Keegan - Battle At Sea: From Man-of-War to Submarine

From Man-of-War to Submarine

JOHN KEEGAN

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Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781446496114

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Pimlico 2004

6 8 10 9 7

Copyright John Keegan 1988

John Keegan has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published in Great Britain as The Price of Admiralty by Hutchinson 1988

First Pimlico edition, published as Battle at Sea 1993

Second Pimlico edition 2004

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ISBN 9781844137374

In memory

of my grandfather

John Bridgman

(18821954)

of Toomdeely, County Limerick

and for my son

Thomas John Bridgman Keegan

and my grandson

Benjamin Bridgman Newmark

John Keegan is the Defence Editor of the Daily Telegraph and Britains foremost military historian. The Reith Lecturer in 1998, he is the author of many bestselling books including The Face of Battle, The Mask of Command, Six Armies in Normandy, The Second World War, A History of Warfare (awarded the Duff Cooper Prize), Warpaths, The Battle for History, The First World War, and most recently, Intelligence in War.

For many years John Keegan was the Senior Lecturer in Military History at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and he has been a Fellow of Princeton University and Delmas Distinguished Professor of History at Vassar. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He received the OBE in the Gulf War honours list, and was knighted in the Millennium honours list in 1999.

Nelson and his officers (Engraving) ()

Plates

Santissima Trinidad, flagship of the Spanish Admiral Cisneros at Trafalgar

HMS Victory, as painted by Constable

Nelson shot down on the quarterdeck of Victory, by Denis Dighton

Swiftsure, Bahama, Colossus and Argonaute at Trafalgar

Scene from the Mizzen starboard shrouds of HMS Victory at Trafalgar by William Turner

HMS Victory entering Gibraltar harbour by Clarkson Stanfield

Vice-Admiral Sir Cuthbert Collingwood

Captain (later Rear-Admiral Sir) Thomas Masterman Hardy

Vice-Admiral Horatio, 1st Viscount Nelson

Vice-Admiral Pierre Charles Jean Baptiste Sylvestre (Comte de) Villeneuve

HMS Iron Duke, Jellicoes flagship at Jutland

HMS Warspite, of the 5th Battle Squadron

The battle line of the Grand Fleet

The battlecruisers Indomitable and Inflexible steaming to engage the German battle line

The battlecruiser Seydlitz after Jutland

HMS Lion suffering a hit by Lutzow

HMS Invincible with HM Destroyer Badger searching for survivors

Admiral Sir John Jellico aboard HMS Iron Duke

Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty, commander of the Battlecruiser Fleet at Jutland

Admiral Franz Hipper, commander of the First Scouting Group of Gann battlecruisers at Jutland

Admiral Reinhard Scheer, commander of the German High Seas Fleet, Admiral Prince Heinrich and the German Crown Prince

USS Yorktown, flagship of Admiral Fletcher

Yorktown under attack by Japanese bombers

Damage control parties on Yorktowns flight deck

Hiryu manoeuvring at high speed

The Japanese cruiser Mikuma escaping from the Battle of Midway

Zero fighters take off from the flight deck of Akagi

Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of Pacific Fleet, and Vice-Admiral Raymond Spruance

Vice-Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, commander of US carrier forces

Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, commander of the Japanese carrier fleet

Admiral Isuruku Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet

British merchant under convoy by a Royal Navy destroyer

An Atlantic convoy changing course during the Battle of the Atlantic

U-39, a Type VII U-boat, on exercise in the Baltic

A United States Navy submarine charging a U-boat

The crew of a sinking U-boat

A conference of merchant captains at Liverpool

Admiral Sir Max Horton, commander, Western Approaches

Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, commander of the German U-boat fleet.

Maps

Trafalgar, location map

Trafalgar, morning, 21 October 1805 and Nelson and Collingwood (breaking the line)

Jutland, location map, and at about 6.30pm, 31 May 1916

Battle of Midway

Allied Shipping Losses, 1 August 194231 May 1943

North Atlantic Convoys and the positions of Convoys SC112 and HX229, 1720 March 1943

My thanks are due first to those who taught me the little I know about ships, seamanship and sailing: John Watson, of Trinity College, Oxford, who taught me to sail in a Fleetwind dinghy at Port Meadow in our freshman term in 1953; the officers of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst Sailing Club, and particularly Lieutenant-Colonel John Carver, with whom I cruised in the Sandhurst yachts Wishstream and Wishstream II in the Solent and Channel in 196070; the naval historian, the late A. B. Rodger, my Balliol tutor; and my grandfather, John Bridgman, whose lifelong interest in the sea aroused my own. It was he who introduced me to the classics of naval and nautical literature in childhood, made me ship models, told me sea stories and launched me in imagination on the waters. He was the most delightful of grandfathers.

My thanks are also due to the staffs of several specialist libraries: Mr Andrew Orgill and his staff at the Central Library, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst; Mr Michael Sims and his staff at the Staff College Library; Mr John Andrews and Miss Mavis Simpson at the Ministry of Defence Library; and the staffs of the National Maritime Museum Library and the London Library.

I should particularly like to thank friends and colleagues at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and the Daily Telegraph: Mr James Allan, Mr Conrad Black, Dr Anthony Clayton, Lord Deedes, Mr Jeremy Deedes, Mr Trevor Grove, Mr Nigel Horne, Mr Andrew Hutchinson, Miss Claire Jordan, Mr Andrew Knight, Mr Michael Orr, Mr Nigel Wade and Mr Ned Willmott; Ned Willmotts capacity to answer the most abstruse enquiry about twentieth-century naval history without recourse to printed sources continues to astonish me. I owe warmest thanks of all to Mr Max Hastings, who allowed me the time to write this book.