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CORRESPONDENCEColin Jones a , Sir Robin Knox-Johnston b , H. Hignett c , John H.Harland d , Graham Rhys-Jones e , John V. Bartlett f , Dr D. C.McWhannell g & Barrington Rosier ha 14 Henderson Street, South Melbourne , Victoria , 3205 ,Australiab St Francis Cottage Torbryan Newton Abbot, Devon , TQ12 5URc 15 Sherborne Road Wallasey, Merseyside , CH44 2EYd 448 Avery Road, Kelowna , BC , V1W 4H8 , Canadae Magnolia House , Charminster Dorchester, Dorset , DT2 9QPf 6 Cottenham Park Road, London , SW20 0RZg 8 Seaforth Road, Dundee , DD5 1QHh Allhays Porthallow Looe, Cornwall , PL13 2JBPublished online: 22 Mar 2013.

To cite this article: Colin Jones , Sir Robin Knox-Johnston , H. Hignett , John H. Harland , GrahamRhys-Jones , John V. Bartlett , Dr D. C. McWhannell & Barrington Rosier (2004) CORRESPONDENCE,The Mariner's Mirror, 90:1, 105-112, DOI: 10.1080/00253359.2004.10656890

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2004.10656890

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13 Farmer and Henley, Slang and its Ana-logues. Also Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang.

14 Ibid.15 Lloyd, Health of Seamen, 266.16 ‘A Portsmouth Slop Seller’s Sign 1790’,

in W. H. Long (ed.), Naval Yarns (1899, repr.1973), 156.

17 ‘Lace’ could also refer to the braid thatsailors used for stitching over the seams on theirjackets. See OED..

18 C. T. Onions, A Shakespeare Glossary(1911). Also Lexicon Balatronicum (1811). Repr.of Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of theVulgar Tongue (1785).

19 Smyth, Sailor’s Word Book.20 Cited in John Winton, Hurrah for the

Life of a Sailor (1977), 24.21 Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of the Un-

derworld (1950, repr. 1989), see ‘lage of duds’.Also W. W. Skeat, A Glossary of Tudor and StuartWords (1914, repr. Hildesheim, 1968).

22 Michael Roe (ed.), The Journal and Let-ters of Captain Charles Bishop…1797 (Hak. Soc.,1967), 270.

T. M. CONWAYRowlands Gill, Tyne & Wear

10 (2003) HORSE LATITUDES The horse lati-tudes are restricted to the North and South At-lantic, so Jeremy Franks’ suggestion hardly helps

to explain the term. It has been aired in MMonly twice in 61 years (vol. 28 no. 3, 253 andvol. 73 no. 3, 321) and still lacks a satisfactorydefinition. The present writer suggests that itmight have arisen from the French term hors de(outside of, apart from), possibly appearing onold French maps before 1777, which is the dateof the earliest citation in the Oxford English Dic-tionary.

CHARLES DAWSONSundbyberg

12 (2003) BARBOZETTES A clue to the natureof the ‘barbozettes’ recovered from the Maria maylie in the presence of cudbear, a dying agent, inthe cargo. Middle French had a term for tawing,the tanning process in which mineral agents suchas alum and salt are used in place of vegetable ex-tracts, based on the verb barboter, one of whosemeanings was to plunge repeatedly into water.The term for a tawery was barbaude and for onewho worked there barbaudier. No relatedFrench name for the end product of tawing hasbeen recorded but it was called ‘alum’, ‘white’or ‘Hungarian’ leather in English. Barbozettes,clearly a diminutive form, may have been smallsemi-finished pieces of pliant leather.

