Naval History

A hundred and fifty years ago, naval warfare entered a new phase with the introduction of ironclad vessels. On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor, prototype of this new class of warships, fought the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads, Virginia, after the Virginia had ravaged the Union fleet blockading the James River, sinking larger, seemingly more powerful wooden warships in a potent demonstration of the power of an armored, heavily-gunned, steam-powered warship.

The US Navy's first planned battle of WWII is told through the extraordinary, little-known story of USS Duncan, the first Allied warship to penetrate a Japanese battle line. From their first encounter with their celebrated captain and tyrannical executive officer to a deadly night afloat in shark-infested waters to a homecoming turned into a PR campaign, The Gun Club is a vivid day-to-day account of life on a warship, told largely in the words of the survivors, and is one of the most detailed and compelling accounts of a war cruise ever written.

On the 8th June 1940, the Nazi battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau opened their guns on the aircraft-carrier HMS Glorious. Within minutes, the Glorious was taking on water, and the order was given to abandon ship. Only 40 men survived this ordeal, one of which was Royal Marine Ronald "Tubby" Healiss, who served as a member of a 4.7 gun crew on the Glorious. His award-winning account is a true and terrible record of suffering, which uncovers one of the greatest undocumented naval stories of the Second World War.

Initially a slaving vessel itself, the Black Joke was captured in 1827 and repurposed by the Royal Navy to catch its former compatriots. Over the next five years, the vessel liberated more enslaved people than any other in Britain's West Africa Squadron. As Britain attempted to snuff out the transatlantic slave trade by way of treaty and negotiation, enforcing these policies fell to ships such as the Black Joke as they battled slavers, weather disasters, and interpersonal drama among captains and crew that reverberated across oceans.

Book four of Sea Stories of a U.S. Marine relates a historic period in US Marine Corps Aviation, the first "off the shelf" procurement of a major weapons system from a foreign country and the introduction of the first operational V/STOL (vertical/short takeoff or landing) aircraft into the Untied States arsenal. The story is related through the eyes of our pilot and family from books one, two, and three. His writing style again puts the listener in the cockpit with him as he learns the intricacies of flying a V/STOL aircraft.

In Maritime Power and the Struggle for Freedom, Peter Padfield presents a superb description and analysis of naval campaigns conducted between 1788 and 1851 that shaped the modern world. Winner of the Mountbatten Maritime Prize, this is the second of Padfield's masterful trilogy that traces the impact of naval power on modern history, and the means by which it has been enacted.

When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the British asked Australia for help. With some misgivings, the Australian government sent five destroyers to beef up the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. HMAS Vendetta, Vampire, Voyager, Stuart and Waterhen were old ships, small with worn-out engines. Their crews used to joke they were held together by string and chewing gum; when the Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels heard of them, he sneered that they were a load of scrap iron.

This book traces the lives of the Macaw and her enigmatic captain, from birth on San Francisco Bay to death at Midway. Ultimately, for Paul Burton and the Macaw the real enemy was the sea, and in a deadly denouement told here in riveting detail, the sea won. Highlighting the underreported role auxiliary vessels played in the war, A Strange Whim of the Sea should engage the military historian and layperson alike with the previously untold story it tells of struggle, sacrifice, death, and survival in the Pacific in World War II.

Vice Admiral Sir Peter Gretton's book is a brilliant account of his career in the navy through World War Two: fighting in the Second Battle of the Narvik and guarding convoys in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, before being placed in charge of Escort Group B7. Convoy Escort Commander demonstrates how Allied commanders searched for new methods to repel U-boat assaults, including using direction-finding radio and radar, employing special tactical formations, coordinating with air cover, and endeavoring to keep the convoy together and prevent straggling.

At the onset of the American Revolution, the British expected to quell the rebellion quickly with a show of overwhelming force. In an experiment in asymmetric warfare, David Bushnell created the first submarine vessel designed specifically “for the destruction of vessels of war”. In Turtle, the authors provide new insight into Bushnell’s “engine of devastation”, tracing the history of undersea warfare before Bushnell and the origin of the many innovations Bushnell understood would be necessary for conducting a covert submarine attack.

