The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Naval Battles
Edited: Richard Russell Lawrence
Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers
Publishing Date: 2003
Pgs: 640
Disposition: My bookshelf
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REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Summary:

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Genre:
History
Navy
Armed Forces
Militaria
Engineering
War

Why this book:
I love a good fleet action story.
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Favorite Character:
Archimedes in the Siege of Syracuse in the Second Punic War was a badassed merchant of death.

Least Favorite Character:
William Bligh and anyone above the rank of Captain during the Age of Sail, right up until the aftermath of the First World War in the British Navy.

Character I Most Identified With:

Plot Holes/Out of Character:

Favorite Scene:
A sailor swimming for shore off Dunkirk whose ship was just sunk by dive bombers, what's he thinking about...England, glory, revenge, mother...nope, his wife's ass inspires him to keep swimming.

The Royal Navy seaplane pilot returning from a cloudy, foggy, rainy recon mission that seemed to have combat all around him, sees his squadron and joins the flying v formation headed towards home, only to realize that he has slipped his plane into formation with a flight of German Messerschmitt planes heading to attack. Before he’s caught out, he fires into the nearest plane and blasts at the formation as he breaks for a cloudbank and runs for home.

Favorite Quote:
"...the odour of change..." said in reference to the British fleet being forced out of Toulon by Napoleon.

A British bomb disposal-man in the Falklands: “The threat of the unexploded bombs was totally underestimated in the South Atlantic. Nowadays when the armed services deploy, they take a whole bomb disposal squadron of 180 men. In 1982, there were just two of us. Jim and I went down to the Falklands with our precis from the bomb disposal course and a couple of copies of Jane's Defense Weekly on what weapons the enemy might use. It sounds incredible, but it's true.” Jim didn’t make it home.

Hmm Moments:
The Spartan / Syracusan battles with the Athenians leading to their defeat in the Peloponnesian War is an interesting bit of history. As a much younger person reading about this in history, it never dawned on me that Siciliy was Sicily and that the Grecian city-states were indeed colonizing the Mediterranean Sea. And also, that Athens lost some of those wars. Always seemed in school history books that the Athenians always won. And the Golden Age of Greece was so much more than just Athens. Thanks to this I may need to read up on some Grecian history. I wonder what else I missed, misinterpreted, or just didn't learn.

A soldier awaiting evacuation from Dunkirk who is upset that the commanders and higher-ups in the British Expeditionary Force didn't let them fight the Germans, thinking that at least they could have held them for a couple of weeks further up the road and allowed this evacuation to take place in a more orderly fashion. Could they though? Or would that have given the Nazis exactly what they were hoping for, an opportunity to destroy the BEF before it managed to embark for England? And if the BEF had been destroyed on those beaches, would England have continued fighting...and would the Nazis have stopped at the Channel to regroup and fortify, or would they have come rolling across and opened another bloody theater of war?

I wonder if the Blitz had been concentrating on the ports would the imports not getting in-country have done more to demoralize the Brits than the threats of nightly bombing runs over the city.

Why the Germans in WW2 didn't push the Spanish to enter the war and alongside the Italians capture Gibraltar and Morroco is ludicrous. Locking up the entrance to the Mediterranean would have made Fortress Europa a much harder nut to crack, from an armchair historical quarterback perspective anyway.

WTF Moments:
Don John only had to hold together a mixed fleet from Venice, Genoa, Spain, and the Papal States when none of them trusted each other and had even fought wars against each other in the preceding years. Only the decree of the Pope and their fear of the Ottomans held them together. What could possibly go wrong?

The Spithead and related fleetwide mutinies where the seamen demanded better treatment and pay brought the Navy more into line with the Army. Also, the demand that troublesome officers who were put off of ships shouldn't be put back onto ships that they were cashiered from was brought forth. In this time, Captain William Bligh was put off of a ship, yes, that William Bligh. The height of stupidity that that SOB was ever placed in command of another ship considering his temperament and treatment of the crew. The Admiralty created the situations via his being given command of the Bounty, despite his record, that resulted in the most famous mutiny in history.

So after promising to honor the pact made with the strikers, I refuse to call them mutineers, and pardon any offenders, the aristocratic dickheads in command of the brutish navy did what they always did, hung the leaders, purged the ranks, and flogged anyone who got out of line. William Bligh belonged in the brutish navy.

So what did the Royal Navy do with the wounded in the heat of battle during the War of 1812, if the wounded was judged to be done for by the laypeople on deck, they were often tossed overboard...still alive to drown. Oh, officers were by and large carried below. If the wounded was found by their friends, they were carried to the ship's surgeon. The wayward who fell among those who didn't know them seem to be consigned to drown before their wounds could take them...wonder how much petty revenge was carried out in those instances amidst the cannonade and musket fire. Humans are petty. You know they did it. Life was cheap on the gun decks of the Royal Navy in the early 1800s.

