Nautical Research Journal Book reviews
British Battleships of the Victorian Era By Norman Friedman
Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2018 10” x 11-1/2”, hardcover, 400 pages
Photographs, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $85.00
ISBN: 9781682473290
T e arrival on this reviewer’s desk of the latest large, comprehensive, excellently-written and very well-produced volume from Norman Friedman was welcomed with great pleasure.
Norman Friedman is a well-known American naval author, analyst and historian. He has also published extensively on the ships of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States and British navies, as well as on naval gunnery. He turns his attention here to British battleships of the nineteenth century, so completing his exhaustive studies of the ships of the Royal Navy from the end of the Age of Sail onwards, starting with wooden-hulled, sail and steam-powered cruising and battleship types, both paddle and screw-driven.
T is fi ne volume takes us back to the 1860s and up to the battleship revolution of the fi rst decade of the twentieth century, culminating in the launch of the revolutionary Dreadnought, in 1906, which changed the face of battleship design and warfare. T e book supplements Friedman’s earlier (2015) study in the same series, T e British Battleship 1906- 1946; together these two cover the complete period of steam battleships in British naval service.
As with Norman Friedman’s previous books, this work is a visual treasure-trove of its subject. Many Admiralty plans from the archives of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich are liberally spread throughout its pages. T ey include many very informative images of guns, turrets, fi xtures and fi ttings as well as of the ships themselves. A number of pages at the center of the volume off er Admiralty
plans reproduced in full color, including two fold- out double-page spreads and one four-page profi le spread of HMS Camperdown of 1885. T ese are supplemented by several plans from the United States Naval History and Heritage Command (formerly the Naval Historical Center), and a few from Australian archives. Line drawings by A D Baker III and some plans from the collection of Norman Friedman himself are also included.
A wealth of archive photographs from the whole period, all monochrome (as were the originals), also illustrates this defi nitive work. A number of the images show ships of other national navies, particularly examples from the competitive and growing fl eet of France (the ironclad la Gloire ordered in 1858 is an example, to which the still- surviving HMS Warrior of 1860 was Britain’s answer). T e striking dustjacket illustration is reproduced from an oil painting by Eduardo de Martino in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, T e Channel Fleet at Sea, July 1898; the line is led by the pre-dreadnought battleship Majestic, which had been commissioned in 1895.
Norman Friedman’s writing style is lucid, well- written and very readable. He excels at putting his account of the advances in naval technology into the context of strategy, economics and politics that surrounded them and in which they developed.
T is is very valuable volume for anyone interested in the history and development of the capital warships of the nineteenth century, particularly of the most powerful warships of Victoria’s black battlefl eet. It is sure to become a defi nitive classic on its subject.
Roger Marsh Shantraud, Co. Clare, Ireland
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