The Channel Fleet and the Blockade of Brest 1793–1801

The Channel Fleet and the Blockade of Brest 1793–1801 PDF Author: Roger Morriss
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000340791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 714

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Book Description
During the French Revolutionary War the Channel Fleet played the crucial role of defending Britain from invasion, protecting Britain’s incoming and outgoing trade through the Channel and Western Approaches, and preventing the French Brest fleet from setting forth on raids and expeditions. Presenting documents revealing the evolution of this role during the war, this book focuses on the blockade of Brest. It shows how the blockade developed and tightened through the increase of Admiralty control of the disposition of the Channel Fleet. It reveals the political conflicts that existed between the Commanders-in-Chief and the Admiralty, the logistical demands that had to be met, and the response of the Admiralty and fleet officers to the Spithead Mutiny. Above all, it reveals the response of the Fleet to the challenges it met from the French in their sequence of break-outs, and from the perennial problem posed by the necessity to preserve the health of seamen. Here, confuting the claims of contemporary medical officers, is evidence that shows how scurvy remained a scourge to the very end of the war.

The Channel Fleet and the Blockade of Brest 1793–1801

The Channel Fleet and the Blockade of Brest 1793–1801 PDF Author: Roger Morriss
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000340791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 714

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Book Description
During the French Revolutionary War the Channel Fleet played the crucial role of defending Britain from invasion, protecting Britain’s incoming and outgoing trade through the Channel and Western Approaches, and preventing the French Brest fleet from setting forth on raids and expeditions. Presenting documents revealing the evolution of this role during the war, this book focuses on the blockade of Brest. It shows how the blockade developed and tightened through the increase of Admiralty control of the disposition of the Channel Fleet. It reveals the political conflicts that existed between the Commanders-in-Chief and the Admiralty, the logistical demands that had to be met, and the response of the Admiralty and fleet officers to the Spithead Mutiny. Above all, it reveals the response of the Fleet to the challenges it met from the French in their sequence of break-outs, and from the perennial problem posed by the necessity to preserve the health of seamen. Here, confuting the claims of contemporary medical officers, is evidence that shows how scurvy remained a scourge to the very end of the war.

The Channel Fleet and the Blockade of Brest, 1793-1801

The Channel Fleet and the Blockade of Brest, 1793-1801 PDF Author: Roger Morriss
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 730

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Book Description
Presenting documents revealing the evolution of this role during the war, this book focuses on the blockade of Brest. It shows how the blockade developed and tightened through the increase of Admiralty control of the disposition of the Channel Fleet.

Sustaining the Fleet, 1793-1815

Sustaining the Fleet, 1793-1815 PDF Author: Roger Knight
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843835649
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
An assessment of the work of the contractors who were commissioned by the Victualling Board to provision the fleet in this period. Provisioning the fleet, and the army overseas, during the French Wars of 1793-1815 was a major undertaking. This book explains how the Victualling Board in London handled this enormous task, focusing in particular on contractors -that is the merchants and brokers, who provided a vast range of commodities including flour and biscuit, salt beef and pork, as well as huge quantities of fresh water and coal, and every other item needed. It shows how these merchants could be large or small concerns, and provides detailed case studies of different kinds of contractors, including examples of contractors based both in Britain and in the navy's overseas bases. The book demonstrates how, overall, the contracting system represented the mobilisation of a substantial part of the British economy for war; how the performance of contracting was effective, with little or no corruption; and how the contractors took considerable financial risks and made only reasonable margins. It assesses the performance of the Victualling Board, arguing that this was good, and that the problem in the major area of weakness - accounting - was quickly addressed following a major crisis in 1808-09. It concludes that this was "an impressive performance" by the state, but that the overwhelming advantage was the resilience of the market, and that it was "upon the success of the contractors that the war at sea was won." For most of his career, ROGER KNIGHT was on the staff of the National Maritime Museum, leaving as Deputy Director in 2000. Since then he has taught at the Greenwich Maritime Institute at the University of Greenwich, where he is currently Visiting Professor of Naval History. MARTIN WILCOX completed a doctorate in maritime history at the University of Hull, and has been employed as postdoctoral research fellow at Greenwich Maritime Institute since 2006.

The Channel

The Channel PDF Author: Renaud Morieux
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316489736
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
Rather than a natural frontier between natural enemies, this book approaches the English Channel as a shared space, which mediated the multiple relations between France and England in the long eighteenth century, in both a metaphorical and a material sense. Instead of arguing that Britain's insularity kept it spatially and intellectually segregated from the Continent, Renaud Morieux focuses on the Channel as a zone of contact. The 'narrow sea' was a shifting frontier between states and a space of exchange between populations. This richly textured history shows how the maritime border was imagined by cartographers and legal theorists, delimited by state administrators and transgressed by migrants. It approaches French and English fishermen, smugglers and merchants as transnational actors, whose everyday practices were entangled. The variation of scales of analysis enriches theoretical and empirical understandings of Anglo-French relations, and reassesses the question of Britain's deep historical connections with Europe.