WILLIAM SAYERSWillard, New York

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From Colin Jones:

A note on longitude

Although the introduction of the marine chro-nometer from the 1760s made things a great dealeasier for navigators, the difficulties that remainedmay be illustrated by the voyage of CommanderBellingshausen and Lieutenant Lazarev of theRussian navy from 1819 to 1821. They had threeEnglish chronometers: a large Arnold, No. 518,a small Arnold, No. 2110 and a Barraud, No. 922.When Bellingshausen had sailed with Krusensternin 1803–6 they also had three chronometers, ofwhich the small Arnold, No. 1856, broke atPetropavlovsk and was not repaired until theyreached Macau. For a voyage of exploration, the

back-ups were necessary, as was the checking oftheir performance on a regular basis.

After the voyage from Portsmouth to Riode Janeiro, Bellingshausen found that the largeArnold gained 6.748 seconds a day, the smallArnold gained 2.514 seconds a day and theBarraud lost 7.487 seconds a day. The chronom-eters did not pass so well through the shakingthey received in the Antarctic, and on arrival inSydney the large Arnold was gaining 5 minutes10 seconds a day and the small, 6 minutes 8 sec-onds, while the Barraud lost 10 minutes 31 sec-onds a day, all of which might be taken as quiteunacceptable. Returning to Sydney from a cruisein the south seas, the large Arnold was gaining19.36 seconds a day and the small, 12.0 seconds

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a day, while the Barraud lost 15.16 seconds aday.

In the absence of an official observatory inSydney to establish exact longitude, the Russiansset themselves up on ‘the cape directly oppositeSydney Bay’, the present Milsons Point, whoselongitude is now accepted as 151 degrees 12 min-utes 47 seconds east. Lunars were taken by sex-tants, two manufactured by Dollond, one byTroughton and one by Burge. Three hundredand seventy were taken on the first visit to Syd-ney and 1,609 on the second, but they were veryfar from providing the accuracy that such num-bers might imply. Longitude on the first visitwas averaged as 151 degrees 19 minutes 14 sec-onds and on the second, 151 degrees 13 minutes38 seconds. The calculations provided variationsbetween individuals of 6 minutes 34 seconds forthe first group and as much as 21 minutes 14seconds on the second. This latter variation isequivalent to 20 miles at this latitude, perhapscritical at sea and not a good advertisement forthe utility of the lunar method.

The problem would eventually be solvedby the establishment of a worldwide system ofofficial observatories on whose longitude andtime navigators could rely, but in the 1820s thiswas not yet the case and navigators had still toexercise a very prudent caution.

14 Henderson StreetSouth MelbourneVictoria 3205, Australia

From Sir Robin Knox-Johnston:

Image and reality in eighteenth-centurynaval tactics

N. A. M. Rodger’s fascinating article (MM, vol.89 no. 3, 280–96) mentioned the difficulty of us-ing boats to convey signals when a fleet wasunderway prior to the introduction of moderndisengaging gear for the fall blocks. These werecertainly in use in the Royal Navy when I joinedmy first RN ship in 1956, but were not at all com-mon in the Merchant Navy which I subsequentlyjoined. The emergency boat, usually the motorlifeboat, had a large oval ring at the bottom ofthe fall block which was put over a lifting hookin the boat. If the boat had to be launched whenthe vessel was still underway the practice was to

keep paying out on the falls until the weight ofthe boat was transferred to the boat rope, al-ways rigged and led well forward. Then, at riskto fingers, the after block was unhooked first,for obvious reasons, and then the forward one,the boat shearing away from the ship’s side assoon as this had been completed to get clear ofthe swinging blocks and risk of damage fromcollision. Launching the boat was always diffi-cult; recovering the boat in any seaway was al-ways hazardous. The ring, forward one first, hadto be held in place on the boat’s lifting hook untilthe after one had been secured and the weight ofthe boat taken fully on the falls and clear of thewaves. In the meantime the boat was rising andfalling with the sea and the heavy steel blockwas one moment taking the weight of the boatand the next collapsing down on an unwary handas the boat pitched on the waves. Nothing hadreally changed in two centuries except the blockswere steel and the falls wire!

