Even in the requisite subdued light, Will Andrews’ fishing schooner models in the Cape Ann Museum drew my attention and admiration during a 2019 visit. Thankfully, Linda Andrews wisely encouraged her husband to gather and publish his research about the shipbuilding and deep-sea fishing communities of Cape Ann and the maritime, historical, societal, and economic, context of these iconic vessels produced and worked from about 1847-1930.

The waterborne heroines of this story are Essex- and Gloucester-built, Gloucester-outfitted and operated, two-masted, gaff-rigged, fishing schooners. Each selected as an exemplar of the uneven evolution in form and function of their sisters. Their quintessentially American story includes the all too frequent devastating losses of life and property on the North Atlantic, and how they heavily influenced purpose-built vessel development. Improvements, sadly not introduced proactively in most cases, but as belated reactions to the sea having claimed so many loved ones.

The physical appearance of each chosen schooner is memorialized in 1:48-scale model form, the meticulous products of Will’s relentless research and uncompromising craftsmanship. With each, he accomplishes the goal of every serious marine model artist “to create a compelling impression of the original vessel.” (Napier).

The author and the content of this volume—graciously dedicated to Erik A.R. Ronnberg, Jr., absolutely deserve a place in the pantheon of devoted historians and works, listed in the Bibliography. And I commend Andrews for your consideration.

If you aspire to build models of any of the selected schooners, may I suggest you also have Howard Irving Chapelle’s The American Fishing Schooners ~ 1825-1930 close at hand. The drawings in there—lines plans, and of the rather unique fittings and machinery of Gloucestermen, are laudably clear. They provide a sort of visual glossary, and thereby excellent complements to Andrews’ illuminating definition of each, which includes the answer to “How was this used?” (Weinstein). Moreover, the index speeds finding items of your interest.

The photographs of Andrews’ models are worthy of careful study. The lack of captions or interpretive text placed nearby each photograph may encourage a bit of bookmarking in the section about the namesake vessel and the corresponding photograph pages, to move more easily and confidently back and forth. One is inclined to create one’s own customized index, just for the schooner of interest.

The last chapters of Will’s well-told story are forthright but bittersweet. The “War to end all wars” had just been won. The International Fishermen’s Races with Canadian designers, and the seaborne steeds they bred, and campaigned, celebrated a return to normalcy. But the victory, not unlike that global conflict, was short lived. Flyers that attained the pinnacle as inspiring functional works of art in wood, were replaced by transitional utilitarian draggers, and combustion engine-powered, steel, “Ugly Ducklings”.

Civilization is driven by commerce and technology. One feeds the other. Historically, much of that commerce has moved by sea. In turn, ships moving cargoes are influenced by their times’ technology. Historian Fernand Braudel called the sea “the greatest document of its past existence.”

A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks, by David Gibbins, shows how through marine archaeology the sea allows the world’s history to be read. He uses twelve wrecks as a springboard for looking at the state of the world when the ships sank.

He starts in prehistory examining a second-millennium BC Bronze Age vessel. He finishes four thousand years later, looking at a twentieth-century steamer torpedoed and sunk during World War II. Along the way he stops at ten different places: Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, Byzantium, Tang China, the Viking era, King Henry VIII’s England, the Dutch Golden Age, eighteenth-century piracy, and nineteenth-century exploration.

Each chapter uses a period wreck to examine the ship and the times which created it. Every shipwreck is a time capsule, preserving the history of the period it was built. It reveals goods traded, existing inventions, how people lived and their interests. Diet, living standards, education levels and religious beliefs are preserved in part by the sea, waiting to be uncovered.

This book is also a history of marine archaeology, a discipline which emerged in the last half of the twentieth century. Gibbins explains how technologies like the aqualung and remote operating vehicles offered access to previously inaccessible wrecks starting in the 1960s. He describes the growth of underwater archaeology and the increasing sophistication of the technologies used to find and preserve artifacts on the sea bottom.

He also shows how and why wrecks offer special access to history. They sharply define a point in time and reveal the lives of the individuals involved from a merchant in Tutankhamun’s time to a survivor of a torpedoed ship in the Atlantic.

For Gibbins, a renowned underwater archaeologist, this is intensely personal story. He participated in many of the expeditions to the wrecks highlighted in this book. He helped making the discoveries and interpreting results. The twelve wrecks explored are highlights of his career.