The Navy of Edward VI and Mary I

The Navy of Edward VI and Mary I PDF Author: Dr C S Knighton
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409482405
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 698

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Book Description
The reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, and the early years of Elizabeth I were vital times for naval administration and witnessed the apprenticeship of many who would lead the service later during Elizabeth's reign. This volume includes the extant Treasurer's and Victualler's accounts, with entries from the State Papers which augment the calendar summaries previously published. Documents are also printed for the first time from a variety of archives in Britain and abroad.

The Naval Miscellany

The Naval Miscellany PDF Author: Brian Vale
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351730827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Brian Vale is a naval historian with degrees from Keele and King’s College London. A life-long member of the Society for Nautical Research and the Navy Records Society, he has long specialised in Anglo-South American maritime history. His books include Independence or Death! British sailors and Brazilian Independence, A Frigate of King George, The Audacious Admiral Cochrane and Cochrane in the Pacific: Fortune and Freedom in Spanish America.

Commander: The Life and Exploits of Britain's Greatest Frigate Captain

Commander: The Life and Exploits of Britain's Greatest Frigate Captain PDF Author: Stephen Taylor
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393089673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
"Nobody describes a naval battle better than Taylor…a flawless demonstration of the biographer’s craft." —Jan Morris, The Guardian Edward Pellew, captain of the legendary Indefatigable, was quite simply the greatest British frigate captain in the age of sail. Left fatherless at age eight, with a penniless mother and five siblings, Pellew fought his way from the very bottom of the navy to fleet command. Victories and eye-catching feats won him a public following. Yet he had a gift for antagonizing his better-born peers, and he made powerful enemies. Redemption came with his last command, when he set off to do battle with the Barbary States and free thousands of European slaves. Opinion held this to be an impossible mission, and Pellew himself, leading from the front in the style of his contemporary Nelson, did not expect to survive. Pellew’s humanity, fondness for subordinates, and blind love for his family, and the warmth and intimacy of his letters, make him a hugely engaging figure. Stephen Taylor gives him at last the biography he deserves.

The Command of the Ocean

The Command of the Ocean PDF Author: N. A. M. Rodger
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393060508
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1022

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Book Description
"N. A. M. Rodger provides reassessments of such famous figures as Pepys, Hawke, Howe, and St. Vincent. The particular and distinct qualities of Nelson and Collingwood are contrasted, and the world of the officers and men who made up the originals of Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower is brought to life. Rodger's comparative view of other navies - French, Dutch, Spanish, and American - allows him to make a fresh assessment of the qualities of the British."--BOOK JACKET.

The Naval Mutinies of 1798

The Naval Mutinies of 1798 PDF Author: Philip MacDougall
Publisher: Pen and Sword Maritime
ISBN: 139904463X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
For Ireland, the year 1798 saw a major rebellion breaking out against rule from London, a time in which Britain was in its fifth year of a hard-fought war against revolutionary France. Set in motion by the Society of United Irishmen, an underground organization with links to Paris, the rebellion was eventually crushed by an overwhelming force of arms. In this new, dramatic account, Philip MacDougall shines a light on a little covered aspect of this history: the United Irish plot to capture a number of British warships and the planned use of those vessels in support of the rebellion that broke out in 1798. The means by which those ships were to be taken, not by direct external attack but by mutinous intrigue directed from on board, is fully explored. While ships blockading the French port of Brest returned to re-victual in Cawsand Bay, with many of the officers on shore leave, it was an ideal time for the plotting of mutinies. United Irishman alongside English and Scottish republicans could safely mix with those on other ships to develop a unified strategy. This book offers a micro study of how the planned mutiny plot developed and was co-ordinated. Personalities, cliques and idealists are seen as taking leading roles, with attention given to the motivating issues that lay behind those risk takers who knew that failure would result in likely hanging from the yardarm. Based on research from the National Archives, contemporary newspaper reports and the detailed hand written minutes of the courts martial held upon those identified as rebel leaders and some of their supporters (containing the actual words of the people of the lower deck) this is a full and balanced account of the plot which, if successful, would have re-written history.

Feeding Nelson's Navy

Feeding Nelson's Navy PDF Author: Janet Macdonald
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 147383516X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
The author of How to Cook from A-Z disproves the myth of British navy culinary misconduct in “a work of serious history that is a delight to read” (British Food in America). This celebration of the Georgian sailor’s diet reveals how the navy’s administrators fed a fleet of more than 150,000 men, in ships that were often at sea for months on end and that had no recourse to either refrigeration or canning. Contrary to the prevailing image of rotten meat and weevily biscuits, their diet was a surprisingly hearty mixture of beer, brandy, salt beef and pork, peas, butter, cheese, hard biscuit, and the exotic sounding lobscouse, not to mention the Malaga raisins, oranges, lemons, figs, dates, and pumpkins which were available to ships on far-distant stations. In fact, by 1800 the British fleet had largely eradicated scurvy and other dietary disorders. While this scholarly work contains much of value to the historian, the author’s popular touch makes this an enthralling story for anyone with an interest in life at sea in the age of sail. “Overall this is an excellent examination of this crucial aspect of British naval power, and I’m certainly going to try out some of the recipes.” —HistoryOfWar.org