Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

In action with destroyers 1939-1945 : the wartime memoirs of Commander JAJ Dennis, DSC RN /Anthony Cumming. "In Action with Destroyers 1939 - 1945 is a superbly written and exciting eyewitness account of the war at sea from 1939 to 1945. There can have been few, if any, naval officers who saw so much action as Alec Dennis, who served in four destroyers; HMS Griffin and Savage initially before commanding Valorous and Tetcott. While too modest to admit to it, he was mentioned in Despatches three times (Norway, sinking the Scharnhorst and in the North Sea) and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (Greece 1942). His war service also included the important but little known Madagascar operation, the Malta and Arctic convoys and D-Day. For all the danger and action, Dennis recorded his remarkable experiences with a light even irreverent touch and, as a result, his memoir is not just a brilliant account of one man's war at sea but a rattling good read."--Provided by the publisher. 2017. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92DENNIS

Surviving the Arctic Convoys : the wartime memoir of leading seaman Charlie Erswell /John R. McKay. "Leading Seaman Charlie Erswell saw much more than his fair share of action during the Second World War. He was present at the 1942 landing in North Africa (Operation TORCH), D-Day and the liberation of Norway. But his main area of operations was that of the Arctic Convoys, escorting merchant ships taking essential war supplies to the Russian ports of Murmansk and Archangel. In addition to contending with relentless U-boat and Luftwaffe attacks, crews endured the extreme sea conditions and appalling weather. This involved clearing ice and snow in temperatures as low as minus thirty degrees Celsius. No wonder Winston Churchill described it as 'the worst journey in the world'. Leading Seaman Charlie Erswell saw much more than his fair share of action during the Second World War. He was present at the 1942 landing in North Africa (Operation TORCH), D-Day and the liberation of Norway. But his main area of operations was that of the Arctic Convoys, escorting merchant ships taking essential war supplies to the Russian ports of Murmansk and Archangel. In addition to contending with relentless U-boat and Luftwaffe attacks, crews endured the extreme sea conditions and appalling weather. This involved clearing ice and snow in temperatures as low as minus thirty degrees Celsius. No wonder Winston Churchill described it as 'the worst journey in the world'. Fortunately, Charlie, who served on two destroyers, HMS Milne and Savage, kept a record of his experiences and is alive today to describe them. His story, published to coincide with the 80th Anniversary of the first convoy, is more than one man's account. It is an inspiring tribute to his colleagues, many of whom were killed in action. No-one reading Surviving The Arctic Convoys could fail to be moved by the bravery and endurance of these outstanding men."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.5429

Adrift : a true story of tragedy on the icy Atlantic and the one who lived to tell about it /Brian Murphy with Toula Vlahou. "The small ship making the Liverpool-to-New York trip in the early months of 1856 carried mail, crates of dry goods, and more than one hundred passengers, mostly Irish emigrants. Suddenly an iceberg tore the ship asunder and five lifeboats were lowered. As four lifeboats drifted into the fog and icy water, never to be heard from again, the last boat wrenched away from the sinking ship with a few blankets, some water and biscuits, and thirteen souls. Only one would survive. This is his story. As they started their nine days adrift more than four hundred miles off Newfoundland, the castaways - an Irish couple and their two boys, an English woman and her daughter, newlyweds from Ireland, and several crewmen, including Thomas W. Nye from Bedford, Massachusetts - began fighting over food and water. One by one, though, day by day, they died. Some from exposure, others from madness and panic. In the end, only Nye and his journal survived. Using Nye's journal and his later newspaper accounts, ship's logs, assorted diaries, and family archives, Brian Murphy chronicles the horrific nine days that thirteen people suffered adrift on the cold gray Atlantic sea. In the tradition of bestsellers such as Into Thin Air and In the Heart of the Sea, Adrift brings readers to the edge of human limits, where every frantic decision and every desperate act is a potential life saver or life taker."--Provided by the publisher. 2018. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.9163/4

