REVIEWS EDITOR'S BOOK LOCKER The Great War at Sea, by Richard Hough (Birlinn, 8, Canongate Venture, 5 New Street, Edinburgh, EH8 8BH, Scotland (phone: +44 (13 1) 556 6660), 2000, orig 1983, illus, notes, maps, biblio, index, ISBN 1-84 158-053-8; ÂŁ 12.99pb; $25.95 pb) Richard Hough, a gifted writer of compelling hisro rical narrative, with a sure rouch in seafaring matters, died in 1999 at age 77. His departure remo ved a viral force from our field . His mas terwork may well be th is fast-paced, dramatic but accurate and balanced acco unt of the naval side of World War I, which ended the hundred years of the Pax Britannica maintained by the unchal lenged might of Britain's Royal Navy. With a sure rouch Hough depi cts the weaknesses of the huge and ill-assorted Royal Navy, which like the British Empire itself, may be said ro have happened by accident. Against this force the unstable German Kaiser Wilhelm II began ro build a highly effici ent High Seas Fleet, under the sure hand of Admiral Tirpitz, who insisted on testing everything developed by new technologies since the las t great battles at sea. The Russo-Japan ese War of 1904-5 offe red hints of what was ro come, but these were deceptive. Hough wro te a classic account of that enco unter in his Fleet that
H ad to Die, a tide that aptly described the ago ny of Admiral Rozhesrvensky's massive Russian battleships sent from European waters robe overwhelmed by lighter, hardhitting and superbly trained Japanese cruisers at Tsushima. But the immediate future lay with the massive battleships carrying a uniform armament of the biggest possible guns. England 's Ad mi ral John "Jacky" Fisher, taking office as First Naval Lord in 1904 (an office he promptly renamed Sea Lord, despising the Latinate terms so beloved of Victo rians), shook the Royal Navy from stem to stern, producing in short order a much smaller, almost infinitely stronger fleet built aro und the super-battl eship Dreadnought. As was noted at the time, she made every battleship in the wo rld obsolete. She gave her name to all later battleships as a rype, so even new German battleships were known as Dreadnoughtschiffe. Ir has become fas hionable to decry the dreadnought mania, and it's true that these huge ships spent most of the war swinging idl y at anchor. H ough has the breadth of vision to understand the latent power of these ships, and he clearly sets forth how the war would have been over on the spot if the balance of battlefleet strength had swung against Britain. As Fisher's sponsor at the
Admiral ty, Winston Churchill , tellingly observed , the ad miral ofBritain's Grand Fleet was the only man on either side who co uld lose the war in an afte rnoon. Hough 's appreciation of Jutland, the one maj or fleet enco unter of dreadnought battl eships, co rrectly acco unts it as a decisive British victory, though Britain lost more ships than Germ any. T he point was that the German main body never came out again to fo rce another encounter, leaving the Royal Navy masters at sea-the overriding necessity for Allied vicrory. Hough is also right, I believe, in noting the conceptual superiori ty of the British ships, despite much stronger German technology. His fri endship with the American naval historian Arthur Marder (ro whom he dedicated this book) ass ured the technical and historical acrn racy of his account of the prewar buildup, and his close work with the late Admiral ty librarian Peter Kemp I believe saved Hough from the clumps of minor errors found in his las t book, Naval Battles of the Twentieth Century, publish ed in the US by Overlook Press in 2001. T hat is a good book, sure in its broad grasp; but The Great War at Sea is a great book, as well as a great read .
(Continued from page 39) 1742 Anso n was down to one ship and an enfeebl ed crew. Alone in the Pacific, he pressed on. D etermined to intercept the Spanish galleo n that carried treasure between Acapulco and Manila, Anson found the Nuestra Senora de Covadonga. Ninery minutes of fighting resulted in the capture of this "Prize of all th e Oceans." Anson traveled on ro Canton for repairs and so me encounters with the Chinese before arriving in England where the Spanish treasure was carted in 32 wago ns from Portsmouth to the Tower of London. Outside the Tower, lawyers worked with clients hoping to gain their share of the prize. Anson co ntinued ro rise in public esteem and advanced to the rank of admiral. His fame was secured with the publication of A Voyage Round the World by George Anson (1748). A great publishing success, the book was issued in 15 editions within 20 years. Glyn Williams is a professor emeritus of history at Queen Mary and Westfield Col-
lege, the U niversity of London, and author of works on Cap tain Cook and the exploration of the South Sea. Writing this hisrory of Anson's voyage, he cuts through a maze of source material to produce one of sea history's most compelling tales.
trade-offs involved by a mas ter of the ship designing art, naval archi teer D . K. Brown, who retired as Deputy Chief Naval Architect of th e Royal Corps of Naval Constructors in 1988. This book is the fourth in a superlative series including: Before the Ironclad: D evelopment of Ship Design, Propulsion andArmamentin the Royal Navy 18151860; Warrior to Dreadnought: Warship Development 1860-1905; and The Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Development 1906-1922. Brown's books in this series give insight not available elsewhere inro the thought process and val ues of the designers of a fleer over successive genera tions. The designing of a well-balanced ship is diffic ult ro convey ro nontechnical readers. This book tells of British design between the wa rs with clarity and directness. The diaries of Sir Stan ley V. Goodall , the man responsible for wa rship design during most of the period, inform an d enliven the text. T he analysis of the success or failure of vario us designs is particularlyvaluablewhen
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TIMOTHY J. R UNYAN
East Carolina U niversiry G reenville, No rth Carolina Nelson to Vanguard: Warship Design and Development, 1923-1945, D . K. Brown (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD , 2000, 224pp, illus, biblio, gloss, index, !SB 1-55 75 0-492-X; $59.95 hc) Naval architects must keep many interrelated facrors in mind when designing a ship . Wars hips, with their extreme complexity and national importance, present particularly difficult challenges, and call for a firm grasp of the often subtl e, interwoven influence of multipl e facto rs on the final plans. In Nelson to Vanguard readers are treated to a clear explanation of the
PETER STA FORD
SEA HISTORY 96, SPRING 200 I