England, with a white pine tree replacing the St. George’s Cross in the canton. Although they generally stand stoically and quietly in our woods today, white pines were once at the center of controversy and conflict, with a distant ruling body seeing the future of its naval might in North American forests, and local landowners forging their way in the New World standing up to defend what they saw as their property, and their way of life. John Galluzzo Hanover, Massachusetts Churchill and Fisher: Titans of the Admiralty by Barry Gough (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2017, 640pp, illus, notes, index, isbn 978-1-459411-36-4; $39.95hc) Professor Barry Gough’s latest of his many books on maritime and Commonwealth history may well turn out to be his finest hour. The author pits the two titans of the sea, Winston Churchill and Admiral John (Jackie) Fisher, against each other in a 600-page dreadnought of a book. It proves to be a masterpiece, filled with action and high drama.
At the start of the twentieth century Churchill, aged thirty-six in 1910, was a very young First Lord of the Admiralty and a most impetuous and rash night owl. Admiral Fisher, who had begun his Royal Navy service in the 1850s, was First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910, when in his sixties. In the run up to the Great War, he was nearing the end of a fine career of naval reform. Handling this scrappy duo fell to Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. One recalls Queen Elizabeth’s yoking a phlegmatic Hawkyns to a choleric Drake as co-commanders on their final voyage for Spanish gold in 1595. It was chalk and cheese under Elizabeth, and the same under George V. This was the end of Edwardian England—1910 to 1919—that led up to and through the Great War. Kaiser Wilhelm II, cousin to George V, went to war in 1914 against England in an early call for Lebensraum. The Kriegsmarine had expanded under German admiral Alfred von Tirpitz until checked by British Admiral John Jellicoe in May 1916 at the Battle of Jutland. Ashore in England, there was social unrest: women’s agitation for suffrage and, with original art of the yankee whale hunt
A new book by Gerry Garibaldi.
“O’er the Wide and Tractless Sea”
The River of Sin
“O’er the Wide and Tractless Sea”
k original art of the yankee whale hunt By Michael P. Dyer
Michael P. Dyer
In the tradition of C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey comes Daniel Wren, a newly minted midshipman aboard the Royal Navy sloop, Phoenix. Its mission: To sail into the Narmada River, deep into the exotic, black heart of India to discover the fate of an East India Company outpost with which all contact has been lost. In the course of Old Dartmouth Historical Society / New Bedford Whaling Museum this quest, Wren must confront a dark, unexpected fate of his own. Learn more at Amazon!
the war, conscription, the start of the Royal Air Force, and the creation of General Kitchener’s Army. Edwardian confidence was falling away fast to Realpolitik. Two scandals of note rocked England during the Great War. First was the insufficient production of artillery shells, and the second, Britain’s unsuccessful attempt to control the sea route from Russia to Europe, resulting in the Gallipoli campaign, fought from February 1915 to January 1916 against the Turks. The German fleet, which had been aiding the Turks, escaped to Constantinople, then Turkey soon joined the German coalition. Could Britannia still rule the waves? Apparently not, now two years into the Great War. Churchill was partly responsible for the Gallipoli debacle. That and the blimps over England—a bit of new German technology—brought down both titans. Fisher was relieved of his position as First Sea Lord and ordered to man a desk at a government inventions board. Churchill was relieved of his post as First Lord of the Admiralty and given command of a battalion of doughboys on the Western Front. Within two years, however, he was named
ISBN 978-0-9975161-3-5
***** on Amazon
***** on Goodreads
“...riveting story telling that between the lines makes also for fascinating history.” “Beautifully detailed and psychologically deep.” “We are in a land of precious gems, Hindu Gods, and great temptations.”
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A handsomely illustrated book that sheds light on rarely, if ever, seen paintings, drawings, and whaling artworks. 365 pages | $65.00 whalingmuseum.org 508-997-0046 ext. 127 SEA HISTORY 165, WINTER 2018–19