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Author: Bill Clements
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1526740311
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
A study of how the Royal Navy defended the British Empire’s far-flung bases, from Bermuda to Hong Kong and beyond. Includes maps and photos. During the nineteenth century, the Royal Navy played a key role in defending the expanding British Empire. As sail gave way to steam power, there was a pressing requirement for coaling stations and dock facilities across the world’s oceans. These strategic bases needed fixed defenses. In Britain’s Island Fortresses, historian Bill Clements describes in detail, with the aid of historic photographs, maps and plans, the defenses of the most important islands, Bermuda, Ceylon, Hong Kong, Jamaica and Singapore, and a number of lesser ones including Antigua, Ascension, Mauritius, St. Helena, and St. Lucia. He describes how the defenses were modified over the years in order to meet the changing strategic needs of the Empire, and the technological changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Only three of these bases had to defend themselves in war—Hong Kong, Singapore and Ceylon—and the author relates the battles for these bases. This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the maritime history of the British Empire.
Author: Bill Clements
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1526740311
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Get Book Here
Book Description
A study of how the Royal Navy defended the British Empire’s far-flung bases, from Bermuda to Hong Kong and beyond. Includes maps and photos. During the nineteenth century, the Royal Navy played a key role in defending the expanding British Empire. As sail gave way to steam power, there was a pressing requirement for coaling stations and dock facilities across the world’s oceans. These strategic bases needed fixed defenses. In Britain’s Island Fortresses, historian Bill Clements describes in detail, with the aid of historic photographs, maps and plans, the defenses of the most important islands, Bermuda, Ceylon, Hong Kong, Jamaica and Singapore, and a number of lesser ones including Antigua, Ascension, Mauritius, St. Helena, and St. Lucia. He describes how the defenses were modified over the years in order to meet the changing strategic needs of the Empire, and the technological changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Only three of these bases had to defend themselves in war—Hong Kong, Singapore and Ceylon—and the author relates the battles for these bases. This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the maritime history of the British Empire.
Author: Christopher R. DeCorse
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813056753
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This book is about the diverse communities associated with English and British forts of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It casts new light on forts and their communities by asking new questions and applying innovative methodological approaches.
Author: Christopher R. DeCorse
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813052238
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331
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Book Description
While the military features of historic forts usually receive the most attention from researchers, this volume focuses instead on the people who met and interacted in these sites. Contributors to British Forts and Their Communities look beyond the defensive architecture, physical landscapes, and armed conflicts to explore the complex social diversity that arose in the outposts of the British Empire. The forts investigated here operated at the empire's peak in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, protecting British colonial settlements and trading enclaves scattered across the globe. Locations in this volume include New York State, Michigan, the St. Lawrence River, and Vancouver, as well as sites in the Caribbean and in Africa. Using archaeological and archival evidence, these case studies show how forts brought together people of many different origins, ethnicities, identities, and social roles, from European soldiers to indigenous traders to African slaves. Characterized by shifting networks of people, commodities, and ideas, these fort populations were microcosms of the emerging modern world. This volume reveals how important it is to move past the conventional emphasis on the armed might of the colonizer in order to better understand the messy, entangled nature of British colonialism and the new era it helped usher in. Contributors: Zachary J.M. Beier | Flordeliz T. Bugarin | Robert Cromwell | Christopher R. DeCorse | Liza Gijanto | Guido Pezzarossi | Douglas Pippin | Amy Roache-Fedchenko | Gerald F. Schroedl | David R. Starbuck | Douglas C. Wilson
Author: Great Britain. Hydrographic Department
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Pilot guides
Languages : en
Pages : 536
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Book Description
Author: Peter Jacobs
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473882559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
The introduction of Italy into the Second World War on 10 June 1940 signalled the start of the siege of Malta, and for the next two and a half years the Axis powers did all they could to batter the small island into submission. Maltas defences were initially verging on non-existent but the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, could not give up on the island. Laying at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, where the supply route between Italy and the Axis armies in Libya crossed the Allied sea route between Gibraltar and Alexandria, almost exactly at its mid-point, Malta was strategically too important and held the key to the door of the desert war being fought in North Africa.If Malta could be held then it would allow British forces to maintain an offensive capability in the Mediterranean and prevent Axis supplies from reaching North Africa. But everything needed to fight a campaign people, food, fuel, ammunition, medical stores, aircraft and spares would have to be delivered to Malta in sufficient numbers and on a regular basis. It would take a monumental air and maritime effort just to survive, let alone hit back, and to manage both would require those in command to carefully balance Maltas precious and limited resources. Otherwise, it meant surrender and who knows what the outcome of the Second World War might have been had the island fallen. Here, the accomplished military author Peter Jacobs tells the extraordinary story of the heroic defence and re-supply of the Fortress Island of Malta during the longest siege in British history.Links End Links Author
Author: Mark Bowden
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1835539920
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
England’s Military Heritage from the Air presents the story of the country’s rich military heritage using photographs from the Aerofilms Collection. Covering over 6,000 years, it reflects the changing threats faced by England from enemies without, and conflicts within. The book covers everything from hillforts to aircraft carriers and includes the castles, battle sites, ships and aircraft that have witnessed the changing character of warfare. Ending with how victory and sacrifice are commemorated and remembered, England’s Military Heritage from the Air is a tribute to the courage, skill and endurance of the people who have suffered yet prevailed.
