Derek Nudd's Blog - Posts Tagged "pirates"

The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, 660-1649 by N.A.M. Rodger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


'Sea power cannot be improvised. In every age and in every circumstance, the successful navies have been those which rested on long years of steady investment in the infrastructure essential to keep running the complex and delicate machinery of a seagoing fleet. ... This is a truth not universally acknowledged in the twentieth century and hardly demonstrated at all in the sixteenth, yet it was precisely in this that the precocious strength of the Elizabethan Navy rested.'
Rodger's slightly pointed opening to Chapter 23 encapsulates the narrative of this book taking in a thousand years of British maritime history, from the Saxon raiders of the seventh century to the execution of Charles 1. For most of this time sea power involved the transport and supply of armies by co-opted merchants and pirates (often the same people). The concept of a standing 'Navy Royal' emerged under the Tudors and was almost, but not quite, lost in the civil war. Which is where this book hands over to The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain 1649-1815.
I came to this volume out of sequence, having read the two later ones first. As with the others its great strength is the way Rodger places the narrative of events in its political, social and technological context. It is well written and, unlike many paperbacks, has proper plate sections for the illustrations. Over a third of the page count is taken up by ancillary pages - appendices, notes, bibliography and index.
Overall, highly recommended.



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