Box 1: Volume and folder with various clippings and research notes (extracted from the volume): alphabetical index of naval officers' surnames. The index records in columns the ranks of commander, captain and admiral followed by the column 'died.' The preceeding three columns include their commission dates.

Box 2: correspondence divided alphabetically by surname.

Box 3: circa ninety letters written to Clowes between 1896 and 1904; volume: subject index arranged chronologically, separated by month and date, but not by year (several years may appear for a particular day within a month); volume of newspaper cuttings of his articles entitled 'The Navy and the Empire: 1. The Work of the Navy; 2. The Triumphs of the Navy; 3. The Luck of the Navy' and so on...

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Administrative / biographical background
Clowes began to study naval affairs on the staff of the Army and Navy Gazette; where he focused on naval questions, accompanying the Home Fleets as special naval correspondent with the Daily News in 1885; The Standard between 1887 and 1890; and The Times between 1890 and 1895. It was during this period that his reputation as a naval expert was established. He published articles under the nom de plume Nauticus; which included themes such as naval gunnery and torpedo boats in wartime. He published anonymously a series of articles on the subject of ‘The needs of the navy’ in the Daily Graphic (1893). Clowes is perhaps best known for his compilation ‘The Royal Navy: its History from the Earliest Times’ in seven volumes, researched between 1897 and 1903; which he did in collaboration with Sir Clements Markham, A. T. Mahan, W. H. Wilson et al. He was knighted in 1902.