A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks is at once a history and an adventure tale. It brings the realities of the past to life, while illustrating the excitement resulting from uncovering it.

A very interesting and extremely well researched reference book concerning the loss of Royal Navy and other Commonwealth naval ships from 1920 through to the Falklands War. Each entry provides the ship's details, date of loss, commanding officer, and a narrative detailing how the vessel was lost.

World War II losses make up the bulk of the book and describe the campaigns fought such as Norway, Dunkirk, and the Atlantic through to the final fighting in the Pacific in 1945. Some entries are quite lengthy, others less so. While many losses were from enemy action, rock, tempest, and fire also took its toll as well as the foe. In some cases, blue-on-blue actions occurred, such as the first Royal Navy loss of the war, on 10 September 1939, when the submarine Oxley, operating on the surface, was mistaken for a German U-boat by the submarine Triton and torpedoed with the loss of fifty-two of the ship's company.

The well-known losses such as Hood, Repulse, Prince of Wales, and other capital ships are covered, but so are the small trawlers, motor torpedo boats, and mine-sweepers. The losses of the minor landing craft, known only by their number, during actions such as the Dieppe raid, Operation Torch in North Africa and D-Day, are also included, but with less detail about how they were lost and personnel killed or missing. The sheer number of landing craft lost on D-Day is quite sobering.

The pre-war period, 1920-1939, had, as would be expected, far fewer losses but of the thirty-eight vessels lost, ten were submarines. Post-World War II losses were also minimal, with less than a hundred vessels lost due to various reasons. Again, submarine incidents took their toll, as did bad weather. Training incidents also saw several losses, most notably that of the Australian destroyer Voyager, sunk by a collision with the aircraft carrier Melbourne during nighttime flying exercises in February 1964 with the loss of eighty-two of the ship's company.

The book ends with the analysis of the Royal Navy losses in the 1982 Falklands War: two destroyers, two frigates, a landing ship, and a landing craft medium in this short but sharp conflict. Several other RN ships were damaged in this short war.

Overall, this is an excellent reference book for the naval historian and those with an interest in the war at sea during World War II. Highly Recommended.

Eber Brock Ward was raised in modest circumstances, but at twenty-one, was taken into his uncle's thriving shipping business, becoming the principal heir of what was reaching towards a million-dollar business. From this foundation, Ward invested in some of the earliest iron-making businesses in the Great Lakes region, along with acquiring railroad, mining, and lumber properties. A late venture into glass-making rounded out his portfolio. The connections between the resource extraction, transportation, and industrial production leads the author on more than one occasion to argue that Ward should be considered among the pioneers of vertical integration in the United States.

A businessman first and always, Ward had supported the Whigs early and by the 1850s was a committed Republican. Among his closest friends politically was Republican Senator, B. F. Wade. Among the things that united the two men was their unwavering opposition to slavery, which included orders to Ward's captains to assist escaping slaves across the border to Canada.

The loss of Ward’s steamer Atlantic provides some valuable insights into how Ward conducted business in the years following his uncle's death. While Nagle supplies a narrative focused on the newspaper reporting of the incident, the case law reports make interesting reading on their own. The initial trial between Ward and the owners of Ogdensburgh placed all the blame and liability on Ward's vessel. He fought that decision all the way to the United States Supreme Court to ensure that liability was divided evenly. Given the disparity in the value of the two vessels, the owners of the much less valuable Ogdensburgh were then required to pay Ward over $40,000 for the loss of Atlantic. Efforts to collect this brought Ward back to the Supreme Court two more times to extract the maximum recompense from his soon-bankrupted rivals. There are a number of references to Ward as a robber baron; the label is a good fit.

Nagle questions why Ward is not well remembered as an industrialist and then provides the answer. Ward's investments were in individual, albeit complementary, enterprises and his will largely required those investments to be liquidated. Whatever vertical integration there was quickly disintegrated. His timber holdings were passed intact and free of debt to his young, second wife, whose brothers made another fortune buying up Ward's debts at a discount. A few years later, she married a Canadian and moved to Toronto.

Nagle's volume depends on a dispersed collection of Ward papers, along with a wide range of primary printed sources to bring this narrative together. If there is more to be said, especially regarding Samuel Ward's efforts to actually create the fortune to which E.B. Ward contributed and succeeded, this remains a foundational work on one of the key figures in the history of nineteenth-century business in the Great Lakes region. Eber Brock Ward may be the forgotten iron king, but in the history of Great Lakes shipping, his name certainly has not been forgotten and will be even more prominent in the studies that build on Nagle's work.

