Naval History

Admiral Lord Collingwood, the eldest son of a Newcastle merchant, went to sea in 1761 at the age of 13. In his nearly fifty years in the Navy Collingwood's service took him to Boston, where he lived and fought during the American War of Independence; to Antigua, where he and Nelson both fell in love with Mary Moutray; to Corsica; Sicily; and Menorca, where he ended his career as the effective viceroy of the Mediterranean.

A few minutes before midnight on April 14, 1912, the "unsinkable" RMS Titanic, on her maiden voyage to New York, struck an iceberg. Less than three hours later she lay at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. While the world has remained fascinated by the tragedy, the most amazing drama of those fateful hours was not played out aboard the doomed liner. It took place on the decks of two other ships, one 58 miles distant from the sinking Titanic, the other barely 10 miles away.

From the acclaimed military history author, this action-packed World War II history describes the Allies' brutal naval engagements and daring harbor raids to destroy the backbone of Hitler's surface fleet.

Despite incredible political, military, and intelligence risks, and after six years of secret preparations, the CIA attempted to salvage the sunken Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 from the depths of the North Pacific Ocean in early August 1974. This audacious effort was carried out under the cover of an undersea mining operation sponsored by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.

In a narrative that moves from Washington's headquarters on the Hudson River, to the wooded hillside in North Carolina where Nathanael Greene fought Lord Cornwallis to a vicious draw, to Lafayette's brilliant series of maneuvers across Tidewater Virginia, author Nathaniel Philbrick details the epic and suspenseful year through to its triumphant conclusion. A riveting and wide-ranging story, full of dramatic, unexpected turns, In the Hurricane's Eye reveals that the fate of the American Revolution depended, in the end, on Washington and the sea.

At the heart of Admiral James Stavridis’s training as a naval officer was the preparation to lead sailors in combat, to face the decisive moment in battle whenever it might arise. In To Risk it All, he offers up nine of the most useful and enthralling stories from the US Navy’s nearly 250-year history, and draws from them a set of insights that we can all put to use when confronted with fateful choices.

In the early hours of July 5, 1943, the destroyer USS Strong was hit by a Japanese torpedo. The powerful weapon broke the destroyer's back, flooded her engine room, killed dozens of sailors, and sparked raging fires. While accompanying ships were able to rescue most of Strong's surviving crewmen, scores were submerged in the ocean as the shattered warship sank beneath the waves - and a young officer's harrowing story of survival began.

When Admiral William Halsey selected Destroyer Squadron 21 to lead his victorious ships into Tokyo Bay to accept the Japanese surrender, it was the most battle-hardened US naval squadron of the war. But it was not the squadron of ships that had accumulated such an inspiring résumé; it was the people serving aboard them. Through diaries, personal interviews with survivors, and letters written to and by the crews during the war, preeminent historian of the Pacific theater John Wukovits brings to life the human story of the squadron and its men.

The heroic story of the founding of the US Navy during the Revolution has been told many times, yet largely missing from maritime histories of America's first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels that truly revealed the new nation's character. In Rebels at Sea, Eric Jay Dolin corrects that significant omission, and contends that privateers, as they were called, were in fact critical to the American victory. Privateers were privately owned vessels that were granted permission by the new government to seize British merchantmen and men of war.

Written with the unprecedented cooperation of the Naval Special Warfare community, here is the definitive history of the U.S. Navy SEALs, a thrilling chronicle that reveals the inside story behind the greatest combat operations of our nation’s most celebrated warriors.

On 27 October 1942, four "Long Lance" torpedoes fired by the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo exploded in the hull of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8). Minutes later, the ship that had launched the Doolitte Raid six months earlier slipped beneath the waves of the Coral Sea 100 miles northeast of the island of Guadalcanal and just north of the Santa Cruz Islands, taking with her 140 of her sailors. With the loss of Hornet, the United States Navy now had one aircraft carrier left in the South Pacific.

On a late September day in 480 BC, Greek warships faced an invading Persian armada in the narrow Salamis Straits in the most important naval battle of the ancient world. Overwhelmingly outnumbered by the enemy, the Greeks triumphed through a combination of strategy and deception. More than two millennia after it occurred, the clash between the Greeks and Persians at Salamis remains one of the most tactically brilliant battles ever fought.

In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. Roosevelt's glamorous 21 year old daughter Alice served as mistress of the cruise, which included senators and congressmen. On this trip, Taft concluded secret agreements in Roosevelt's name.

Small though they were, PT boats played a key role in World War II, carrying out an astonishing variety of missions where fast, versatile, and strongly armed vessels were needed. Called "weapons of opportunity", they met the enemy at closer quarters and with greater frequency than any other type of surface craft. Among the most famous PT commanders was John F. Kennedy, whose courageous actions in the Pacific are now well known to the American public.

Orphaned at five, nothing held Whidden back from embarking on sea life seven years later. Serving as an apprentice, he quickly proved his worth and earned himself a mate's position by his early 20s. Graduating to third, second, and first office, he ended his career in command of, and having part-ownership of, his own vessel. Ocean Life in the Old Sailing Ship Days records a series of real events from his childhood impressions of rough and ready seamen to his thrilling and brutal experiences of war.

From the shelling of the fort at Westerplatte on the Polish coast on September 1, 1939, to the loss of thousands of German refugees at sea in May 1945, the Baltic witnessed continuous and ferocious fighting throughout World War II. In this new audiobook, Poul Grooss chronicles naval warfare in the region and covers such major events as the siege of Leningrad, the Soviet campaign against Sweden in 1942, the three wars in Finland (1939-44), the Soviet liberation of the Baltic states, and the German evacuation of two million people from the East.

For this rousing, revisionist history, the former head of exhibitions at England's National Maritime Museum has combed original documents and records to produce a most authoritative and definitive account of piracy's "Golden Age." As he explodes many accepted myths (i.e. "walking the plank" is pure fiction), Cordingly replaces them with a truth that is more complex and often bloodier.

Based on interviews with more than 40 survivors, knowledgeable political insiders, and Soviet archives of the period, investigative writer Joan Mellen presents evidence suggesting complicity between US and Israeli intelligence in the attack on Liberty and the more than 50-year long cover-up. What were the underlying motives? Was this a false flag operation conducted in the midst of the Six-Day War? Was it conceivable that Israel would have initiated such an operation without a green light from the United States?

In its voracious hunger to fill its decks and spars with the bodies of strong young sailors, the nineteenth century US Navy and the commercial maritime industry welcomed eccentrics, criminals, outcasts, and misfits into a community of the marginalized, one that held very different values and expectations than the towns and villages from which the young men fled, a community that offered a tentative refuge to men who were sexually attracted to other men. Benemann provides an in-depth examination of nineteenth century LGBTQ culture as it developed at sea and in America's port cities.

St Nazaire, 1.22 a.m. 28th March 1942. HMS Cambeltown, supported by seventeen wooden motor launches, approached the German-held port intending to smash into the lock gates of the largest dock in the world; the Normandie Dock-Operation Chariot was in full swing. Against vicious Nazi gunfire, the commandos stormed the docks, and within half an hour, succeeded in their chief demolition objectives, but in the heat of battle, the Royal Navy had lost nearly all of its small vessels intended to carry them back to England.