First published in 1994, Mr Fitton and the Black Legion charts the adventures of hero and sailor Michael Fitton. It is February 1797 and 1400 of the French army have landed on the Pembroke coast. Michael Fitton, master's mate in King George's Navy, finds himself involved in this historic event. As he becomes embroiled with Colonel Tate's Black Legion, Mr Fitton faces perilous adventures, including battles on the high seas, secret expeditions across the French borders and an encounter with the attractive Comtesse de Callac.
First published in 1993 Mr Fitton's Prize follows the adventures of sailor Michael Fitton. When Michael Fitton joins the HMS Fortitude as master's mate all he wants is a chance to prove himself a loyal member of the new crew and earn a much-longed for promotion. But Fitton's loyalty to the ship is severely tested when his captain refuses to help struggling French Royalists, including the beautiful and captivating Denise de Charignay, defend their stronghold against the revolutionaries. A chance to command his own expedition leads Fitton into a daring night seizure of a French brig and the opportunity to sail to the Royalists aid. Relying purely on nerve and skill Fitton must battle revolutionaries in order to save Denise and her uncle the Comte, friend of the Comte d'Artois, brother to the executed French King Louis XVI, now a refugee in England and heir presumptive to the French throne. Facing capture and execution as he races across the sea back to the shores of England, where he may face a court-martial for his actions, Fitton must find a way to outwit a larger, faster and better equipped vessel captained by his old nemesis, the French privateer Captain Dorimond.
This book provides summaries and analyses of more than 250 novels and nearly 30 films and examines the extent to which they accurately reflect the history, mores and manners of the period--and the extent to which they reveal the ideas and attitudes of their authors and of the periods in which they were written. Particular emphasis is placed on the nature and importance of the war at sea for the British and on the role of famous naval officers such as Nelson, Pellew, Duncan, Smith and Cochrane in the defeat of Napoleon.
Richmond Son is a snapshot of the life and times of a boy during the 1950s. He lives in Richmond, an old and tired suburb on the doorstep of Melbourne. Peter attends St James, North Richmond, a Catholic primary school were the pupils are taught by nuns. Its struggling under the pressures of a burgeoning student population, the effects of the post war immigration boom and the baby boomers. Theres no government funding and few new nuns. A sense of antagonism is swirling just below the surface as Catholics continue to battle under the gaze of an indifferent Protestant majority. But unforeseen changes are about to occur which will ultimately transform this situation. Peters parents were strugglers. Like many of that time, they had been faced by a future without opportunity. First there had been the social, political and educational abyss of the 1930s depression, where adult unemployment reached 30%. Then the war arrived, which led to conscription for my father and factory work for my mother. When wars end finally came, a whole generation would look back upon a fifteen year period that had been laced with fear and despair. By the middle 1950s, our splendid city of Melbourne was on the cusp of great change. The Olympic Games were about to transform it and so was black and white television. Millions of new migrants would complete the transformation. Peter reflects upon how it used to be, seen through the eyes of a boy just eight years old.
Eighteen classic sea-faring tales by the best-loved writers of the genre, including Patrick O'Brian, C. S. Forester, Richard Woodman, Herman Melville and Frederick Marryat. Featuring favourite heroes such as Captain Jack Aubrey, Adam Hardy, Horatio Hornblower and Nathaniel Drinkwater. These tales vividly re-create the age of the glory days of sail, aboard the great ships that sailed for trade, discovery or warfare. They include storms and shipwrecks, the great sea battles of the Napoleonic era and the sheer, dangerous excitement of life before the mast.
The English/British have always been known as the sailor race with hearts of oak: the Royal Navy as the Senior Service and First Line of Defense. It facilitated the motto: The sun never set on the British Empire. The Royal Navy has exerted a powerful influence on Great Britain, its Empire, Europe, and, ultimately, the world. This superior annotated bibliography supplies entries that explore the influence of the English/British Navy through its history. This survey will provide a major reference guide for students and scholars at all levels. It incorporates evaluative, qualitative, and critical analysis processes, the essence of historical scholarship. Each one of the 4,124 annotated entries is evaluated, assessed, analyzed, integrated, and incorporated into the historiographical scholarship.
This remarkable work is a comprehensive historiographical and bibliographical survey of the most important scholarly and printed materials about the naval and maritime history of England and Great Britain from the earliest times to 1815. More than 4,000 popular, standard and official histories, important articles in journals and periodicals, anthologies, conference, symposium and seminar papers, guides, documents and doctoral theses are covered so that the emphasis is the broadest possible. But the work is far, far more than a listing. The works are all evaluated, assessed and analysed and then integrated into an historical narrative that makes the book a hugely useful reference work for student, scholar, and enthusiast alike. It is divided into twenty-one chapters which cover resource centres, significant naval writers, pre-eminent and general histories, the chronological periods from Julius Caesar through the Vikings, Tudors and Stuarts to Nelson and Bligh, major naval personalities, warships, piracy, strategy and tactics, exploration, discovery and navigation, archaeology and even naval fiction. Quite simply, no-one with an interest and enthusiasm for naval history can afford to be without this book at their side.
