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(More customer reviews)from Norman times to the time of the Dreadnought. The book focuses totally on the development of the British Battle fleet, following it from war to war, helped along by colour plates, photographs and line-drawings of ships and their designs. Fred T. Jane knows his ships and this book was FIRST published in 1912. For people interested in the creation of the British Battle Fleets and the pre-World War One status of the navies, this is the book for them.
If you like this book, also try ; The Great Admirals:Command at Sea 1587-1945 edited by Jack Sweetman.
Click Here to see more reviews about: BRITISH BATTLE-FLEET: Its Inception and Growth Throughout the Centuries (Conway Classics)
Fred T Jane (1865-1916) could almost be termed the father of modern navaljournalism. He produced his first reference book in 1882 at the time of the Royal Navy's bombardment of Alexandria, a collection of his own pen and ink sketches to inform the public aboutthe ships taking part. Then followed his All the World's Fighting Ships in 1897,published since then as an annualreference book covering the world's navies.In one sense Jane was a product of the time, reflecting public interest in naval affairs and the size ofthe world's fleets in particular, but he also helped to shape public perceptions. He increased public knowledge of the characteristics of warships, their armaments, propulsion andprotection. He was a prolific writer, both of quasi-fictionand of valued references, butalways his purpose was to add to public knowledge. The ImperialRussian Navy (1899) was followed by The Imperial Japanese Navy (1904), reflecting the Japanese victory over Russia that year. The public had to wait for The British Battle Fleet until1912, when the naval arms race with Germany was nearing its climax. The book is rightly seen as a classic, read as much for its views on the future of naval warfare as its detailed statistics. As Jane notes in his preface, itdiffers from most'standard' histories in being concerned with the creation of fleets rather than arcane dissection ofancient sea-fights. He covers the whole sweep of British naval history from Alfred the Great to the era of the Dreadnought battleship, and the colour illustrations by W L Wyllie RA and an incisive introduction by the naval historian Antony Preston add a final flourishto a unique history.?
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