St Francis CottageTorbryanNewton AbbotDevon TQ12 5UR

From H. Hignett:

Trinity House pilotage and the1808 Pilotage Act

Pilotage is a very complex subject, about which anumber of books and articles have been written,but Dr Tran (MM, vol. 89 no. 1, 31–50) has lim-ited his study to material in the Guildhall Librarythat seems to be mainly dedicated to ThamesRiver pilotage. He has, however, extended hiscomments to encompass other pilotage districtsand indeed the UK pilotage as a whole. The Pi-lotage Act of 1808 was followed by others in 1812,1824 and 1836. The Merchant Shipping Acts of1854 and 1894 amended these – and in betweenthere have been several amendments too. The1808 act was a temporary measure allowing pi-lotage in other districts to be established underfirm legislation. This has raised concern amongpilots about Dr Tran’s inferences, conclusionsand remarks.

15 Sherborne RoadWallaseyMerseyside CH44 2EY

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From John H. Harland:

Admiral Sir William May RN

Dr Mary Jones’s recent article about AdmiralWilliam May RN (MM, vol. 89 no. 3, 310–24)refers to his family’s Dutch origins. His ances-tors were the last in a series of naval constructors,known to Dutch naval historians as ‘The EnglishShipbuilders’, who worked in the Netherlandsfrom 1727 until 1785. The names include CharlesBentham, Francis White, Thomas Davis, WilliamBentham, and ultimately John and William May.On page 116, Dr Jones refers to the key articleon this topic written in 1972 by Professor JaapBruijn. Its title translates as ‘English Shipbuild-ers at the Admiralty Shipyard at Amsterdam inthe Eighteenth Century: Some Aspects’. Thereare further references to John and William Mayin a more recent publication authored by A. J.Hoving and A. A. Lemmers, In Tekeninggebracht: De achtiende-eeuwse scheepbouwers enhun ontwerpmethoden (roughly, Rendered indraught: The eighteenth-century shipbuilders andtheir design methods) (De Bataafsche Leeuw,Amsterdam, 2001). Despite the very specialised(and very Dutch) content of this book, I think itmerits close attention from those English readersinterested in the history of shipbuilding. It was neverreviewed in MM, but an enthusiastic notice is tobe found in the International Journal of Mari-time History, vol. XIV no. 1 (June 2002), 357–9.

448 Avery RoadKelowna, BCV1W 4H8 Canada

From Graham Rhys-Jones:

German surface ship passive sonar

Your correspondent D. Andrews (Answers, MM,vol. 89 no. 3, 350) thinks that I do less than jus-tice to the capabilities of German passive sonarin my book The Loss of the Bismarck: An Avoid-able Disaster. He is impressed with the perform-ance of the GHG hydrophone array fitted inthe cruiser Prinz Eugen and quotes PaulSchmalen-bach and others to show that it wasthis system which alerted the Fleet Commander,Admiral Lütjens, to the presence of the Hoodand the Prince of Wales.

It would be silly to dismiss Schmalenbach’sevidence out of hand. He was a key witness to

the surface action in the Denmark Strait and latera well-informed commentator on naval affairs.The trouble is that the official reconstructions ofthe action, commissioned by the German NavalStaff and based on the war diaries of the PrinzEugen and the records of the Group Commands,give a different story. These indicate that the firstcredible warning of the enemy’s approach wasprovided by the B-Dienst which, at 05.37 and05.43, intercepted the plain language enemy re-ports transmitted by Admiral Holland’s BattleCruiser Squadron. These radio intercepts are re-corded on the Prinz Eugen’s action plot and ap-pear to be extremely accurate.

What weight should we give to Schmalen-bach’s evidence? While I can find nothing in theofficial record to support the claim that ‘the soundof two fast running turbine ships’ was reportedto the Fleet Commander, it is clear that severalsonar contacts were reported at or about this time.But far from helping to clarify the situation theyseem rather to have resulted in perplexity andconfusion.

