousmatic potential of the ship as a built environment, which they used to their advantage through a careful manipulation of space and sound. I analyse the orchestration of the communal soundscapes which seamen created, and consider the specific shipboard spaces in which these sounds were made from and projected to. In placing these sounds in their spatial and social contexts, it is possible to glimpse an alternative order on British naval vessels, and to better understand cultures of sonic protest during the long eighteenth century.

A One-way Street? Admiral James Somerville and Anglo-American Naval Relations, 1942

Admiral Sir James Somerville’s command of the Eastern Fleet in 1942 caused serious tensions in Anglo-American naval relations despite the admiral’s personal efforts to cultivate closer ties with the US Navy. Specifically, US Navy admirals such as Ernest King felt that while the US Navy had helped the Royal Navy in its hour of need, the favour was not returned by the British. Diverging assessments of the value of the Indian Ocean and the Royal Navy’s wartime experience were the critical factors that led to these tensions. This article highlights the limits of individual attitudes in shaping wartime Anglo-American naval relations. One admiral’s personal views could not overcome differences in British and American naval thinking which led to frustration and resentment rather than greater harmony.

Material memories of travel: the albums of a Victorian naval surgeon

This paper considers the visual archives of maritime scientific exploration, from coastal sketches to ethnographic observation. It focuses on seven albums of John Linton Palmer, a British naval surgeon who served in the Pacific in the 1850s and 1860s, which are today part of the collections of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). Through their drawing, recording and collecting, naval surgeons like Linton Palmer played a significant role in the development of natural history and ethnography during the nineteenth century. The paper discusses the historical significance and potential contemporary uses of the Linton Palmer albums in the context of three forms of memory-making: firstly, the documentation of topographic, antiquarian, ethnographic, microscopic and other field observations by means of drawing; secondly, the assembling of such materials into personalised albums, part of a distinctive nineteenth-century naval tradition by which the experience of travel was re-collected (in the case of Linton Palmer within the scientific culture of late-Victorian Liverpool); and thirdly, the contemporary uses of such forms of visual heritage in a variety of contexts from family history to Indigenous land claims.

From Sevastopol to Sukhumi – and back again: British naval liaison in action with the Red Navy in the Black Sea, 1941-1945

During World War II, Britain established a liaison officer with the Soviet Fleet in the Black Sea. Military cooperation between the western allies and the USSR is often regarded as minimal and unsuccessful, but this post demonstrated more positive cooperation. There were two crises when there were accusations of misbehaviour, and there were occasions when he was idle, but these were handled successfully in Whitehall. The post endured, and successive officers did a good job of operational liaison, as well as providing unique intelligence insights from a Soviet fighting front, right up until the end of the war in Europe.

Sustaining British Naval Power Through New England Masts During the Seven Years War

This study focuses on the Royal Navy’s use of American naval stores, especially New England masts, during the Seven Years War. It highlights the significance of the eastward naval logistics of American naval stores across the Atlantic, based on records revealing the navy’s constant effort to sustain these logistics in the British Atlantic world. Drawing on hitherto neglected official manuscripts relating to the Navy Board, this article throws new light on how the Royal Navy procured them across the war-torn Atlantic Ocean during this war. This investigation into the transport of naval stores to Britain in wartime broadens our understanding of the co-operation of the naval administrations with contractors and the role of America within the empire as the source of naval commodities, in addition to better-known cases of lucrative commodities such as sugar and tobacco. Given the contribution of natural resources to forming and maintaining supremacy, the navy’s use of American naval stores is a suggestive case of exploiting an empire’s natural resources within the context of Atlantic history.

“Iron Sailor”: Captain James Cook on the Background of the Era

The article is dedicated to Captain James Cook, the great navigator who became the symbol of naval might of the British Empire. The biography of this sailor, who devoted all his life to Sea and Navy, is analyzed on the background of the events of the Age of the Enlightenment, of which Cook was a prominent representative. He became a soldier and a military man, a hydrograph and a scientist, a humanist, and a colonizer. In a paradoxical way, Cook combined all the contradictory features of the 18th century, rose to the heights of the British naval elite and became a true hero of British expansion.

