"The Price of Admiralty: An indigctment of the Royal Navy 1805 - 1966" (used book)

The Price of Admiralty: An indigctment of the Royal Navy 1805 - 1966

by Stanley Bonnett

About the Book

Used book. Hardcover. Dust jacket included. Good condition.

-- From the dust jacket

This book is an account of the coast of the Royal Navy during the past 150 years in terms of men, their achievements, their health and their dignity. The story of battle and heroism has many times been told. This is a different story and not a pretty one.

The starting point is the period immediately following the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and the book ends with the absorption of the board of Admiralty into the Ministry of Defence in 1966. Trafalgar and Nelson gave the Navy a definitive lustre, which a century and a half of public adoration polished into a dazzling brilliance producing a conviction that whatever might be wrong ashore, nothing was ever wrong at sea. This conviction blinding the British public to the most appalling incompetence, stupidity and sadism it has ever been any nation’s lot to survive.

If the author’s sympathy is obviously with the lower deck, he offers no apology. To write at all is to be subjective. Many will judge this book to be critical, unfair and harmful to the reputation of the Royal Navy. To them he says only that glory can stand upright without mythology. Further, glory has its price. This book is the Price of Admiralty.