The Bismarck war diary as reconstructedby Group West reads as follows:

04:00 Wind NW Force 4, Overcast.04:07 Prinz Eugen reports sonar contact at 285°[a relative bearing, ‘angle of training’ in Germanparlance]. Nothing visible on horizon.05:25 Torpedo contact at 195° [again relative, pre-sumably]. Probably false alarm caused by unitson port side. Ships turn sharply to port to 170°.05:32 Task Force goes back to course 230°.05:37 Surveillance [i.e. radio surveillance] reportsnew unit to port. Assumed light cruiser.05:43 Surveillance reports further unit to port,later identified as Hood.05:47 Alarm. On horizon, port beam, smokethickening rapidly.

The diary then deals with the gun action butafter 10 minutes it continues:

06:03–06:14 Evasion of torpedo tracks first re-ported by sonar. Origin not clear because aircraftpresent. Assumed from Hood at extreme range.Sonar absolutely certain; 2nd and 3rd torpedotracks seen by Captain Prinz Eugen from bridgewing.

At 07.23 there were further torpedo warningsfrom the Prinz Eugen followed by evasive action.

This series of reports says a good deal aboutthe potential of the GHG system. If the Prinz

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Eugen’s contacts were based on the propellercavitation of the British ships – and the balanceof probability would surely point in this direc-tion – it would appear that the system wasachieving detection ranges well in excess of30,000 yards. But the Kriegsmarine was far fromready in the spring of 1941 to exploit this po-tential. The system had never been tested underocean conditions and, as Helmuth Brinkmann(captain of the Prinz Eugen) made clear in hisafter action report, trials in the Baltic had beenunsatisfactory. Results achieved in the DenmarkStrait were wholly unexpected; they were thusdiscounted or misinterpreted by the Germancommand. Their possible significance only be-came clear later.

Since Operation Rheinübung marked the ef-fective end of Admiral Raeder’s attempt to launcha surface ship campaign in the Atlantic, it maywell be that the Kriegsmarine never got muchfurther than this in establishing the capabilitiesand limitations of surface ship passive sonar.

Magnolia HouseCharminsterDorchesterDorset DT2 9QP

From John V. Bartlett:

Steam trawler Viola

On page 336 of MM, vol. 89 no. 3 it is suggestedthat the steam trawler Viola must be the only ves-sel to have seen action in the First World War andthe Falklands War. Such statements inevitablyinvite contradiction.

HM Drifter Golden Chance was sweepingmines in 1915–19, and patrolled off Cornwall in1940–45. Thereafter she went sealing in the Falk-land Islands where she remains to be seen nearPort Stanley. She is also to be found in The Inter-national Register of Historic Ships.

6 Cottenham Park RoadLondon SW20 0RZ

From Dr D. C. McWhannell:

Scottish Boatbuilding accounts 1600–1700

Since publication of the paper ‘Campbell ofBreadalbane and Campbell of Argyll Boat-

building Accounts 1600 to 1700’ (MM, vol. 89no. 4, November 2003) I have discovered, usingthe excellent search facility on the nas.gov.ukwebsite to access the recatalogued and digitized‘GD112 Campbell of Breadalbane Papers’, thatthe ‘litill Patrik’ referred to on pages 418 and419 in my paper is in fact Padhruig Dubh Beag,first Campbell of Innerzeldies, and not as I hadsuggested a Mac Gille Chonaill wright.

8 Seaforth RoadDundee DD5 1QH

From Barrington Rosier:

The Longevity of Wooden Warships

I have read with considerable interest RobertMalcomson’s recent article ‘The Longevity ofWooden Warships: The Great Lakes Example’(MM, vol. 89 no. 4, 425–36). I hope that MrMalcomson will not mind too much if I make afew observations of my own on the evidencethat he has meticulously assembled, observationsthat lead me to rather different conclusions fromhis.