In Screams of the Drowning, Klaus Willmann tells the story of German solder Hans Fackler during World War II. He also briefly sheds light on the sinking of the liner Wilhelm Gustloff during that conflict.

Willman opens with an exploration of Fackler's childhood and his take on the events going on around him at a period towards the end of World War II. He then moves into an exploration of Fackler's training and indoctrination into the Hitler Youth, and his experiences on the Eastern Front. Following that, he explores trips to field hospitals and Fackler's eventual transfer and evacuation on Wilhelm Gustloff

This is not a technical examination of the strategy and tactics employed on the Eastern Front. Nor will readers find a deep analysis of battles and tactics. Hans Fackler's experiences do, however, provide a first-hand account of the average German soldier on the Eastern Front at war's end. For example, the discussion of disparities in equipment throughout the German Army, and the rapidly deteriorating situation at the front is both intimate and chilling. Although students of military history may not find anything particularly new or revealing in Fackler's story, those less familiar with the topic will find the book a readable introduction to the period while more advanced students will find it a solid piece of non-technical background to events on the Eastern Front.

Despite its vivid description of the Eastern Front, Screams of the Drowning suffers from a number of shortcomings. The events surrounding the sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff may not be well known outside the context of maritime or military history, but the author only addresses it briefly in barely a dozen pages. Of course, the actual sinking occurred quite quickly and a passenger below decks, like Fackler, would not necessarily be aware of the technical situation regarding the state of the ship or the nature of the attacks. Lack of access to such information accounts for the limited explanation of the sinking, not the author's inability or unwillingness to explore the facts.

As a memoir, the text does not refer to primary or secondary sources, which limits the work as an academic resource. While the author does not draw direct conclusions, readers should cross-reference political or strategic comments against other sources for a more complete picture. Finally, it should be noted that this is a translation of a transcription of a memoir. Students who read this in the original German may find additional context or nuance not present in the English transmission. The translator does note that some sacrifices and changes from the original were necessary, readers should remember that some things are lost in translation.

Screams of the Drowning offers an engaging account of one man's experience during World War II. While of limited academic value, the memoir does shed light on a little-known aspect of the war that students at all levels should find useful. Perhaps the questions it provokes will encouraging further exploration of the war on the Eastern Front.

This booklet is one of a series popular with the general public regarding combat between two opposing entities. In this example, we have an examination of the United States Navy submarine force against the Imperial Japanese Navy's  anti-submarine escorts or destroyer force. The author, Mark Stille, is a retired United States Navy commander with a number of Osprey Publishing titles to his credit.

The superficial understanding of the Pacific War tends to be one of aircraft carriers and island invasions, a naval war in which the combatants rarely saw each other and fought at long range with aircraft. Often overlooked is the devastating unrestricted submarine campaign conducted by the United States against Japanese shipping, against which Japan was ill-prepared. Indeed, so successful was the American campaign against the seaborne trade on which Japan's economy depended that it had virtually ceased by the early months of 1945 and hence, the territories seized from the imperial powers (the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands) so swiftly and easily in late 1941 and early 1942 were rendered valueless.

The booklet is organized into a first section that explores the development and employment of submarines and escorts as conceived by the two nations prior to and during the war. With this foundation in place, separate sections then examine the strategic environment in which the campaign was fought, a relatively lengthy section as to the technical specifications of the various classes of vessel used by both sides, a short review of the personnel and their training on both sides, a thumbnail sketch of the American campaign against shipping and the ineffective Japanese countermeasures, and a conclusion.

The production quality of the booklet is very high, with a large number of photographs as well as diagrams and illustrations of the various classes of vessels involved. Every effort has been made to be even-handed in this approach, which succeeds quite well in that regard. Accompanying the illustrations are tables of typical data, such as performance parameters, weapons and dates of construction and similar aspects of relevance and interest.

This is absolutely not an academic book, but it can serve as a rough and ready sketch of the American submarine war against Japan. Its small bibliography can at least initiate the exploration of more comprehensive accounts, but it only represents a start. The analysis provided is high level and is fine as far as it goes but is limited with little nuance. Its merits include brevity and it can serve as a quick introduction and overview to the subject. The booklet is also well produced as is typical of Osprey Publications and will find a ready audience attracted to such offerings.