Once aboard a Cornish lugger / Paul Greenwood. "Cornwall's rich waters have always provided a bountiful harvest for its fisherman. In many ways, the fishing industry of Cornwall is inseparable from its heritage, evoking images of fishing boats resting in picturesque harbours. The industry has not always provided so idyllic a picture. In Once Aboard a Cornish Lugger, Cornish former fisherman Paul Greenwood vividly describes life as a crewman throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s. He draws on his own experiences to graphically bring to life the hardships and dangers faced by Cornish fishermen, and tells of gales, whales, wrecks and rigours of life aboard the fishing boats that worked off the south coast of Cornwall. His frank account of the hardships he encountered at sea, overcoming sea-sickness, fatigue, cold and wet while working night and day hauling nets and lines is a brilliant evocation of a bygone age."--Provided by the publisher 2015. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 639.2(423.7)

Nelson's Star of the Order of the Bath and awards to the family of Admiral Richard Keats / Morton & Eden in association with Sotherby's. Morton & Eden 2010. • PAMPHLET • 1 copy available. 929.71BATH

The great liners story / William H. Miller. "This illustrated and colourful history charts the hey-day of the great liners, those grand and lavish vessels that cruised around the world carrying their glamorous passengers from port to port. Decorated to the highest of finishes, fitted out in the most luxurious of styles, these floating palaces epitomised their opulent age. Their iconic names, from Titanic to Mauretania, from Queen Elizabeth to QE2, conjure up visions of power, grace, elegance and nostalgia for this golden age of travel."--Back cover. 2012. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 629.123.3"18/..."

Explorers' sketchbooks : the art of discovery & adventure /Huw Lewis-Jones, Kari Herbert; foreword by Robert Macfarlane. A compilation of extracts reproduced from the notebooks of seventy explorers from the 16th century through to the present day. The extracts highlight their sketches and illustrations and are supported by a brief profile of each explorer and a summary of the journeys made. 2016. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.4

Empire of ice and stone : the disastrous and heroic voyage of the Karluk /Buddy Levy. "The true, harrowing story of the ill-fated 1913 Canadian Arctic Expedition and the two men who came to define it. In the summer of 1913, the wooden-hulled brigantine Karluk departed Canada for the Arctic Ocean. At the helm was Captain Bob Bartlett, considered the world's greatest living ice navigator. The expedition's visionary leader was a flamboyant impresario named Vilhjalmur Stefansson hungry for fame. Just six weeks after the Karluk departed, giant ice floes closed in around her. As the ship became icebound, Stefansson disembarked with five companions and struck out on what he claimed was a 10-day caribou hunting trip. Most on board would never see him again. Twenty-two men and an Inuit woman with two small daughters now stood on a mile-square ice floe, their ship and their original leader gone. Under Bartlett's leadership they built makeshift shelters, surviving the freezing darkness of Polar night. Captain Bartlett now made a difficult and courageous decision. He would take one of the young Inuit hunters and attempt a 1000-mile journey to save the shipwrecked survivors. It was their only hope. Set against the backdrop of the Titanic disaster and World War I, filled with heroism, tragedy, and scientific discovery, Buddy Levy's Empire of Ice and Stone tells the story of two men and two distinctively different brands of leadership: one selfless, one self-serving, and how they would forever be bound by one of the most audacious and disastrous expeditions in polar history, considered the last great voyage of The Heroic Age of Discovery."--Provided by publisher 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 919.804

The empire of necessity : slavery, freedom, and deception in the New World /Greg Grandin. One morning in 1805, off a remote island in the South Pacific, Captain Amasa Delano, a New England seal hunter, climbed aboard a distressed Spanish ship carrying scores of West Africans who appeared to be slaves. They weren't. Having earlier seized control of the vessel and slaughtered most of the crew, they were staging an elaborate ruse. When Delano, an idealistic, anti-slavery republican, finally realized the deception--that the men and women he thought were slaves were actually running the ship--he responded with explosive violence. Drawing on research on four continents, historian Greg Grandin explores the multiple forces that culminated in this extraordinary event--an event that inspired Herman Melville's masterpiece "Benito Cereno". Now historian Greg Grandin, with the gripping storytelling that was praised in Fordlandia, uses the dramatic happenings of that day to map a new transnational history of slavery in the Americas, capturing the clash of peoples, economies, and faiths that was the New World in the early 1800s.--Provided by the publisher. 2014. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.1