I am not convinced that the evidence MrMalcomson has assembled necessarily justifieshis conclusion that ‘…given the opportunity toavoid destruction or slow death in ordinary, thegovernment vessels on the lakes could be ex-pected to sail for decades’. First of all, the sam-ple of vessels in his Table 2, for which he has‘career data from launch to dissolution; naturallife, dissolution documented’, is very small, andI suspect too small to be statistically significant,ie. 23 vessels out of a total of 161 or more. Byincluding the vessels from Table 3 the positionis certainly improved, but this total of 41 war-ships is still but 25 per cent of the total.Secondly, a simple average is in terms of meth-odology less than adequate in determining a truepicture of career length, in particular when theships concerned are so few in number. An ex-treme example of what I mean by this is the 17.5years average career length in Mr Malcomson’sTable 1. Such a result is quite simply meaning-less, since of the two ships concerned, the onelasted seven years and the other 28. In fact, it isclear from Table 2 that 12 out of the 23 vessels,or 52 per cent of the sample, were out of servicewithin at most eight years of their launch dates,

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which lends considerable support to the ex-pressed opinions of both Colonel Pye and de laRochefoucauld.

In order to obtain a more realistic pictureof the career lengths of sailing warships, we needto devise a methodology that demonstrates moreclearly what is happening to numbers of shipsover numbers of years. This can be satisfacto-rily achieved in several ways. For example, bycombining the information on career lengthsobtained from Tables 2 and 3, but carefully ex-cluding those vessels that were wrecked or lostto enemy action, we can devise a simple chartthat profiles the rate at which the 35 remainingwarships were apparently withdrawn from ac-tive service, as shown in Fig. 1.

This demonstrates that 40 per cent of thetotal, or 14 out of the total of 35, were deletedbetween six and ten years of age, and that a fur-ther 34 per cent were probably deleted by theend of their fifteenth year, so that a total of some83 per cent had been taken out of service by thattime.

Perhaps an even more effective way of visu-alizing the attrition rate is to look at the samedata from a different perspective in order to plotthe survival rates of the vessels that served onthe Great Lakes, as shown in Fig. 2.

By using such charts we can easily comparedifferent groups of ships from different periodsor different theatres of operation and see howthey compare, in terms of longevity. For in-stance, Fig. 2 may be compared with Fig. 3 whichdepicts the service life of the 73 survivors of thevery large Cruiser class of brig sloops of 1796.These vessels – which, by the way, had an aver-age service career of 17.85 years – were con-structed more or less throughout the Great Warsfought against Revolutionary and NapoleonicFrance. I have excluded from my calculations24 which met with untimely fates, such as bywreck or enemy action, as well as three surviv-ing fir-built versions of the class, fir-built war-ships being notoriously short-lived.

From Figs 2 and 3 we can see that after tenyears of service almost 77 per cent of the Cruiserclass remained in service as compared with only51 per cent of the Great Lakes sample. By age15 the difference is even more marked, with 59per cent of the Cruiser class still in service asagainst perhaps only 17 per cent on the Great

Lakes. What do these figures tell us? No moreand no less than this: that vessels built to serveon the Great Lakes – or those for which MrMalcomson has been able to assemble reason-ably complete data – probably had, on the whole,shorter service careers than one class of smallsaltwater warships built at a similar period inhistory.

Why might this be so? I think there are anumber of possible explanations. Mr Malcomsonpraises Canadian oak, intimating that it was theequal of that from Riga, favoured in the RoyalDockyards. He may or may not be right, but Iwas struck by the large quantity of pine plankspecified in the estimate to repair the Ottawa in1795, and from which it would appear that themain and quarter decks were quite rotten – af-ter a mere four years of service. The extensiveuse of a soft wood such as pine would not haveenhanced the durability of these vessels. Even ifthe pine was not used to repair their hulls, thefact that their decks were rotten would have beenenough to permit the seepage of water into theinterior, and encourage the spread of decaythroughout.