Author Jeff Spevak was confronted with a dilemma: How do you tell the story of a man who can’t bring himself to talk about the most epic moment of his life? A clever fellow who’d scrapped to survive in a fashion that seems quaint today, Coleman tested himself as a teenager by swimming across lakes, building homes from foraged lumber, and running a navy carpentry shop as though he were a member of the scamming crew of McHale’s Navy. He was a self-taught sailor who’d become a legend on Lake Ontario. At age 96, Ernie was still sailing.

Dr. Jordan B. Smith, Jr. became the first African-American to become the Color Company Commander at the United States Naval Academy (Annapolis or USNA) in 1976. The Class of 1976 African Americans set the pathway for changes, by demonstrating that Blacks and other minorities had earned the right to be in Annapolis. The incidents and events are authentic. This audiobook is about one of the Black men who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1976.

For over three and a half years, from 1779 to 1783, the tiny territory of Gibraltar was besieged and blockaded, on land and at sea, by the overwhelming forces of Spain and France. It became the longest siege in British history, and the obsession with saving Gibraltar was blamed for the loss of the American colonies in the War of Independence. Located between the Mediterranean and Atlantic, on the very edge of Europe, Gibraltar was a place of varied nationalities, languages, religions and social classes.

January 1972: the tiny outpost of British Honduras is threatened with imminent invasion by battle-hardened, US-trained Guatemalan paratroopers. Britain's response must be immediate and decisive. But there is only one deterrent the government can offer: HMS Ark Royal, once the navy's most powerful warship, now a white elephant on the verge of being scrapped. To save the small colony, she must launch a pair of Buccaneer fighter bombers on an unprecedented long-range mission. But first the old carrier must make a high-speed 1,500-mile dash across the Atlantic.

On August 14, 1945, Alfred Eisenstaedt took a picture of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square, minutes after they heard of Japan's surrender to the United States. Two weeks later LIFE magazine published that image. It became one of the most famous WWII photographs in history (and the most celebrated photograph ever published in the world's dominant photo-journal), a cherished reminder of what it felt like for the war to finally be over.

Women have bravely served in the US Navy for nearly a century, but they have been allowed to serve in combat roles for only the last 25 years. When the combat exclusion law was lifted in 1993, women in the navy soon had a new range of opportunities available to them. The repeal of the law finally gave women the chance to serve on combatant ships for the first time. Among the first women to step onto these warships as a new crewmember was Joanna Sprtel Walters.

As the war in Iraq continues, the idea of being a soldier in wartime is of interest to many Americans. Why Marines Fight by James Brady is a ruthlessly candid book told in the words of U.S. Marines themselves, who answer provocative questions about what drives them to fight so competently and ferociously.

Delivering Destruction is the first detailed study of American triphibious (land, sea, and air) firepower coordination in the Pacific War. In describing the Amphibious Corps' development of fire coordination teams and tactics in the Central Pacific, Hemler underlines the importance of wartime adaptation, battlefield coordination, and the primacy of the human element in naval combat.

With all the immediacy of an eyewitness account, Anthony Pitch recounts the dramatic story of the British invasion of Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1814. The British torched the Capitol, the White House, and other buildings, setting off an inferno that illuminated the countryside for miles around and sent President James Madison galloping out of town. The author's gripping account also describes the valiant defense of nearby Fort McHenry and the story of the writing of The Star Spangled Banner.

By mid-1942 the Allies were losing the Mediterranean war: Malta was isolated and its civilian population faced starvation. In June 1942 the British Royal Navy made a stupendous effort to break the Axis stranglehold. The British dispatched armed convoys from Gibraltar and Egypt toward Malta. In a complex battle lasting more than a week, Italian and German forces defeated Operation Vigorous, the larger eastern effort, and ravaged the western convoy, Operation Harpoon, in a series of air, submarine, and surface attacks culminating in the Battle of Pantelleria.