A Friendly Voice on Many a Dark Night by Larry Bennett Portishead Radio was the world’s largest long-range maritime radio communications station. Originally located at a site in Devizes, Wiltshire in 1920, the transmitters were relocated to Portishead, near Bristol, shortly after the receiving station was moved to Highbridge, Somerset during the 1920s. The station, originally operated by the British...

The Memoires of a Young Man Who Wanted to See the World and Get Paid For it by Philip Braithwaite The author of this wonderful, wellwritten book was born in Warrington in 1944. He served an electrical engineering apprenticeship with the world-renowned Metropolitan Vickers Co Ltd in Trafford Park. He then served four years in the British Merchant Navy, as...

Tales of Wells Harbour by Robert Smith MBE, Wells Harbour Master The stories Robert Smith tells in this landmark book capture the soul of Wellsnext- the-Sea on the North Norfolk coast. As long- serving Harbour Master and former lifeboatman, Robert reveals the characters and events that have shaped the history and spirit of this historic coastal town. The book also...

Shipbuilders and Engineers of Sunderland by Patricia Richardson This book recounts the full story of these famous shipbuilders and mariner engineers on the River Wear. William Doxford built his first wooden ship in 1837 and moved to Pallion 20 years later. He bought his four sons into partnership and diversified into marine engineering. With the innovative ‘Turret Ship’, the business...

Sinking and Cover-up - June 1940 by Stephen Wynn The story behind the sinking of the Lancastria comes in two parts: the sinking of the ship itself and the people who died, and the aftermath which led to allegations of a government cover up ordered by Winston Churchill. There is an officially accepted list of those who died, but allegations...

by Bernard McCall The shipyard of J J Sietas is arguably one of the best-known in northern Europe. It was founded in 1635 and from its inception, the company was continuously owned by the founding family. From the mid- 1950s a decision was made to classify the vessels according to types. A numerical scheme began with Karin in 1958. This...

The Kriegsmarine’s WWII Submarine Strike Force by Jak P Mallmann Showell The success of German submarines during the First World War in almost cutting off Britain’s vital imports had not been forgotten by Adolf Hitler and when, in March 1935, he repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, Britain, magnanimously, signed up to an Anglo-German Naval Agreement. This allowed the Germans to...

Halsewell-A Shipwreck that Gripped the Nation by Andrew Norman The loss of East Indiaman HCS Halsewell on the coast of Dorset in southern England in January 1786, touched the very heart of the British nation. Halsewell was just one of many hundreds of vessels which had been in the service of the Honourable East India Company since its foundation in...

by Philip Weir During 1940, the German army swept with devastating speed across the Low Countries and into northern France and drove Allied forces back into a small pocket around Dunkirk. Without a swift withdrawal across the English Channel, the latter faced certain death or capture. The evacuation plan - Operation Dynamo - initially calculated that 45,000 men might be...

Lives Shaped by the Waves by Vyvyen Brendon Children at sea faced even more drastic separations from loved ones than those sent ‘home’ from India or those packed off to English boarding schools at the age of seven, the subjects of Vyvyen Brendon’s previous books. Captured slaves, child migrants and transported convicts faced an ocean passage leading nearly always to...

by Peter Marsden The raising of the Mary Rose in 1982 was a remarkable feat of archaeology and her subsequent preservation and display at Portsmouth a triumph of technical skill and imagination. She is more than a relic, however. She has a story to tell, and her sinking in the Solent in 1545, when under attack by the French, and...

How an icon was made in London by Graham Taylor Published on the quatercentenary of the Mayflower’s journey, this book offers a unique perspective by placing the story in a British context and providing a fresh analysis of why the journey took place. It explores the economic as well as the religious reasons for the journey to strip away the...

The Evolutionary Role of the Snorkel in Donitz’s U-Boat Fleet 1944-1945 During the last year of World War II, the once surface-bound diesel-electric U-boat ushered in the age of total undersea war with the introduction of an air mast, or ‘snorkel’ as it became known among the men who served in Donitz’s submarine fleet. U-boats no longer needed to surface...

A History of Luftwaffe Maritime Operations by Lawrence Paterson The arduous development of a dedicated naval air arm for Germany’s resurgent military was fraught with the kind of fierce interservice rivalry that was rife throughout the turbulent history of the Third Reich. However, almost despite the odds, a small dedicated maritime strike force was assembled, germinating during the Spanish Civil...

The Recollections of Admiral S N Timiryov by Stephen C Ellis The translation of these memoirs brings an important and authoritative historical source to those interested in Russian or naval history who are unable to access them in the original Russian. Their author, Rear Admiral S N Timiryov, was well placed to make observations on the character of many of...

The Royal Navy and the Fight to Save Estonia and Latvia, 1918-1920 by Steve Dunn Though, for most participants, the First World War ended on 11 November 1918, the Royal Navy found itself, despite four years of slaughter and war weariness, fighting a fierce and brutal battle in the Baltic Sea against Bolshevik Russia in an attempt to protect the...

by James C Hamilton Two hundred and fifty years ago Captain James Cook, during his extraordinary voyages of navigation and maritime exploration, searched for Antarctica. During parts of his three voyages in the southern Pacific and Southern Oceans, Cook narrowed the options for the location of Antarctica. Over three summers, he completed a circumnavigation of portions of the Southern Continent,...

Extraordinary Stories of Courage and Compassion at Sea Compiled by the RNLI In this collection of heart-wrenching and life-affirming missions, we hear blow-by-blow descriptions of some of the most dramatic rescues from the last twenty years. We experience these through the eyes of the lifesavers as they must make life-or-death decisions, face fierce conditions and tackle difficult and dangerous situations....

A Reconstruction of the Most Powerful Warship of Its Day by John McKay Sovereign of the Seas was the most spectacular, extravagant and controversial warship of the early seventeenth century. The ultimate royal prestige project, whose armament was increased by the King’s decree to the unheardof figure of one hundred guns, the ship finally cost the equivalent of ten more...

by Ian Tew Aged just seven, author, Ian Tew, had learnt to sail and by his eighth birthday, he became the owner of a yellow sailing dinghy named Titwillow. It marked the beginning of what was to be a life at sea. After attending the Pangbourne Nautical College, which was an ominous experience, Ian left his seafaring family to join...

by John Bevan Lionel Kenneth Phillip Crabb, OBE, GM, known as ‘Buster Crabb’ was a British Royal Navy frogman and MI6 diver who vanished during a reconnaissance mission around a Soviet cruiser berthed at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1956. An official cover-up soon ensued and a plethora of conspiracy theories to what happened to Commander Crabb were born. This book is...