Battle of the River Plate (Sea battles in close-up, 4)

Geoffrey Bennett

Littlehampton Book Services Lt

The battle of Trafalgar has now passed into national mythology. The expertise, courage, determination and confidence which gave Britain a victory of spectacular finality in October 1805 also provided her with one of her great legendary figures - a naval hero in life but much more like a national, if very secular, saint in death. However, like the noise and smoke of battle, legends have a habit of obscuring facts and, having embodied themselves in popular imagination, are transcribed to the history books. Captain Bennett was, for many years, a serving officer in the Royal Navy as well as being one of the most highly regarded naval historians of his time. He sets the battle in the context of the world-wide struggle against Napoleon, describes the ships, their crews and the tactics of the action. In his scholarly but immensely readable account of the battle he discusses the preparatory manoeuvres and the mechanics of naval warfare in the age of sail. He illustrates the text with many diagrams.

The battle of Trafalgar

Naval Institute

<p>At the end of May 1916, a chance encounter with Admiral Hipper's battlecruisers has enabled Beatty to lead the German Battle Fleet into the jaws of Jellicoe's greatly superior force, but darkness had allowed Admiral Scheer to extricate his ships from a potentially disastrous situation. Though inconclusive, at the Battle of Jutland the German Fleet suffered so much damage that it made no further attempt to challenge the Grand Fleet, and the British blockade remained unbroken. Captain Bennett has used sources previously unavailable to historians in his reconstruction of this controversial battle, including the papers of Vice-Admiral Harper explaining why his official record of the battle was not published until 1927, and the secret "Naval Staff Appreciation" of 1922 whose criticism were so scathing that it was never issued to the Fleet. Also included are numerous battle plans, photographs and an introduction by Bennett's son.</p>

The Battle of Jutland

History

Military

David&Charles

Battle of the River Plate

Ian Allan Publishing Ltd

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Books by Geoffrey Bennett