Author: Marie Williams
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1467152064
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
From the outbreak of the Revolutionary War to the summer of 1777, Loyalists and Patriot forces wove their way through the mountains and valleys of the Adirondacks, vying for land and control of the key waterways of the Hudson River, Lake Champlain, the St. Lawrence River and the New York Harbor. The majority of New Yorkers, particularly those who occupied the Adirondack Mountain Region and other wilderness frontier regions, were either Loyalist or neutral throughout the war. Their stories, motivations and actions are often overlooked out of a false impression that most colonists were unifed in favor of American independence. Author Marie Williams recounts the harrowing efforts, battlefield endeavours and conflicted hearts and minds of the forgotten British and Loyalists during the revolutionary era in the Adirondacks.
Author: Michael J. Lyons
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131550944X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
Highly regarded for its concise clarification of the complexities of World War II, this book illuminates the origins, course, and long-range effects of the war. It provides a balanced account that analyzes both the European and Pacific theaters of operations and the connections between them. The Fifth Edition incorporates new material based on the latest scholarship, offering updated conclusions on key topics and expanded coverage throughout.
Author: Jean-Denis G.G. Lepage
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476647917
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
This book details British fortifications used from the Tudor period beginning in 1485 through the end of World War II in 1945. With the advent of firearms, the Tudor period indeed opened a new chapter in the histories of Britain, fortification and warfare. By 1500 AD, Britain and Europe at large entered a new phase, marked by the foundation of colonial empires and a broadened sphere of influence and rule. During the following centuries, British sailors, ruthless adventurers, fighting men, and greedy merchants laid foundations to fortify the most widespread and most prosperous colonial Empire the world had ever seen. This text focuses on British coastal fortifications and on combinations of fortresses used for more general strategic purposes. Featured structures have protected points of vital importance, such as capital cities, military depots, ports, harbors and dockyards at essential locations in Britain and throughout the British Empire.
Author: John Grehan
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 1399084232
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
Incredible as it may seem today, detailed plans were drawn up to recapture the Channel Islands, the most heavily fortified of all the German-occupied territories, regardless of the potentially ‘severe’ loss of life and the widespread destruction to the property of the British citizens. Under the codenames Constellation, Condor, Concertina, and Coverlet, the islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney were to be attacked in 1943. The operation against Alderney would be preceded by a bombardment by between 500 and 600 medium/light bombers and an astonishing forty to fifty squadrons of fighters. The official papers which have now become available state that: ‘The islands cannot be taken without causing some civilian casualties. In the case of Alderney, it is thought that the air bombardment will have to be on such a scale that all personnel on the island will have to become casualties.’ A similar number of aircraft would attack Guernsey while, for the assault upon Jersey, thirty-one squadrons of heavy bombers and strike aircraft would bombard the island’s east and west coasts. This would be followed, on D-Day, by parachute and infantry landings and then a commando assault in the south-west. On Day 2 of the operation the first of the tanks were to land, with more armor and infantry to follow on subsequent days. As the German garrison of the Channel Islands was some 40,000 strong, the islands would be turned into an enormous battlefield, and a vast killing ground. The consequences for the Islanders were almost too horrendous to imagine and the political fallout beyond calculation if the operations failed in their objectives after the devastation and loss of British lives that the fighting had caused. Despite all this, it was thought that such operations would become the ‘second front’ so persistently demanded by Stalin to draw German troops from the Eastern Front and might also help the Allied forces which were about to invade Italy – Operation Husky – from North Africa. Equally, the Channel Islands would be the ideal base for the D-Day invasion of France scheduled for 1944. There was much then in favor of mounting the operations against the Channel Islands regardless of the fact that it meant the death of untold British citizens at the hands of British troops and the Allied air forces. The Allied Assault Upon Hitler's Channel Island Fortress is, therefore, the first detailed analysis of what would have been the most controversial operation ever undertaken by the British and American armed forces.
