Andrew Lambert

John Scott Russell — Ships, Science and Scandal in the Age of Transition

Abstract Victorian engineer and educator John Scott Russell (1808–82) built his career on an impressive scientific education, a fluent pen and the ability to bridge the intellectual gap between theory and practice during the critical decades of the mid-nineteenth century. Abandoning an academic career to pursue his fortune in engineering, Russell made important contributions to hydrodynamics, iron shipbuilding and dissemination of new technologies. His organizational abilities secured a leading role in the 1851 Great Exhibition. With the support of Rotherham ironmaster Charles Geach MP he operated shipyards on the Isle of Dogs, building Brunels massive Great Eastern. Russells contribution to the project was immense, including most of the detailed design, the hull and paddle wheel engines. An acrimonious feud with Brunel ended in disaster, the ship was overdue, and over-budget, Russell was bankrupted, and family and friends blamed him for Brunels early death. After 1860 he worked as a consultant engineer, wrote a monumental study of shipbuilding, founded the Royal Institute of Naval Architects and inspired the creation of the School of Naval Architecture. He led the debate between theory and practice as shipbuilding moved from art to science. Russells problems stemmed from the lack of capital. This led him to over-extend himself, spreading his resources too thin. When his shipbuilding career began to unravel, he lacked the reserves to weather economic recession. Furthermore he was too clever and too ambitious, leading many to question his integrity and honesty. The negative side of Russells ambition, his fluency and superior manner made him many enemies. As a result he died without the usual honours, where Brunel turned down a knighthood Russell was never offered one.

The Construction of Naval History 1815-1914

E naval history examined admirals and operations – ships and men, dismissing the nineteenth century as an unremarkable catalogue of gunboat diplomacy; tedious technology and dull books that separated Nelson from the next world conflict. After 1918 such attitudes persisted, reaching a low point in 1988, when the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, closed the relevant galleries: henceforth naval history ended in 1805.1 Never a headline area for research or teaching, the nineteenth century rarely achieved a critical mass of scholarship, and the main debates have been driven by twentieth century concerns. Despite that there has been substantial progress, especially in the past two decades. Hitherto divergent facets of naval history have coalesced into a far stronger body of scholarship that has, in part through the cultural turn, rejoined the academic mainstream. Furthermore the work of naval historians has converged with scholars in strategic and defence studies, sociology and international law. Links beyond the historical discipline have converged around the war studies/war and society approach, and naval history has recovered the broad public audience that sustained much of the pre-1914 output. The ‘cultural turn’, increasing focus on sales among ‘academic’ presses and the interest of mainstream publishers has reinvigorated the field, widening both audiences and the research community. The development of multidisciplinary links, an expanding role in service education and successful commercial publication run counter to the dominant model in British history, the research grant. Using a model devised for costly collaborative science projects does not reflect the vital social/public role that history filled long before it became academic. Historians have a responsibility to address the concerns of their own age, and make history available to society – but current funding and assessment processes privilege forms of communication, the peer-assessed journal and the costly monograph, which might have been designed to exclude the public. The problem is exacerbated by the financial implications. University historians will recognize the pressure to conform. This may not be unduly problematic for scholarship bounded by a specific discipline, but naval history has three distinct audiences – among which academia is the smallest.

DANGEROUS HISTORY: THE TRAGIC AFTERLIFE OF CAPTAIN SIR JOHN FRANKLIN

Abstract In 1845 British naval captain Sir John Franklin sailed into the Canadian Arctic with two ships and 128 men, and disappeared. His ill-fated expedition was swiftly mythologised and co-opted into a Victorian narrative of self-sacrifice, heroism and duty. In puncturing these myths, Professor Andrew Lambert, author of an acclaimed new history of Franklins polar navigation, explains why history is not a fixed record, but a constantly evolving interaction between different ages, and different opinions.

