E. Keble Chatterton

Outside pure Naval history it would be difficult to find any period so full of incident and contest as that which is covered by the exploits of the English Preventive Service in their efforts to deal with the notorious and dangerous bands of smugglers which at one time were a terrible menace to the trade and welfare of our nation. As we shall see from the following pages, their activities covered many decades, and indeed smuggling is not even to-day...

During the First World War, Britain relied heavily on resources imported across the Atlantic by its merchant marine. From the very beginning of the war, German U-boats targeted the merchant convoys, sinking millions of tons of essential produce and threatening Britain’s war effort. Were it not for the heroic efforts of the Q-ships, the naval war could have proven disastrous for the allies. Between 1914 and 1918, nearly 200 commercial vessels were...

Pirates and acts of piracy were not limited to the Caribbean Sea and the 16th and 17th centuries, as is commonly thought, but ranged far across time and place. Men of adventure who took to pirating in classical times around the Mediterranean are featured in these stirring true tales of high-seas treachery. Gripping narratives of corsairs, freebooters, and privateers-from the Vikings in their longships to the pirates of the Levant and the China Seas-come...

Excerpt: "I feel, then, that I may with confidence ask the reader who loves ships for themselves, or is fascinated by history, or is specially, interested in the rise of our Indian Empire, to follow me in the following pages, while the story of these old East Indiamen is narrated. In a little while we shall have passed entirely from the last of all surviving ocean-going sailing ships, but during the whole of their period none have left their mark...