Imagining the Arctic : Heroism, spectacle and polar exploration /Huw Lewis-Jones. "Imagining the Arctic explores the culture and politics of polar exploration and the making of its heroes. Leading explorers, the celebrity figures of their day, went to great lengths to convince their contemporaries of the merits of polar voyages. Much of exploration was in fact theatre: a series of performances to capture public attention and persuade governments to finance ambitious proposals. The achievements of explorers were promoted, celebrated, and manipulated, whilst explorers themselves became the subject of huge attention. Huw Lewis-Jones draws upon recovered texts and striking images, many reproduced for the first time since the nineteenth century, to show how exploration was projected through a series of spectacular visuals, helping us to reconstruct the ways that heroes and the wilderness were imagined. Elegantly written and richly illustrated, Imagining the Arctic offers original insights into our understanding of exploration and its pull on the public imagination."--Provided by the publisher. 2017. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.4(98/99)

A matter of honor : Pearl Harbor : betrayal, blame, and a family's quest for justice /Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. An account of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the 'scapegoat' Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, the failure of the top brass in Washington to provide Kimmel with vital intelligence prior to the attack, and the continuing efforts of the family to have Kimmel formally exonerated. [2016] • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.542.6"1941"

Seven at Santa Cruz : the life of fighter ace Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa /Ted Edwards. "This riveting biography details how Stanley 'Swede' Vejtasa became a World War II naval hero. During the Battle of the Coral Sea, Swede flew an SBD Dauntless dive-bomber and helped sink Shoho, the first aircraft carrier lost by Japan in World War II. The next day, in that same Dauntless, he took off from USS Yorktown and out-flew and out-gunned three Japanese Zeros, making him the only dive bomber pilot to be awarded Navy Crosses for both bombing and aerial combat. Months later, the day before the Battle of Santa Cruz, Swede was flying an F4F Wildcat fighter off USS Enterprise and had no recourse but to follow orders he knew to be insane. He and his squadron mates flew their predictably empty search legs and beyond, only to discover upon their return to Point Option in the dark, that Enterprise was nowhere to be found. Incredibly, Swede located the oil slick he had noticed seeping from Enterprise during a morning combat air patrol and was able to track it back to the carrier. After their harrowing return, during the Battle of Santa Cruz, the fate of Enterprise, and by extension Guadalcanal, lay in the hands of that same Swede Vejtasa. He responded by single-handedly downing an unprecedented two Japanese dive bombers and five torpedo bombers attacking the carrier. Skipper Jimmy Flatley recognized that in all likelihood, Swede had saved Enterprise from destruction, and he recommended Swede for the Medal of Honor."--Provided by publisher. 2018 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92VEJTASA

Mutiny on the Bounty / Peter FitzSimons. "The mutiny on HMS Bounty, in the South Pacific on 28 April 1789, is one of history's truly great stories - a tale of human drama, intrigue and adventure of the highest order - and in the hands of Peter FitzSimons it comes to life as never before. Commissioned by the Royal Navy to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti and take them to the West Indies, the Bounty's crew found themselves in a tropical paradise. Five months later, they did not want to leave. Under the leadership of Fletcher Christian most of the crew mutinied soon after sailing from Tahiti, setting Captain William Bligh and 18 loyal crewmen adrift in a small open boat. In one of history's great feats of seamanship, Bligh navigated this tiny vessel for 3618 nautical miles to Timor. Fletcher Christian and the mutineers sailed back to Tahiti, where most remained and were later tried for mutiny. But Christian, along with eight fellow mutineers and some Tahitian men and women, sailed off into the unknown, eventually discovering the isolated Pitcairn Island - at the time not even marked on British maps - and settling there. This astonishing story is historical adventure at its very best, encompassing the mutiny, Bligh's monumental achievement in navigating to safety, and Fletcher Christian and the mutineers' own epic journey from the sensual paradise of Tahiti to the outpost of Pitcairn Island. The mutineers' descendants live on Pitcairn to this day, amid swirling stories and rumours of past sexual transgressions and present-day repercussions. Mutiny on the Bounty is a sprawling, dramatic tale of intrigue, bravery and sheer boldness, told with the accuracy of historical detail and total command of story that are Peter FitzSimons' trademarks."--Provided by the publisher. [2018] • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.133"1789"

