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The naval town of Portsmouth bore a large portion of the brunt of the casualties lost at the Battle of Jutland (1916). The article will explore the precedent of naval philanthropy in Portsmouth and its historical links with naval disasters affecting the town which will lead to an analysis of how the town viewed their civic duty and mobilised local support for war widows immediately after the Battle of Jutland. It will then turn to assess the role of the local War Pensions Statutory Committee and its intersections with charitable organisations such as the Royal Patriotic Fund and Lady Beatty's Jutland Fund. The analysis will lastly explore some of the stories of the nearly 100-strong Jutland war widows who worked in Portsmouth Royal Dockyard during the war. It will highlight the agency of civic leaders in determining aspects of World War One relief and how war widows were able to navigate and survive their personal tragedies in a naval town. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eighteenth-century naval ships were impressive infrastructures, but subjected to extraordinary strain. To assist with their "voyage repairs," the Royal Navy gradually established numerous overseas bases, displaying the power, reach, and ruthless logistical efficiency of the British state. This article, however, is concerned with what happened where no such bases (yet) existed, in parts of the world falling in between areas of direct British administration, control, or influence. The specific restrictions imposed by technology and infrastructures have been studied by historians interested in naval strategy, but they can also help to reframe national narratives of power or observe the transnational interactions surrounding access to knowledge and resources. This paper discusses the material, cultural, and diplomatic constraints that could appear when vessels, and especially "discovery ships," sailed in strange waters or sought technical assistance in allied ports. I argue that the "mortification" of some commanders at their vessels' unfitness for service was an important – and often neglected – element on the palette of emotions undergone by voyagers, capturing their strong sense of ultimate material powerlessness. Such frustration even became embedded in imperial cartography, as shown by the case study of Matthew Flinders. This perspective highlights the limits of naval technology, complicating imperialistic "success stories" and better reintegrating the navy into the history of maritime travel and transportation, from which it is often singled out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the First World War, the law stated that only Anglican clergy could perform religious services aboard British warships; clergy of other denominations were, other than in exceptional circumstances, barred from undertaking this role. For a brief period at the start of the twentieth century an informal and unpublicized attempt was made to circumvent this requirement and provide Catholic sailors with access to their own priests at sea. The reasons for this policy, how it operated and why it ended are explored in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the extent to which socioeconomic background affects the chances of promotion to senior ranks within the Royal Navy and how the upwardly mobile often face a "class ceiling." The researchers collected quantitative data within the Royal Navy. The research found a disproportionate overrepresentation of officers from socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds, creating a homogenous upper echelon and self-selecting elite hierarchy. The authors argue for the systematic collection of socioeconomic background data and longitudinal analysis to focus efforts toward engendering the conditions for social mobility and the ability to quantitatively assess the impact of policy changes on future social mobility outcomes. The research contributes to understand contemporary social mobility issues and is the first quantitative analysis of Royal Navy officers' socioeconomic backgrounds. The research provides perspectives on which other Armed Forces (including the United States) that face diversity issues could reflect. The article repositions military issues in mainstream academic discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During World War II, Britain established a liaison officer with the Soviet Fleet in the Black Sea. Military cooperation between the western allies and the USSR is often regarded as minimal and unsuccessful, but this post demonstrated more positive cooperation. There were two crises when there were accusations of misbehaviour, and there were occasions when he was idle, but these were handled successfully in Whitehall. The post endured, and successive officers did a good job of operational liaison, as well as providing unique intelligence insights from a Soviet fighting front, right up until the end of the war in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article explores the significance of two British military expeditions deployed to the ancient Sudanese port city of Suakin on the Red Sea coast in 1884 and 1885. Although the British government claimed the expeditions were organized to support Egyptian forces in Sudan during the Mahdist revolt, the evidence suggests instead that the intervention was orchestrated as part of a wider effort to seize all Egyptian ports in the Red Sea to prevent them from falling into French hands. This move came as Britain began increasingly to rely on the imperial sea lanes to support its status as a global power in the late nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In August 1914 the Royal Navy entered the First World War without a clear sense of how it was going to undertake anti-submarine warfare (ASW). In part this was a technical issue; fundamentally the requirements of ASW were at the very edge of what was then possible. This article will, however, argue that the problem ran deeper, and stemmed from cultural assumptions