The most recommended books about the British Royal Navy

This is the best collection for readers whose interests lie in the recent naval tradition of mutinies. It covers mutinies across the globe and includes some of the classic examples, such as the 1905 Battleship Potemkin, the 1931 Invergordon Royal Navy mutiny, and the 1944 Port Chicago mutiny. The first speaks to the importance of conditions on board ship, the second directly reflects the current wave of strikes in the UK, caused by the same phenomena: pay. The last is in a different category altogether and reminds us that mutinies are seldom isolated from their environment, indeed, the Port Chicago mutiny played a key role in the early post-war struggle for civil rights in the USA.

Equiano’s autobiography fascinated me when I stumbled upon a paperback edition of it in a local bookstore nearly thirty years ago.

A bestseller during Equiano’s lifetime, his Interesting Narrative is appreciated as a work of enduring historical and literary value. The odyssey he recounts takes him from enslavement as a child in Africa to becoming a leading figure in the struggle to abolish the transatlantic slave trade.

Along the way, he serves in the British Royal Navy, gains his freedom, participates in a scientific expedition to the Arctic, has a religious conversion, observes various kinds of slavery in North and Central America, England, Europe, and the Middle East before agreeing to help administer settling in Africa formerly enslaved poor Blacks who had joined the British forces during the American Revolution.

Marryat is known as the “Father or Naval Fiction” who established a genre that still flourishes. In 1806, at fourteen, he joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman. In the next nine years he saw service—and battle—against the French and American navies, at one stage under the command of the legendary frigate captain Thomas Cochrane. Marryat retired as a captain in 1830 to devote himself to writing. This novel is based on his own early years in the navy. It’s light in tone and very readable but there’s no sentimentality when he deals with losses and injury. One suspects that it reflects the gallows' humour that carried the navy through those long years. I’ve always loved it!

This epic book tells the story of a brave convoy to Malta during World War II, a period and a narrative that particularly appeals to me, given my writing.

Hastings perfectly captures the terror, drama, and heroism of Allied sailors fighting their way through to the besieged island in this gripping page-turner.

This is the book that got me into naval history and made me want to be a naval historian.

Bennett was a serving officer in the RN and the son of a naval officer. He writes with pace, experience, and clarity about the major naval encounters of the First World War. It is a book that would be a good primer for anyone wanting to start the WW1 at sea journey. I purchased it in a second-hand bookshop in Cambridge and never looked back.

The historiography of the Second World War is littered with stylized facts which are either wrong or only partly true. 

One is that the U.S. economy was almost completely demilitarized during the 1930s. This is largely true insofar as ground and air forces are concerned. It was not true for the Navy. As a former undersecretary of the Navy Roosevelt had a soft spot for sea power. So did important leaders in the legislature. 

The two Vinson-Trammel Acts passed in the 1930s allowed the US to build up to treaty limits. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, U.S. naval power ranked only slightly behind that of the Royal Navy, and ahead of the Japanese (although not in the Pacific).

Moreover, the U.S. possessed an industrial infrastructure and an experienced workforce in both government and private shipyards that was capable of rapidly building multiple ships. Heinrich provides an excellent… show more.

I love books where I cannot guess the outcome, and Cold Harbour is one of the best. The stakes are high for both the Allies and the Germans. You’re never really sure what will happen next, right down to the finish.

It’s May 1944 and excitement is running high with the Allies and the Germans. The Allies want to know about the German Atlantic Wall and Rommel’s plans to defeat the invasion, and for the Germans, where the Allies will land.

The Allies, like the Germans, used aircraft and U-boats, in carrying out their spy operations. In Cold Harbour, a small fishing port near Cornwall, Craig Osborne, an OSS agent and assassin, finds himself in an U-boat off the coast of Brittany, where he discovers the U-boat is manned by Royal Navy. With the help of the sister of a dead British agent, he is able to penetrate a… show more.

While the outcome of the naval war was a foregone conclusion, the United States Navy and a swarm of privateers punched well above their weight, humiliating the world’s preeminent navy early in the conflict and boosting American national morale. There are a number of excellent books on the naval history of the conflict, but, carefully researched and accessibly written, Perilous Fight is my favorite telling of this critical aspect of the War of 1812.

Most people will have heard of Parkinson’s law: the idea that work expands to fill the time available for its completion, but he (drawing from his time as a naval historian) also developed the law of triviality: that an organization typically give devotes disproportionate time to insignificant issues.

The short book is full of many other insightful observations about organizational life and bureaucracy, including the tendency for officials to make more work for each, other leading to the famous prediction that the Royal Navy would eventually have more admirals than ships.

Sailor’s Heart is a courageous book about a topic close to my own heart: the impact of trauma on fighting men in WWII. After researching and writing about the RAF’s treatment of men deemed “lacking in moral fibre,” I was fascinated by this book, which looks at the Admiralty’s handling of the same phenomenon. 

Based on admiralty records, Sailor’s Heart provides three vivid examples of wartime stress causing otherwise healthy individuals to suffer a breakdown in morale. I loved the fact that Campbell avoids formula writing and does not attempt to “fulfill market expectations." (e.g. no dramatic rescue, no love interest.) Equally impressive, Campbell avoids heroes—let alone superheroes—in favour of vulnerable, believable, and ultimately very ordinary protagonists.