Mark Stille has written a useful summary of America's naval war with a focus on the warships involved. The emphasis is overwhelmingly on America's war against Japan rather than the two-ocean war that was in fact fought by the United States Navy, aligning with the common perception in the United States that Japan was the main enemy notwithstanding the acceptance of the Germany-first strategy agreed to with its allies. That war was overwhelmingly a naval war from the perspective of the Americans (Japan's war in China does not come into play with this maritime account) and, as Stille's narrative makes clear, was won by America's vast economic and material resources for which Japan had no answer.

Stille's book is organized into nine chapters plus an introduction. The first addresses American naval strategy and tactics during World War II, the second examines United States Navy operations, and the last is an assessment as to the effectiveness of the United States Navy throughout the conflict. The bulk of the book in the remaining six chapters explores the individual ship types that made up the United States Navy: battleships, carriers, cruisers (heavy and light), destroyers, and submarines. As is common with Osprey Publishing in general, the illustrations, diagrams, and photographs are lavishly provided and to a very high quality.

The introduction sets the scene for the United States in terms of noting the armed neutrality period just ahead of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that drew the country into the maelstrom of World War II. The tit-for-tat period in the Atlantic where German U-boats and United States Navy destroyers engaged in an undeclared war is useful to recall, as it largely explains Hitler's inexplicable act of folly in declaring war on the United States after Pearl Harbor, thereby simplifying the American President Roosevelt's geopolitical difficulty with entering the European war. The introduction also touches on the interwar treaties and naval limitation agreements that constrained navalism and promoted disarmament. These restrictions had a material effect on United States Navy preparations for war as it did for the Royal Navy and the other belligerents. The passage of the Two-Ocean Navy Act in July 1941 was a key milestone in unleashing America's latent material superiority, with the ships authorized under that act providing the instruments of victory over Japan and, to a lesser extent, Germany.

The two chapters on United States Navy strategies and tactics and on naval operations are useful guides as to America's conduct of the war against Japan. Stille notes the early mindset of United States Navy senior leadership that, unsurprisingly, was not always up to the strain of modem war and often lacked the imagination and insight necessary to conduct successful operations against Japan. War, however, is a stem teacher and very quickly the peacetime cobwebs and preconceptions were shaken off and the United States Navy got down to business. Admiral Yamamoto's declaration prior to the breakout of the war that he would have it all his way for six months but after that was unlikely proved all too true. After Midway in June 1942, Japan was consistently on its back foot and was increasingly on the defensive and reactive to American initiatives. This is not to underestimate the difficulties the USN faced after Midway, which Stille summarizes well.Indeed, at one point later in 1942, the United States Navy was down to one operational carrier, USS Enterprise. Thereafter, however, the material potential of the United States was evident and, notwithstanding the bitter battles that followed, by early 1943 the outcome was not in doubt.

Stille's summary of the campaigns and battles is well done with the only caveat being the limited discussion on the other ocean of the two ocean war. There is barely a mention of the Royal Navy side of that conflict, let alone any mention of any Royal Canadian Navy's role in the Atlantic. The conclusion to the book with its assessment as to the United States Navy’s role and effectiveness is by and large fair. Nevertheless, assigning the overall outcome of the war to the United States Navy is perhaps too much. While the destruction of Japan was essentially an American affair with limited and unnecessary (and unwelcome) assistance from Britain, the defeat of Germany was at the hands of the Red Army with no more than useful assistance from the Western allies, the most important component of which was supplies. These, to be sure, were largely supplied by sea, but the greater role in that regard was via the Royal Navy.

The chapters on the warship types are to the normal very high standard of the Osprey Publishing series. The reliance on earlier Osprey booklets on these vessel classes is noted in the publishing details at the front of the book and, if one has a complete collection of these, one likely does not need this compilation. That noted, it is an extremely useful compendium to have at hand in one place. Production standards are high, with numerous ship diagrams and contemporary photographs, accompanied by tables of basic performance data as well as dates of construction and final disposition. One is struck by the sheer scale of the United States Navy as represented in these tables and the achievement of the American shipbuilding industry during the war. Major warships, as well as vast numbers of destroyers, untold quantities of landing craft, assault vessels, and auxiliary ships were churned out at an astonishing pace. All were essential for the conduct of the war by the Western Allies in both theatres—Europe and Pacific. The quality of most of the designs and construction standards were second to none.