HMS Belfast : cruiser 1939 /by Richard Johnstone-Bryden. "HMS Belfast, originally a Royal Navy light cruiser, is now permanently moored on the Thames in London. One of ten Town-class cruisers she saw service on the icy Arctic convoys during the Second World War and was also present for the bombardment of the D-Day beaches in 1944. Later, she saw service during the Korean War. As is the case for many historic ships, however, there is a surprising shortage of informative and well illustrated guides, for reference during a visit or for research by enthusiasts - ship modellers, naval buffs, historians or students."--Provided by the publisher. 2013. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 623.82BELFAST

Tracing the connected narrative : Arctic exploration in British print culture, 1818-1860 /Janice Cavell. Cavell, Janice. c2008. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.4(98):676.22"1818/1860"

Through A Canadian Periscope : the Story of The Canadian Submarine Service /Julie H. Ferguson. "A comprehensive history of Canada's submarine service and the people who have served in it. Through a Canadian Periscope?s second edition celebrates the story of the Canadian submarine service on the occasion of its centenary in 2014. Created in 1914, at the beginning of World War I, Canada's submarine force has overcome repeated attempts to sink it since then. Surprise, controversy, political expediency, and naval manipulation flow through its one hundred-year history. Heroes and eccentrics, and ordinary people populate its remarkable story, epitomizing the true essence of the service. Fully updated and with new and restored images, Through a Canadian Periscope offers a colourful and thoroughly researched account of the Canadian submarine service, from its unexpected inauguration in British Columbia on the first day of the World War I, through its uncertain future in the 1990s, to the present day. This vivid account celebrates the individuals who dedicated themselves to the Canadian submarine service and in some instances lost their lives in submarines."--Provided by the publisher. [2014] • BOOK • 1 copy available. 623.827(71)

The luckiest thirteen : The forgotten men of St. Finbarr - A trawler crew's battle in the Arctic. /Brian W. Lavery "A true-life drama of an intense battle for survival on the high seas. The Luckiest Thirteen is the story of an incredible two-day battle to save the super trawler St Finbarr, and of those who tried to rescue her heroic crew in surging, frozen seas. It was also a backdrop for the powerful stories of families ashore, dumbstruck by fear and grief, as well as a love story of a teenage deckhand and his girl that ended with a heart-rending twist. From her hi-tech hold to her modern wheelhouse she was every inch the super ship the great hope for the future built to save the fleet at a record-breaking price but a heart-breaking cost. On the thirteenth trip after her maiden voyage, the St Finbarr met with catastrophe off the Newfoundland coast. On Christmas Day 1966, twenty-five families in the northern English fishing port of Hull were thrown into a dreadful suspense not knowing if their loved ones were dead or alive after the disaster that befell The Perfect Trawler. Complete with 16 pages of dramatic and poignant photographs from the period."--Provided by the publisher. 2017. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 656.61.085.3ST FINBARR

The German fleet at war, 1939-1945 / Vincent P. O'Hara. "The German Fleet at War relates the little-known history of the Kriegsmarine's surface fleet with a focus on the sixty-nine surface naval battles fought by Germany's major warships against the large warships of the British, French, American, Polish, Soviet, Norwegian and Greek navies. It emphasizes operational details but also paints a broad overview of the naval war. The book addresses the lack of information about the specifics of naval engagements in World War II and provides a database of naval engagements for comparison and analysis, but unlike most reference works, it has a continuous narrative and a theme. The result is a unique overview of the German and Allied navies at war that provides new appreciation of their activities and accomplishments."--Publisher description. 2011. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.545.9(43)"1939/1945"

The war of the gun boats / Bryan Cooper. "This book traces the history and development of the gun boats from their first limited use in World War I to the fast motor boats designed in the 1930s for wealthy private clients and water speed record attempts. With account of the battles which took place during the World War II, when the vital importance of coastal waters came to be recognized, it captures the drama of this highly individual form of combat."--Provided by the publisher. 2009. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 623.824"19"

