Empire of the Seas - Brian Lavery

The year 1588 marked a turning point in our national story. Victory over the Armada transformed us into a seafaring nation and it sparked a myth that one day would become a reality – that the nation’s new destiny, the source of her future wealth and power lay out on the oceans.

This book tells the story of how the navy expanded from a tiny force to become the most complex industrial enterprise on earth; how the need to organise it laid the foundations of our civil service and our economy; and how it transformed our culture, our sense of national identity and our democracy.

Exploring deeper into the themes raised by the television series, Brian Lavery documents the progress of the Royal Navy from late Tudor times to the First World War.

He discusses its relationship with the state and the British people, analyses the tactics and initiative that created dramatic victories, and the failures and incompetence that lead to disaster.

Rising through the administrative brilliance of Pepys, Anson and Lord Sandwich and the inspirational leadership of Blake, Hawke and Nelson, the Royal Navy became the most powerful force in the world. But the conviction of Britain’s navy as undisputed ruler of the waves encouraged a sterility in strategic thinking and complacency during the ‘long peace’ of the nineteenth century leading to the bruising experience of the Battle of Jutland.