Stille has delivered a fine book that is a good introduction to America' maritime war as well as a top-notch discussion on warship types that fought that war. It is not an academic work per se, lacking the apparatus of notes and providing but a slender bibliography, albeit one that can certainly be explored for additional detail. It is also light on providing context with allies such as Great Britain and Commonwealth forces such as Canada, and skims over the European Theater in general. Notwithstanding these caveats, I unhesitatingly recommend it.

Most naval memoirs spotlight the exploits of well-known commanders who participated in one or several historic battles. In a refreshing departure More Lives Than a Ships Cat focuses upon a young sailor whose Military Occupational Specialty was not combat. He was a clerk who earned the distinction of being The Most Highly Decorated Midshipman in the Second World War. Of obscure Ashkenazi roots, Gordon Alexander (Mick) Stoke was the last to be admitted into the Paymaster Branch Class at Dartmouth Royal Naval College, but finished with a first in his group. That was in January 1940. Paymasters spend much of their time ciphering and deciphering signals for the commander, and are concerned with accounting, distributing pay, secretarial work, victualling, clothing, stores, and performing secretarial work for senior officers. This was an unlikely path to become a highly distinguished naval officer. Yet Stoke excelled as a student, athlete, and valued junior officer, rising through the ranks from midshipman, the lowest officer rank in the Royal Navy, to lieutenant at an astonishing pace. His last "flimsy" (efficiency report) of 1945 typified what his commanders thought of him. "An outstanding Officer in every way, of marked ability, and assurance. Has a larger reserve of energy and has shown great initiatives in several jobs. He has an excellent knowledge of his many duties   a first­class Captain Secretary who should go far in the Service. Physically fit, keenly interested in games and has a good knowledge of French and Spanish. Thoroughly recommended for grant of seniority."

Mick, as he was known, was Mentioned in Dispatches several times early in his career, and later awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) and DSC (Distinguished Service Cross for Gallantry), the Atlantic Star, Africa Star, Italy Star, Arctic Star, Arctic Emblem, the Soviet Russian Convoy Medal, and a Star and Silver Pacific Medal. The stars indicated the war theatres in which he saw action during World War II. Remarkably he survived multiple devasting torpedo attacks while serving onboard HMS Glasgow, Queen Elizabeth, Carlisle, and Hardy. The last event occurred in the icy waters about fifty miles south of Bear Island inside the Arctic Circle. He also survived extraordinary heavy and sustained bombing raids while stationed onboard these ships and acting as an onshore-based naval coordinator participating in the desert siege of Tobruk in 1941, at the bleak Algerian port Bone during Operation Torch at the end of 1942 on into 1943, and later supplying logistical support for the Sicilian and Salemo invasions. Stokes was stationed onboard HMS Kempenfelt, the British destroyer that laid claim to being the closest to the shore delivering supporting artillery fire to the D-Day invasion at Juno Beach. He later acted as a liaison officer to the United States Navy from a British aircraft carrier in the Pacific toward the last days of the war during which he had served from age nineteen to twenty-four. After his military service he became a successful businessman receiving the 1981 Queen's Award for Export (for British businesses who excel at international trade, innovation, and development). The former navy paymaster died at the age of seventy in 1991.

Jeremy Stoke, the author and Mick's son, had access to a broad array of primary source documents, letters to his parents and wife, and a variety of naval logs, newspapers, official releases, and other papers. Stoke skillfully takes his readers from his father's induction into the navy and through fifteen detailed, largely action-packed chapters that end with his deployment to the Pacific and marriage to Second Officer WRNS Doreen Le Poidevin. There are vivid descriptions of life at sea, clear sailing in the heat and sandstorms in North Africa, ice-filled pitching seas in the Arctic, or cruising upon the extremely far reaches of the war in the South Pacific. All of this while enduring multiple attacks on his ships by planes strafing decks, bombs dropped on or around them, avoiding mines, U-boats, suffering torpedo attacks, and a few unfortunate sinkings.