Writing the Battle: Jutland in Sir Julian Corbett’s Naval Operations

This article examines the origins, development and purpose of Sir Julian Corbett’s account of the controversial battle of Jutland. Naval Operations is seen as an extended analysis of how British strategy was intended to work and why it had failed on this occasion. The argument was carefully constructed to explain the failure without challenging the underlying pattern. Corbett used Trafalgar to claim that the battle of Jutland had ultimately achieved its aim, under the able command of Admiral John Jellicoe, but made it clear that Vice-Admiral David Beatty’s actions hampered a more decisive outcome. Naval Operations was written to support post-war naval education and doctrine development and to connect the First World War with past practice. The text was publicly disowned by the Board of Admiralty, which had failed to have it modified to meet the demands of the newly promoted First Sea Lord, Earl Beatty, and the Battle Cruiser Fleet officers on his staff. Corbett was correct on all the contested points, while Beatty’s attempt to alter this and other official texts raised important questions about the nature and purpose of official history.

Book Review: A Blue Water Navy: The Official Operational History of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War, 1943–1945, Volume II, Part 2

W.A.B. Douglas, Roger Sarty and Michael Whitby; with Robert H. Caldwell, William Johnston and William G.P. Rawling, A Blue Water Navy: The Official Operational History of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War, 1943-1945, Volume II, Part 2. St. Catharines, ON: Vanwell Publishing, 2007. xvii + 650 pp., photographs, colour plates, maps, figures, tables, appendices, bibliography, indices. CDN

Book Review: General-at-Sea: Robert Blake and the Seventeenth Century Revolution in Naval Warfare, Cromwell's Navy: The Fleet and the English Revolution 1648–1660

60, US

The Transformation of British Naval Strategy: Seapower and Supply in Northern Europe, 1808–1812, by James Davey

60, £32.95, cloth; ISBN 978-1-55125-069-4. Distributed in the USA by Casemate [www.casematepublishing.com], in the UK by Helion and Company [www.helion. co.uk]. Available in French; ISBN 978-1-55125-067-5.

Grainger, J.D. (2014). The British Navy in the Baltic

Australian waters, a record which deserves a place on the bookshelf of any student of marine engineering development. He has also given some deserved publicity to the efforts of a small number of enthusiasts dedicated to the exploration, recording and recovering of much historical material from many wrecks of early steamships around the countrys coastline. May their efforts continue to be rewarded with the success they deserve.

Book Review: To Crown the Waves: The Great Navies of the First World War

After the battles of Trafalgar and Jena Napoleon created the Continental System to challenge the basic building blocks of the British state and its chosen instrument of power. By restricting Britis...

From the Essex to the Dresden: British Grand Strategy in the South Pacific, 1814–1915

The role of British naval forces in the politics and conflicts of the Baltic region from Cromwell to George VI is a promising theme, but as Grainger observes, the Baltic is shallow, studded with rocks and pinnacles, much of it freezes over in winter, and it is only brackish, meaning ships float deeper into the water than they do on the open ocean. Furthermore British experience of this challenging navigation, even though it did stretch back to the Anglo– Saxons, was thin, and resided in the heads of merchant skippers who, despite the author’s contention, tended to focus on specific port to port routes. To make matters worse the Baltic is a sea of choke points, starting with the Danish Narrows, often heavily fortified, while major regional powers, Russia and later Imperial Germany, possessed massive internal resources, making them relatively invulnerable to short term naval power. It was not an obvious theatre in which to apply sea power. Instead it was the pull factor of trade dependence that brought the British to the Baltic. British naval and commercial shipping depended on key naval stores, tar, pitch, flax, and hemp from the sixteenth century, while Baltic grain was the obvious source when the domestic harvest proved inadequate. By the eighteenth century Britain was also dependant on Baltic timber, critically masts and oak plank. This growing dependence obliged Britain to take an active interest in Baltic politics, to prevent any one power from controlling these strategic raw materials, or the Danish Narrows through which all shipping had to pass. These efforts reached a high point in major Baltic campaigns between 1807 and 1812. The critical role of trade is essential to understanding the dramatic flipflop of British Baltic policy in the latter stages of the Great Northern War, when fleets were despatched to block Swedish and then Russian attempts to control trade, and finally to help secure peaceful conditions for trade. This situation endured until the early nineteenth century, when the harsh experience of 1807–1812 prompted the Government to develop alternative sources of supply, notably in Canada, by tariff preference. This transformed Britain’s strategic appreciation of the Baltic. In the Anglo–Russian standoff of the 1830s Palmerston secured unfettered naval access to the Baltic, Denmark