Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Illuminating the Dark Ages, 30 Jan 2002
By A Customer
This book really does shed light on the dark ages of Victorian warship design, more so than Brown with Warrior to Dreadnought.
The book depicts the balance between technical advance and economic constraint.
The book has many interesting und unusual photographs and drawings and is well researched.
Some of the rationals for design drawn by the author appear construed and may not have been apparant to those involved at the time.
A personal defence of the DNC Barneby and his designs is given, but it is ashame that less is said about him as a person, as he is supposed to have had unorthodox philosophical idears.
This book is a must for those who have fallen in love with that odd collection of ships of the British Naval at the turn of the last century.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book long overdue, 23 Jun 2008
Apparently it took some distance to do justice to the attitudes and attempts of the British Admiralty (and the engineers designing capital ships on their orders) to provide their navy with the right means for keeping up the Empire. John Beeler is as distant as an author can be: an American from Alabama, writing more than 120 years after that period.
The result is a scientifically competent study of the first twenty years of British ironclad design when the Royal Navy was confronted by multiple challenges, both technically and politically. Many historians and naval writers alike have regarded this time as a period characterized by conservatism, backwardness and outright confusion on the part of the Admiralty, and they prove this by the assortment of ships assembled in this period - ranging from clumsy sailing affairs to almost modern battleships. Beeler truly records all these arguments and then dismantles them, point by point, founded on solid evidence derived from contemporary primary and an even greater wealth of secondary sources. He points out that the building policy followed through by the admiralty was influenced by a lot of factors - the worldwide commitment of the navy (necessitating the retaining of masts and sails for lack of the network of coaling stations necessary for an all-steam navy with global commitments), the rapid technological advance, particularly on the part of guns and armour, by which ships were deemed advanced when being laid down, obsolescent when commissioned and outright obsolete only a few years into their service, and finally the economical constraints (forcing the admiralty to try to get out the most of single ships.) Most important however, and he clearly makes this point, was the tactical conundrum the Admiralty was stuck with: it was clear that the new navy of steaming, heavily armed and armoured ironclads necessitated new tactics, but there was no way to say for sure which ones, and that in turn gave room to wild tactical ideas and the ensuing variety of designs.
He also points out that the Royal Navy of the 1870s and 80s was derided by historians on the grounds of hindsight perception. I found it quite refreshing to read a sentence like this one: "It may appear obvious once pointed out, but it is important to bear in mind that in the event of war (...) the Royal Navy would have faced the Russian fleet - such as it was - rather than its own counterpart of twenty years later." It is, indeed.
To be true: Beeler is not the first historian to air these statements. The merits of his book lie in the fact that, for the first time, all these points are compiled into a general case for the restoration of the Admiralty's, naval architects' and politicians' reputations, by putting their decisions into the overall political and historical, economical and social context of the time. A book therefore long overdue.
Also long overdue is the re-appraisal of the work of Nathaniel Barnaby who has been blamed (most prominently by Oscar Parkes) for turning the Royal Navy into a 'collection of samples'. Beeler doesn't make a secret of his fondness for the man whom he credits with having done the least rewarding job at the time (rather than working, for better pay, for clients who would actually have heeded his advice) against much ignorance from their Lordships. He portrays Barnaby not as the stupid draughtsman he has been regarded by many authors, mostly due to his lack of eloquence and his moderate nature, but as a gifted theoretician of naval warfare who predicted many of its developments rather accurately, and based his suggestions on these visions. In this respect, he introduces Barnaby not as a successor to Edward Reed (whose brilliant eloquence made him look better to contemporaries and historians alike) but as a tutor to William White whose designs owe much to the ones by his great teacher.
As to the book proper, many images illustrate a well-written if heavily annotated text (the annotations for readabilitiy's sake always being set up as footnotes on the same page, though.) An exhaustive bibliography completes the book. The edition I had in hand (2003) suffers a little from sloppy revision which has allowed some errata into the book, but not sufficient to justify the book's devaluation.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ugliest ships ever, 17 May 2007
Or perhaps the pre-Dreadnought battleships were that bit uglier.
I've always thought the designers had no clear idea what they were building, or why they were building it, or how to go about building it, and then just mixing raw materials together randomly (in a dark room, with eyes closed) and throwing the finished result at an astonished world like a magician.
Well, they had their reasons and ideas and problems and adversaries, pure guesswork made to look like science and two shells lobbed at a Chinese rowingboat deciding how Yamato looked 70 years later. It must have been terrific fun.
No .......I'm joking. It was a terribly serious business dealing with any number of new technologies in new and untested combinations, at the forefront of modern science, and the book illustrates detailed and splendidly how these monstrosities came to be. Iron or steel? Sail or no sail? Turrets? Coastal defense only? Were they really needed at ALL?? Discussions and disagreements were ferocious, and the cost of a single ship made everyone howl with anguish. 30 years later much larger ships were built in series as a matter of course. But 30 years is a generation, half a lifetime, and much could and did happen. Germany hadn't, not yet.
Battleship design has come and gone, no longer does it signal the might of an empire, but perhaps that's why we find it interesting, sea power archaeology.
Including lots of charming high-quality pictures. God, they're so ugly they're irresistible.
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by Gary Staff