Lieutenant Stoke makes frequent prideful references in his letters to his family about winning rugby matches and other sporting competitions amid the serious terrors of war. All the while the young man was advancing his academic studies and earning praise from his superiors, thus advancing his naval career at a rapid pace. There are occasional breaks in the narrative where he describes his thoughts in personal letters while keeping within the confines of wartime security. In tum, Mick very humanly yearns for letters from his family and from Doreen, later his future wife. He has strong opinions about the German enemy, but also waxes mildly polemical about the French, Algerians, Egyptians, Italians, and the Americans. He expresses dismay at American racial prejudice he observed and particularly their attitude to the war. "They are mainly preoccupied with Japan and consider Germany is mostly a subsidiary war.... The newspapers concentrate so much on American news that British achievements only get attention if they are really startling and then it will be headlines for only a day"

Cleverly titled, well written, fast moving, More Lives Than a Ships Cat is a riveting look at British naval history from an unusual, intimate point of view. Mick Stoke's extraordinary life appears as an uncommon version of everyman. I highly recommend Stoke's work for maritime historians concerned with the Royal Navy during World War II.

On 12 February 1942, Vice Admiral James Somerville assumed command of the Eastern Fleet, the designation for the Allied naval forces in the Indian Ocean. The vessels under his command consisted of the greatest agglomeration of British naval power in World War II up to that point, including three aircraft carriers, five battleships, seven cruisers, fifteen destroyers, and over a hundred aircraft. Yet when the Imperial Japanese Navy conducted a raid in the Indian Ocean just two months later, Somerville ultimately chose not to engage the enemy and instead withdrew his forces, granting a strategic victory to his opponents.

Though Somerville's decision has received far less attention than the more dramatic fall of Singapore, it was no less momentous a demonstration of the decline of British power in the region. As Charles Stephenson explains, it was a consequence of a series of decisions, some made decades earlier, which left the Royal Navy poorly prepared to defend its longstanding naval supremacy from the aircraft of the Kida Butai. His book offers a description of the developments that led to such a humiliating decision, and how the Eastern Fleet rebounded from its nadir to challenge Japanese domination in southeast Asia.

Stephenson underscores the extent of this fall by opening his narrative with the Grand Fleet's triumphant acceptance of Germany's High Seas Fleet's surrender at the end of the First World War. Though the Royal Navy had maintained Britain's naval supremacy in yet another global conflict, no sooner had it done so than it faced the prospect of a new and financially ruinous naval arms race, this time with its wartime allies. Yet the successful post­ war effort to restrain capital ship construction through arms limitation treaties was offset by the growing role played by new technologies, in particular the airplane. Here Stephenson highlights the irony of the Semphill Mission's all­ too-successful efforts to lay the groundwork for Japanese naval aviation, one that the Royal Navy would soon have cause to regret.

This might have mattered less had Great Britain developed naval aviation into the powerful arm it became for the Japanese in World War II. Instead, the combination of the centralization of military aviation in the Royal Air Force and the decision to employ aircraft carriers as a component of the battle fleet instead of its centerpiece ensured that the Fleet Air Arm was well behind its Japanese and American counterparts in this area by the end of the 1930s. Though the limits of British carrier aviation were soon evident in the war against Nazi Germany, it was not until Japanese aviators sank the capital ships of Force Z in December 1941 that the consequences of this became clear. As a result, when Somerville faced the Japanese in April 1942, it was with a fleet that was gravely outmatched by the strike power of their aircraft carriers. Given these circumstances, Stephenson regards Somerville's decision to withdraw as the correct one, even though it conceded much of the Indian Ocean to the Japanese.

It would be over a year and a half  before Somerville attempted to challenge their presence in its waters. With many of the capital ships reassigned to the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, the remaining vessels were occupied with training, escort duties, and providing support for amphibious landings. While the wide-ranging scope of Stephenson's narrative in these chapters turns his book into more of a general account of the entire Indian Ocean theatre during World War II, he never loses sight completely of the activities of the diminished Eastern Fleet, much of which involved adapting to the new model of naval warfare pioneered by the Japanese and the Americans in the Pacific. The main obstacle the fleet faced in doing so was with their planes, as the inadequacy of British models made the use of American carrier aircraft in the region essential for success. This put the Royal Navy in direct competition with the United States Navy for available production, however, which constrained operations until the spring of 1944.