Iron dawn : the Monitor, the Merrimack and the sea battle that changed history /Richard Snow. "No single sea battle has had more immediate and far-reaching consequences than the one fought in Hampton Roads, Virginia in early March 1862. The Confederacy, with no fleet of its own, took a radical step to combat the Union blockade, building on the hull of a captured Union frigate named the Merrimack an iron fort containing ten heavy guns. The North got word of the project when it was already well along, and, in panicked desperation, commissioned an eccentric inventor named John Ericsson to build the Monitor, an entirely revolutionary iron warship, and at the time the single most complicated machine ever made. Rushed through to completion in just 100 days, it mounted only two guns, but they were housed in a shot-proof revolving turret. The ship hurried south from Brooklyn - nearly sinking twice on the voyage - only to arrive to find the Merrimack had come out that morning and sunk half the Union fleet, and would be back to finish the job the next day. When she returned, the Monitor was there. She fought the Merrimack to a standstill, and, many believe, saved the Union cause. As soon as word of the fight spread, Great Britain - the foremost sea power of the day - ceased work on all her wooden ships. As well as providing a pivotal victory in the Civil War, a thousand-year-old tradition had ended. The path to the naval future opened - a new future of industrial warfare, with iron colossi taking to the waves. The Monitor and the Merrimack were early models of the carriers and mega-ships that extend military might over the high seas to this day."--Provided by the publisher. 2016. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.49"1862"(73)

Battle in the Irish Sea : the life and death of HMS Manners The story of a sea battle in the Irish Sea on 26 January 1945 resulting in the loss of HMS Manners and the U-Boat which attacked her. HMS Manners was commissioned as a destroyer escort to protect North Atlantic convoys and was launched in Boston in 1943. Sailing from Falmouth to Liverpool in January 1945, the ship was subjected to torpedo attack by U-Boat 1051 under the command of Oberleutnant Heinrick von Holleben. Damaged beyond repair and having lost more than half of her crew, HMS Manners was de-commissioned and sold for scrapping while U-Boat 1051 herself was sunk the same day as a result of the hunt and attack by Aylmer, Calder, Bligh and Bentinck. Appendices list British and German casualties and those injured as a result of the battle, the voyages of HMS Manners, and provide a chronology of the principal events in the Irish Sea during November 1944 to May 1945. 1993 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.545

The Thames on fire : the battle of London River 1939-1945 /by L M Bates Bates, L. M. 1985 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 942.1.085

The Bounty : the true story of the mutiny on the Bounty /Caroline Alexander. More than two centuries have passed since Master's Mate Fletcher Christian mutinied against Lieutenant Bligh on a small, armed transport vessel called Bounty. Why the details of this obscure adventure at the end of the world remain vivid and enthralling is as intriguing as the truth behind the legend. In giving the Bounty mutiny its historical due, Caroline Alexander has chosen to frame her narrative by focusing on the court-martial of the ten mutineers who were captured in Tahiti and brought to justice in England. This fresh perspective revivifies the entire saga, and the salty, colorful language of the captured men themselves conjures the events of that April morning in 1789, when Christian's breakdown impelled every man on a fateful course: Bligh and his loyalists on the historic open boat voyage that revealed him to be one of history's great navigators; Christian on his restless exile; and the captured mutineers toward their day in court. As the book unfolds, each figure emerges as a full-blown character caught up in a drama that may well end on the gallows. And as Alexander shows, it was in a desperate fight to escape hanging that one of the accused defendants deliberately spun the mutiny into the myth we know today-of the tyrannical Lieutenant Bligh of the Bounty. Ultimately, Alexander concludes that the Bounty mutiny was sparked by that most unpredictable, combustible, and human of situations-the chemistry between strong personalities living in close quarters. Her account of the voyage, the trial, and the surprising fates of Bligh, Christian, and the mutineers is an epic of ambition, passion, pride, and duty at the dawn of the Romantic era. 2003. • BOOK • 3 copies available. 355.133"1789"

Beyond the horizon : memoirs /Jack Close. The memoirs of Jack Close, Beyond the Horizon is split into three parts: the first explores his life growing up in Kingston-Upon-Hull in the 1930s, the second his role in Operation Overlord in 1945, and the third - the eponymous Beyond The Horizon - follows his postwar travels at sea. Close qualified as a Wireless Operator and joined H M Rescue Tugs in 1943, taking part in D-Day by towing sections of the Mulberry Harbours to Normandy. In 1945, he was involved in Operation Deadlight, sinking surrendered German submarines. After the war, Close sailed on trawlers out of Hull and Grimsby. He then spent several years on tramp steamers and tankers all over the world, travelling to, among others, America, Morocco, Japan, and France. This book contains photographs of Close and his family, as well as the boats he worked on over the years. 2010. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 656.61.071.22:355.124"19"

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