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When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, the British Battle Fleet comprised ships that were only marginally different from those that had won the Battle of Trafalgar a generation earlier. By the end of her reign in 1901 their successors would have been unrecognisable to Nelson's sailors. Gone were the towering sail plans, the 'wooden walls' and large numbers of relatively small muzzle-loading guns, to be replaced by black-painted steel hulls, driven independent of the winds by steam machinery, protected with sophisticated armour, and mounting a very few large breech-loading guns firing explosive shells. The only thing unchanged was the Royal Navy's dominance of the world's oceans, seized at Trafalgar and never relinquished. How the Naval Administration coped with this unprecedented revolution in technology without losing maritime ascendancy is the theme of this latest book by Norman Friedman. He analyses the broader factors of politics, economics and international rivalry that bore down on the decision-making and explains how these influences worked through into the ships that were actually built. The result is a much deeper and more sympathetic understanding of the 19th-century Royal Navy and its warship designs. It is a well-illustrated and comprehensive gallery of photographs with in-depth captions accompanied by specially commissioned plans of the important classes by A. D. Baker, and a colour section featuring the original Admiralty draughts, including a spectacular double gatefold. 400 huge pages, 25 x 29.5cm.
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