Charting the naval history of the Great War
Drawing on U-boat logbooks, survivor accounts and modern wreck surveys, this reconstruction follows a single attack on a British merchantman from sighting to sinking. It reveals how little time separated calculation from catastrophe beneath the Atlantic swell.
By April 1917, German U-boats were sinking merchant shipping faster than Britain could replace it, and the nation's food reserves had dwindled to weeks. This account examines the Admiralty's reluctant adoption of the convoy system and the bureaucratic battle that preceded it.
Disguised as harmless trawlers and colliers, the Royal Navy's Q-ships fought a peculiar and dangerous deception war against the U-boat menace. This archival study examines the career of HMS Farnborough and asks whether the legend of the mystery ships survives close scrutiny.