about what the role of the Royal Navy was, and how it should seek to address the challenge posed by submarines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores the accounting regulations imposed on sea officers, particularly the purser, on board Royal Navy ships between 1731 and 1808. This was a period in which the Royal Navy grew to become one of the largest enterprises in Europe with operations throughout the world. The governance, control and accountability practices imposed upon pursers are analysed. The Regulations for accounting records to be kept by pursers indicate that accounting changed very little in the analysis period, until 1808, when it became substantially more detailed. Drawing on institutional theory, it is argued that this was due to external pressures for increased governance following the impeachment of Melville (First Lord of the Admiralty), public spending administrative and accounting reforms and political disapproval of 'offices of profit'. The article provides important insights to the development of accounting, governance, audit and accountability within the Royal Navy, and enhances understanding of the historically unique role of pursers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the utility of naval aviation, specifically the contribution of the British naval air arm to Operation Overlord. It argues that while there were practical reasons for carriers not being present directly off the Normandy beaches, British naval aviation supported the invasion both directly (from ashore, and from carriers operating at a distance) and indirectly, over a long period. It was also performing a range of other roles in several theatres. Navies and naval aviation contribute to campaigns in a way that is different to land-based forces; understanding this requires a bigger map and a longer timeline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctor William Gunn had a long and varied career in the Royal Navy. After spending time on anti-slavery patrols along the west coast of Africa, he was posted to the south Pacific. At Pitcairn Island, he treated the inhabitants during an influenza epidemic, proving himself to be a determined and dedicated practitioner. Subsequently, he was appointed head of the medical department at Chatham Royal Dockyard (1859–1865), an appointment that coincided with the final stages of the Royal Navy's transition from sail and wood to steam and iron. The impact of these changes on the health of dockworkers was quickly felt at Chatham, and Gunn found himself in charge during the building of the first iron warship in a royal dockyard. His story thus offers a window through which to observe a practitioner confronting the health issues and medical uncertainties thrown up by technological change in the Victorian era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1830s and 1840s, the Hydrographic Office of the British Admiralty developed and oversaw one of the major state-run surveying projects of the nineteenth century. This involved a range of instruments whose circulation was increasingly regulated. Using extant museum collections and the correspondence of those involved, this article explores how such objects can be used to discuss both bureaucratic organization at a time of expanding government and the complex issues of sociability involved in hydrographic surveying. Surveying officers worked in a context in which the propriety of property on public service was a pervasive question. Instruments might be given as gifts between officers, appropriated as recompense, absorbed as state property, and disputed between friends. The ownership, provision, and treatment of instruments in particular could be used to demonstrate an officer’s peculiar zeal or institutional neglect. To those outside the ship, what was understood as over-instrumentation became amusing spectacle. On board, their use was part of a deeply hierarchical order of work in regions of colonial and mercantile importance. In examining the relationships around these instruments of survey, the paper proposes a richer understanding of the material culture of hydrography in the early nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a commonplace that the Royal Navy entered the Great War intending to strangle the German economy through a strategy of blockade. This was not so. Prior to 1912 blockade was mainly seen as a means of attaining operational intelligence; economic warfare was secondary. For legal reasons blockade had to be abandoned in 1912. Thereafter, only contraband control remained as a means of waging economic warfare, and this was seen purely as a way of luring the Germans to battle. In 1914 the Royal Navy had no grand strategy, a fact that explains its hesitant performance in the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the evolution of the Royal Navy’s policy relating to the use of amphetamines during the Second World War. This discussion, which demonstrates the groundbreaking yet restrictive nature of naval drug policy, is placed in the wider context of medical research in the Royal Navy during the conflict, in which the organisation was the last of the Services to develop its own personnel research committee. In turn, the article examines the motivation for utilising the drug, which included considerations relating to both wakefulness, in combat situations, and well-being, in survival at sea situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provision of naval gunfire support was an important aspect of the Falklands War. By the end of the 1970s, naval gunfire support appeared to be doomed, but its vital role during the Falklands War led to a timely reappraisal. Indeed, the use of naval gunfire support during the Iraq War in 2003 and the conflict in Libya in 2011 vindicated the revival of interest in the capability. The Falklands War provided a number of valuable lessons about the role and significance of naval gunfire support, particularly during amphibious and expeditionary operations. With the threat of defence cuts ever-present, it is important that those lessons are not forgotten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revises previous interpretations of the Imperial Maritime League, and adds new detail to our understanding of Edwardian patriotic leagues, by highlighting the relevance of radical right ideology. A product of division in the Navy League, the Imperial Maritime League channelled extra-parliamentary sentiment into specific navalist causes, and worked closely with likeminded newspaper editors and naval officers to challenge the Unionist leadership, Admiralty, and Navy League. The new league was ultimately undermined by British victory in the naval race, and the Navy League’s preparedness to react positively to the challenge of a new navalist league. