Fifty-Two Stories of the British Navy

Fifty-two episodes of the Royal Navy from the battle of Damme to Trafalgar, one for each week of the year: single-ship actions, mutinies, rescues, boarding parties. Alfred Miles compiled several such books for boys in the 1900s and quotes the dispatches at length. The selection is patriotic and the seamanship is accurate, which was not always the same thing in this genre. Turner and Aivazovsky lead 46 plates of sea fights, harbours and weather, the visual counterpart to the actions in these pages.