Meh / PFFT Moments:
This is Euro-centric. The gap of years leaves out the Mongol invasions of Japan and their amphibious invasion and counterattacks which would have made a good chapter all on their own.

From the early 1600s through at least the early 1800s, and I'm fairly certain up until WW2, the men running the British Royal Navy were dicks. Look no further than Rear Admiral Calder having to defend against Napoleon's strike force coming for the English Channel while Nelson was busy chasing them around the West Indies on the other side of the Atlantic to find an example of this.

In heavy fog, Calder managed to force them off and capture two ships. But he didn't do enough and was court-martialed. At his court-martial, he was reprimanded, yet they said he did an admirable job. The disconnect is mindboggling. This is what happens when you let inbred, aristocratic nimrods run a military service.

Eyewitness? My ass! The men on board the Cumberland as her cannon shells bounced off the Merimmac's iron cladding, the ship sank beneath them, and the renamed CSS Virginia came around for another attack cheered the colors. ...c'mon. That's an unreliable narrator. We know war is hell. This is more aristocratic nonsense trying to paint war as noble and heroic. We know a myth when we hear one.

CSS torpedo boat v. USS Housatonic. A torpedo boat that drags the torpedo into the target. More torpedo tug than boat. Sounds totally safe and effective. Pfft.

"Eyewitness"...during the destruction of the Akagi at Midway, the narrator couldn't have known what was happening on the ship after he was wounded, broke his ankles and burned, and carried off the ship to the Cruiser Nagara, but he keeps up a heroic narrative of the firefighters trying to put out the fires and save the Aircraft Carrier Akagi. Sounds heroic, but is obviously myth, since there was no way that he could have seen what he was reporting.

Wonder if the British action at Taranto against the Italian Navy informed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? The lesson of what happened to the Italian Navy definitely wasn't learned and implemented around the world by the US Navy at Pearl Harbor. Taranto proved that such an attack wasn't an impossibility. Wonder if a war footing was in place for the US Navy if they would've had that many ships at anchor in the harbor. Sheer luck that the Aircraft Carriers were deployed and not sitting there where the Japanese expected them to be.

The Sigh:
Nelson expected other ships, in the time before radio, to follow his signal flags when he over and over again ignored the signal flags of his superiors and did what he wanted to do was hypocrisy. He was the Brat Prince of the Royal Navy. He must have had powerful benefactors who covered him when superiors wanted to cashier him. I can't imagine within the priggish aristocratic BS that was the Admiralty that his antics went over well. He just had bigger, more priggish, and powerful people covering his backside.

The Russian descriptions of the Battle of Tsushima, you can tell, were translated into British English before finding their way into this collection.

Wisdom:
I'm sure that people being people, it wasn't as easy as ancient writers make out. The "and one man stood and convinced the citizens and all the people of the countryside to change sides and throw their allegiance to their previous opponents through the awesome power of his oratory skills" ...sounds suspiciously like history written by orators. Doesn't it?

Juxtaposition:
After the age of sail, as much as I complained about some of the eyewitness testimonies and the arrogance of the aristocracy, the age of coal and steam is sedate and antiseptic. I realize that this is largely due to the ships that were smacked in the age of sail, a lot of the time, were captured or had large numbers of survivors, while in the age of coal and steam with heavier guns, the ships burned, exploded, and sank with all hands much more often

The Unexpected:
And Archimedes dies in the streets of Syracuse during a Roman invasion, killed by an unnamed common Roman soldier.

The torpedo boat later named the Hundley sank five times against only one attack on enemy vessels. Of the nine-man crew each time, she was recovered each time, the commander survive twice and once two crew members survived, the others all drowned. This was a waste of the lives of the brave.

Missed Opportunity:
So, we went from 31BC to 1571? From Anthony and Cleopatra vs Octavian to the Battle of Lepanto...did no major naval engagements of note happen in those 600 years?

The Caribbean fleet actions after the American Revolution between British and French fleets determined the future of Jamaica, Bermuda, the Bahamas, effectively the British possessions in the Caribbean and Western Atlantic. If the French Admiral had let the Zelee fall to the British and kept his fleet out of reach until a time of his choosing, history may have been significantly different. If M. de Bouganville hadn't chosen discretion over valor and the balance of the fleet following his lead instead of the Admiral's orders, this would've been a far different battle fought off the Saints.
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Conclusions I’ve Drawn:
Life in the Navy for anyone below the rank of Captain was always HELL.

Things I’d Like to See:
Has convinced me to give some of the MANY other Mammoth series books a look-see.

Author Assessment:

Editorial Assessment:
Well done.
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