The Bendery Constitution and Pylyp Orlyk and His Government-in-Exile in Sweden in 1715–1720

The period 1709 to 1720 was of historic importance in the Ukrainian struggle for freedom and independence. On April 5, 1710, on Turkish territory in Bendery, Ukraine’s first constitution was inaugurated. The main author was Orlyk. After the Battle of Poltava in June 1709 King Charles XII of Sweden and the newly elected Hetman Pylyp Orlyk were in exile. In the fall of 1709 Hetman Ivan Mazepa had died in Moldavian Bendery. Orlyk, his chancellor, was elected hetman of Ukraine in the spring of 1710. The Bendery Constitution is not only an expression of the rights of a free Ukrainian people. It may be the main earliest document in modern Ukrainian intellectual history. The constitution is probably also the oldest constitution in the world of the modern era. The first Ukrainian constitution confirmed the status of the “ancient Cossack nation” and its century long struggle for freedom and independence. It guarantees the supremacy of a Kyiv metropolitan. A large number of the rights of the Cossacks are provided for as well as the protection by the king of Sweden. In 1714 around 40 of the Ukrainians in Moldavia left for exile together with Swedes returning home. The journey across Europe first ended in Stralsund (Swedish Pommerania) in May 1715. Later that year to avoid capture Hetman Orlyk and the Ukrainians (including parts of the government) left Stralsund by ship for Ystad, Sweden. Orlyk and family came to reside in the fortress city of Kristianstad in southern Sweden 1716 to 1719 while his government continued to Stockholm. During 1719 to 1720 Orlyk joined them in the Swedish capital. The Ukrainian government-in-exile in Stockholm was supported by the Swedish government of Frederic I and especially by the prominent Swedish politician Daniel von Höpken. The latter aided Orlyk and his ministers financially and most likely with living quarters. In June 1720 von Höpken in a letter advised the king that Orlyk should be financially supported and be given the opportunity to leave Sweden to continue the fight for freedom and independence of Ukraine and lead the Ukrainian Cossacks against Russia. In January 1719 Orlyk had been greatly encouraged by the Treaty of Vienna between Austria, Hannover and Saxony against Russia and its aggressive policy in Eastern Europe. In a last letter dated Stockholm October 10, 1720, Orlyk wrote in Latin to King Frederic I that when leaving Sweden he first planned to visit the King of Great Britain, then Vienna and after that via Hungary go further east. In foreign policy Orlyk’s best hope was King George I of Great Britain. He was willing to go to war against Russia but in the end could find no partners. British naval squadrons entered the Baltic Sea from 1719 to 1721 but could not attack Russian ports. The result was that George I advised Frederic I to conclude peace with Peter I on what terms he could. At Nystad in 1721, however, the question of Ukraine’s freedom and independence was not on the agenda of the Swedish negotiators. The Bendery constitution of 1710 remains as a monument to Ukraine’s first main attempt to break away from Russian domination. Full freedom and independence of Ukraine was finally achieved in 2014.

British Naval Aviation 1908-1914: A Case Study of Military Innovation

This paper examines the development of British naval aviation in the period 1908 to 1914 in the light of modern theories of military innovation. The case is of particular interest because it took place in peacetime in a force which had enjoyed global supremacy for a century, strong contra-indications of the inclination and the capacity for organisational change. The case study examines the development of British naval aviation along two dimensions of innovation: strategy and technology. The analytical tools are the four schools of ‘Military Innovation Theory’ as identified by Grissom. The evidence is derived from the relatively limited body of secondary material and the archives of the Admiralty, the Air Ministry and the Cabinet. The evidence from these sources seems to indicate that what Grissom refers to as the ‘civil military’ theory is the most persuasive. This theory was originated by Posen in 1984 and relies heavily on neo-realist approaches to international relations. It holds that while the default position of the military is conservative, the international environment generates challenges which prompt political leaders to insist the military respond. The decisions of the Liberal Government, and especially of Churchill from 1911, seem to reflect this position. The other theory which offers some purchase is the ‘cultural’ theory which Grissom associates with Theo Farrell. In this theory the behaviour of the military is determined by values and traditions. In the case of the Royal Navy, the officer corps was technically oriented as a result of education and experience and this facilitated the development of naval aviation. The paper demonstrates that by itself, naval technical competence would not have brought the naval air service to the relatively high level it had attained by August 1914. That required the intervention of the civil authorities responding in the fashion prescribed by the civil military theory. Culture was facilitative but the neo-realist processes were determinative.

Commodore Sir Edward W. C. R. Owen: Shaping the British Naval Establishment on the Great Lakes in the Wake of the War of 1812

Commodore Sir Edward W. C. R. Owen: Shaping the British Naval Establishment on the Great Lakes in the Wake of the War of 1812

The Jewish detainees in the narrations of the Greek-Cypriot Press (1946–49)

ABSTRACTThe 1940s in Cyprus, was extremely sensitive to national movements and balances. That’s why the people of the island were not indifferent to the sudden arrival of Jewish refugees. This article describes the history of the Cyprus camps, in which the British forcibly detained tens of thousands Holocaust survivors who had sought to brave the British naval blockade of Palestine, from the perspective of the Greek Cypriot press. Two main coverage prisms can be discerned: description of the British policy and its effects on the Jewish refugees, and the effects of the establishment of the camps for Cyprus’s local population.