The test of the reconstituted Eastern Fleet came that April. With the assistance of an American carrier, the fleet attacked military and industrial targets at Sabang and Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies. Intended as diversions, their impact on the war was minimal given the ongoing degradation of the Japanese air and naval forces further east. Nevertheless, the strikes provided valuable experience for the newly trained personnel, preparing them for their subsequent employment in the final campaigns against Japan as part of the British Pacific Fleet.

In his introduction, Stephenson states that his goal with this book is to provide a narrative history of the Eastern Fleet. He makes no claims to advance any radical thesis, and his work relies exclusively upon published sources and the secondary literature familiar to specialists in the field. Yet this undersells his success in describing a major factor in the eclipse of British naval power in the twentieth century. While his digressions into such tangential topics as espionage activities in Goa can distract from this, the book overall serves as a good introduction to British naval operations that are far too often given scant coverage in general accounts of the naval history of World War II.

This work is a sequel to Jordan's 2011 Warships After Washington and continues his analysis of the building and modernization programs carried out by the world's five major navies during the second half of the Treaty Era. Building upon his previous work and utilizing the same style for continuity, Jordan examines the six main types of vessels affected by the London Treaty's design limitations. Each nation's rationale and design process is well covered, showcasing the advancement of technology, the reactionary elements to foreign design, and the comparative results. Standardized charts, simplified blueprints, and photographs are located throughout for increased understanding, bolstered by an acronym and abbreviation glossary and unit conversion tables. A postscript on the failed 1936 treaty, an appendix transcribing the 1930 treaty, endnotes, bibliography, and an index compliment Jordan's analysis to round out the text.

The book begins with an introductory examination of the 1930 London Treaty, the participant nations, and the implications of its acceptance (or in the case of France and Italy, partial acceptance) on the existing and planned vessels of each country. To avoid retreading his earlier examination, the ramifications of the Washington Treaty are briefly spoken of when necessary, with parenthetical references to relevant chapters in Warships After Washington placed where readers may desire a more detailed analysis.

This is followed by the core six chapters of his work, essentially self-contained studies on Capital Ships, Aircraft Carriers, Cruisers, Destroyers, Submarines, and Small Combatant and Auxiliary Vessels of the London Treaty Era. Each section follows a pattern of brief introduction to the constraints and patterns imposed by the treaty before delving into each nation's resultant actions. This usually consists of initial ship designs by the countries, with reactionary actions discussed in chronologically placed subsections. The delicate balancing act of creating effective designs within the bounds of allowed tonnage and stipulations is thoroughly covered, to include proposed designs that were ultimately rejected such as America's plans for a sub­ category (b) Flying Deck Cruiser.

Funding is often exposed as the general limiter of each nation's ambitions, with additional constraints unique to each nation coming into play. The two-ocean nature of America's navy saw vessel beam and displacement additionally constrained by the width of the Panama Canal, while tensions between France and Italy centered around the former 's "perceived need to police ... overseas territories" leading to both a refusal to accept full parity and a miniature naval arms race.

Technological advancement is often touched upon within the work, as its evolution greatly affected vessel design and rebuilding. The section on battleship modernization is particularly impressive in this regard, showing how reduced numbers of more modem propulsion systems could result in faster, more efficient ships all while freeing tonnage for increased armor and armament.

The dangers of trying to fit too much armor, armament, and equipment on too small a hull are also made clear, as some of the built designs were clearly over-gunned and overweight. This was particularly true for the interwar destroyers of America and Japan, where disproportionately heavy armament on small hulls led not only to gross over-tonnage, but structural weakness as well.

Each chapter contains its own conclusions subsection, where Jordan analyzes the overall logic and goal of the chapter's ship designs, with discussion of their eventual practicality and evolution under the treaty-free restraints of World War II.

His postscript acts as a conclusion to the era, examining the world events that put a strain on the treaty system, and its eventual collapse with America's March 1937 invocation of the escalator clause against Japan and the June 1938 raising of battleship displacements by Britain and France . Jordan's well-reasoned arguments and insights paint a clear picture throughout the work of ship design, counter-design, and the strains of diplomatic planning verses technological reality.

Jordan has provided an excellent examination of the interwar naval vessels of Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy. His concise, easy-to-read style and subdivision of the work into vessel types has created a convenient comparative study for those interested in ship design, interwar international agreements, and treaty vessels' service before or during World War II. His efforts to standardize profile drawings and data have created a greater level of accessibility for foreign designs than previously available, making Warships after London a welcome addition to the historiography of international naval ship design.