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Murray Levick is best known for being one of the surgeons on Scott’s Terra Nova Antarctic expedition (1910–1913) and, as a member of the Northern Party of that expedition, spending a winter living in a snow hole when the ship was unable to collect the men. However, his career encompassed much more than that. He served in the Royal Navy during both World Wars and was a pioneer in physical medicine and rehabilitation. He also founded the British Schools Exploring Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edward Leicester Atkinson qualified at St Thomas's Hospital in 1906 and joined the Navy in 1908. He was a doctor and parasitologist on Captain Scott's Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic and had to take charge of the expedition when Scott died on his return from the South Pole. After the expedition he went to China and discovered the cause of schistosomiasis, returning at the start of the First World War in which he served with distinction, winning a DSO and Albert Medal but also being severely injured. After the war he served in various naval posts and became the youngest Surgeon Captain in the Navy before being retired on health grounds in 1928. He died at sea the following year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how Sir John Fisher, together with Edward VII, sought to use Britain’s naval strength as a tool of deterrence against Germany. By highlighting the Royal Navy’s strength and German vulnerability, they tried to convince policymakers in Berlin that war was not in German interests. This attitude underpinned much of Fisher’s naval policy and helps to explain some of his more extreme statements and actions, which have been the source of certain contradictions within the current historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines Nicholas Lambert’s criticisms of the article ‘Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution Reconsidered: Winston Churchill at the Admiralty, 1911–1914’ (War in History 18, 2011), which challenged revisionist claims that in July 1914 the Royal Navy was on the verge of implementing a ‘naval revolution’ based on radical ideas attributed to Admiral Sir John Fisher. It demonstrates that Lambert’s criticisms are unfounded, and provides additional evidence to support an alternative interpretation of British naval policy in the period 1912–14. Important changes were undoubtedly under way on the eve of the First World War, but the revisionists exaggerate Fisher’s influence and oversimplify an inherently complex decision-making process. The Admiralty’s plan to substitute torpedo craft for some of the battleships in its 1914 programme was intended to bolster a conservative strategy, and the changes under consideration were essentially evolutionary in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Royal Navy’s 1939 ‘Fighting Instructions’ provide a unique and underutilized window onto British naval doctrine in the World War II era. A comparison with US and Japanese pre-war tactical/operational thinking clarifies and illuminates the ideas and issues faced by naval officers in the interwar period. Additionally, this line of inquiry foregrounds the question of how we assess naval tactical schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Like the larger history of amateur theatre in the long nineteenth century, the history of shipboard theatricals reveals how British drama circulated outside the commercial theatre marketplace. The documents reproduced point to particular performances by groups of amateurs that mounted many such events, and as more documents of this sort are uncovered we can expect to learn more about the reception and adaptation of British drama, not to mention new perspectives on the cultural history of the Royal Navy. The annotated reviews of naval theatricals included extend Patrick O'Neill's work on theatricals mounted by British officers and sailors on Arctic expeditions between 1819 and 1875, and Gillian Russell's exploration of theatricals in the Georgian navy. As these late-nineteenth-century documents demonstrate, theatricals remained popular with sailors and officers throughout the long nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges claims by revisionist historians that in July 1914 the Royal Navy was on the verge of instituting a ‘naval revolution’ based on the ideas of Admiral Sir John Fisher. Winston Churchill, the first lord of the Admiralty, was not prepared to rely on Fisher’s concept of ‘flotilla defence’ in the North Sea, as revisionists contend. Nor did he wish to send capital ships to distant waters. He increasingly looked to submarines to protect Britain’s interests in the Mediterranean, a secondary theatre, but he still believed that Britain must maintain a preponderance of strength over Germany in capital ships in the North Sea. Churchill’s strategic views were generally conservative. He hoped that new designs or new technologies would one day allow submarines to supplant battleships, and he actively supported measures that might help to make this possible. But there is no evidence that he and his naval advisers were ready to gamble on a radical departure in force structure or naval strategy on the eve of the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]