by Matthew Wright | Aug 28, 2025 | History Article
The events surrounding the brief Atlantic sortie of the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941, have been told many times. Analysis often focuses on engineering and combat performance,[1] or on the tactical issues associated with finding a lone warship in the North...
by Matthew Wright | Jun 17, 2025 | History Article
One of the most poignant human stories to come out of the Battle of Jutland was that of sixteen year old John Travers Cornwell, J/42563. He was a Boy, 1st Class, aboard HMS Chester during that clash of fleets at the end of May 1916, and he became one of the youngest...
by Matthew Wright | Apr 5, 2025 | History Article
In 1919 an embittered Admiral Sir John Fisher published a trenchant criticism of the British Admiralty’s latest heavy warship. He did not name her, but he didn’t have to: there was only one. To Fisher, HMS Hood had too much weight devoted to armour. ‘And so bang went...
by Matthew Wright | Feb 19, 2025 | History Article
It is not often that previously unknown photos of HMS Hood are discovered. A set were found recently in a New Zealand archive, and are reproduced here for the first time on a naval website. The quality is typical of the day: the slightly blurred imagery typical of the...
by Matthew Wright | Dec 19, 2024 | History Article
In 1919 the embittered Admiral Sir John Fisher, former First Sea Lord and the long-standing champion of naval technology, summed up his recent thinking about heavy warships in three words: ‘speed is armour’.[1] The phrase has since been inextricably associated with...
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