Moreover, since so many of the vessels onthe Great Lakes were apparently constructedvery rapidly and out of green timber, in particu-lar unseasoned oak, it would be hardly surpris-ing if they were to suffer from decay at an earlyage. This problem would have been greatly ex-acerbated if those ships were laid up in ordinaryfor long periods of time – or for a good part ofeach year – uncovered and unventilated. Goodventilation for ships held in ordinary was abso-lutely essential if they were not to deterioratequickly. It is not at all clear from the article howwell the ships were cared for over the long Ca-nadian winter months.

What we are told, however, is that each ves-sel was surveyed afloat at the close of each sea-son with a view to assessing its condition. Thisprocedure, whilst laudable in itself, would nothave been sufficient to verify the true state of avessel’s hull, which could only be ascertainedby docking. But, of course, there were no drydocks on the Great Lakes. In the years follow-ing the end of the Seven Years War, virtually thecomplete list of line of battle ships serving inthe Royal Navy were conscientiously surveyed.The majority of these surveys was carried out

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Fig. 1: Warships deleted per age range

Fig. 3: Percentage of ships surviving by age: Cruiser class of 1796

Fig. 2: Percentage of ships surviving by age: Great Lakes sample

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afloat, but a second survey not infrequently tookplace in dock. The Progress Books for the pe-riod are full of references to these surveys. Usu-ally, once a ship was brought into dry dock theextent of the repairs found to be necessaryjumped dramatically. Admittedly these weresaltwater ships, sheathed against the worm; nonethe less, I think it is fair to say that only by dock-ing could any wooden warship be surveyed withcomplete confidence.

The references to ‘salting’ are also interest-ing, and no doubt this process may have helpedto preserve some of the timbers. But the pres-ence of salt would have caused corrosion to metalparts with which it came into contact. Moreo-ver, salt absorbs humidity, the very thing onewould seek to avoid in the hull of a woodenwarship, which reiterates the need I mentionedfor good ventilation.

In conclusion, I think it is clear enough fromthe limited data available that although someships built for service on the Great Lakes didhave lengthy service careers, many more did not.This is not to state categorically that vessels builtfor service on the Great Lakes were of inferiorquality, or made from inferior materials, but onthe other hand perhaps they were, since MrMalcomson tells us that some were indeed ‘builtfor specific campaigns and then laid up after-wards’. This probably made a lot of sense; therewas always a strong argument for building fromnew rather than trying to preserve old ships withan ongoing programme of expensive repairs.Each ship is an individual, and without com-parative building and maintenance histories to-gether with details of their service careers, it issimply not possible to tell why some ships lastedlonger than others.

Most (saltwater) wooden warships built inthe eighteenth century, if they were to survivein active service for more than a dozen years orso, required frequent refits and costly repairs.Ships of the line could be expected to receive amiddling or large repair within this time scale.Much has been written about the problems as-sociated with the use of green timber, and thespeed of construction in merchant yards. Butdespite these undoubted disadvantages, manyships built remarkably quickly in merchantyards, and of green timber, survived to a ripeold age. For instance, the average career length

of the 49 ships of the line laid down during theSeven Years War – 19 of which were built inmerchant yards – was a very respectable 31.65years. What kept them afloat was regular main-tenance, and lots of money. In wartime thismoney was generally forthcoming (if not alwaysthe time or the space in the dockyards), but oncepeace broke out it was an entirely different mat-ter. If necessity kept the ships of the sailing navyin service, then the return of peace took awaythat need and reduced the money to fund theirrepairs; so that in wartime some ships were keptin service which probably ought to have beenscrapped, whilst in peacetime many werescrapped which might otherwise have been pre-served.

Peace destroyed more wooden ships thanany number of naval engagements. I do notdoubt that the story was much the same on theGreat Lakes. Of the 161 vessels that RobertMalcomson describes in his Table 1, the largestgroup of 29, or 18.01 per cent of the total, hadan average service life of a mere 2.1 years. Thesewere vessels which had been ‘Launched duringwar and soon after laid up’.

