In 1844 the USS Yorktown sailed from New York, as part of the U.S. Navy's newly established African Squadron, to interdict slave ships leaving the African coast. Aboard the sloop of war, Master's Mate John C. Lawrence, an educated New Yorker in his early twenties, kept a private journal describing what happened during the extraordinary two-year voyage and his reactions ...
Scottish artist George Plante did not enter World War II as an artist but as a volunteer radio operator in the British merchant fleet. There he spent more than two years engaged in the long-running and fierce Battle of the Atlantic, splitting his time between Britain and the United States. But while dodging U-boats and battling the elements, he also ...
HMS Captain was the first sea-going turret warship built to provide all-round firepower. This definitive account of the loss of the Captain details the decade-long public controversy in parliament and the press that led to the building of the ship in unprecedented circumstances. The lengthy controversy involved a disagreement between the Captain's designer and inventor of the turntable turret ...