See item level records.

Administrative / biographical background
Halton Stirling Lecky entered the Navy in 1892. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in 1900, then to the rank of commander in 1913 before retiring with the rank of Captain in 1925. He wrote a six-volume work, 'The King's Ships', which chronicled every ship in the Royal Navy at the time of writing, as well as earlier ships with the same names. After World War I he also started work on a further two volumes about the ships that had served during the war. However, only volumes I, II and III were ever published, between 1913-15. Publication was halted due to the war and the original publisher died bankrupt in 1922 without publishing volumes IV, V and VI. His widow turned publication of the remaining volumes over to three businessmen who established the King's Ships Publishing Company in 1923. However these men turned out to be fraudsters who collected subscriptions for the future volumes with no intention of publishing them. Subsequently, despite approaching other publishers as well as several potential benefactors, Lecky was never able to secure the backing to have the remaining volumes published. The first three volumes of 'The King's Ships', which detail ships with names starting with the letters 'A' through to 'J', are available in the Caird Library Reading Room (item ID: PBB0567/1-3). The handwritten drafts of the volumes for the ships with names starting with the letters 'P' to 'Z' are included in this collection, but the drafts for ships with names starting with the letters 'K' to 'O' were lost.