Select bibliographyPrimary sourcesPublic Record Office:

Admiralty Progress Book 2, part 1, PRO,Adm. 180/2

Admiralty Progress Book 2, part 2, PRO,Adm. 180/3

Admiralty Progress Book 5, part 1, vol. 1,PRO, Adm. 180/6

Admiralty Progress Book 5, part 1, vol. 2,PRO, Adm. 180/7

Admiralty Progress Book 5, part 2, PRO,Adm. 180/9

House of Commons Sessional Papers‘A Report from the Committee appointed (uponthe 11th Day of March, 1771) to consider howHis Majesty’s Navy may be better supplied withTimber.’

Secondary Sources‘Essay on Timber Preservation’ in J. G.

Bullocke (ed.), The Tomlinson Papers (NavyRecords Society, 1935)

J. J. Colledge, Ships of the Royal Navy, 2nd

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REVIEWS

THE BRITISH ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET 1734–1995:A Biographical DictionaryBy T. A. HEATHCOTE

Leo Cooper, Barnsley, 2002338 pages, 18 black & white illustrations. Price£25 (hb)ISBN 0-85052-835-6

Heathcote’s book is a biographical dictionaryof 115 individuals who held the rank of Admi-ral of the Fleet from 1734 until the post was abol-ished in 1995, and is a companion to a volumehe produced on British Field Marshals 1736–1997. There is a foreword by Sir Michael Boyce,Chief of the Defence Staff. The biographies arearranged alphabetically and there are 18 blackand white illustrations covering some of the sub-jects. However there is no list of illustrationsgiven in the book and also no reference to wherethe pictures reproduced can be found. Heathcoteprovides a short seven-page introduction to theorigin and development of the rank of Admiralof the Fleet; but this is rather generalized and heprovides no references to the sources he used soit is difficult for anyone wanting to look furtherto know where to start.

Heathcote also does not point out that mostof the admirals appointed to the rank of Admi-ral of the Fleet – such as Anson, Hawke, Forbes,Clinton and Howe – were no longer serving atsea when they were appointed. Sir John Norrisseems to have been the only exception, going tosea in 1735, 1740 and 1744, having been ap-pointed Admiral of the Fleet in 1734. Heathcotealso fails to point out that some individuals –including Edward VIII, George V and the Ger-man Emperor Wilhelm II – were granted therank as honorific appointments. The author doesnot mention this in his introduction and a dis-

cussion as to when and why the rank becamehonorific would have been useful.

The biographies themselves vary in theamount of information provided; the biographyof Sir George Cockburn (Admiral of the Fleet1851) gives the name of both his father andmother while the biographies of Sir JohnEdmond Commerell (1892) and Sir LuciusCurtis (1864) only give their fathers’ details. Thebibliography leaves out both James Pack’s andRoger Morriss’s biographies of Cockburn.Though it is useful to have accounts of the indi-viduals who were admirals post-1945, the bookis not ‘the definitive biographical dictionary’ nor‘an indispensable companion to all those withan interest in British naval history’. The lack offurther reading at the end of each individual bi-ography means that students of naval history willnot find it useful as a starting point, but will stillrely on traditional sources such as the Diction-ary of National Biography.

Heathcote provides two tables as appendi-ces. Table one gives the names of the Admiralsof the Fleet derived from The Navy List. Thiswould have been more effectively placed at thefront of the book, and Sir Richard Vesey-Ham-ilton is omitted. The second list gives a catalogueof the ships that the Admirals of the Fleet servedon during their careers, though it could easilyhave been left out.

PETER LE FEVREGuildford

REVIEWS

edn, 2 vols (London, 1989–91)R. J. B. Knight, The Royal Dockyards in

England at the time of American Independence(PhD thesis, London, 1972)

D. Lyon, The Sailing Navy List: All theShips of the Royal Navy 1688–1860 (London,1993)

R. Malcomson, Warships of the Great Lakes,

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Warships: The Great Lakes Example’, MM, vol.89 no. 4, 425–36AllhaysPorthallowLooeCornwall PL13 2JB

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