The British Battle Fleet; Its Inception and Growth Throughout the Centuries to the Present Day
W. L. Wyllie London: The Library Press, Limited, 1915. Presumed First printing thus. Hardcover. 332 & 288 pages. 2 vols., illus. (many color), tables, diagrams, glossary, appendix, index, foxing to text & fore-edge, discoloration inside boards. Ink name and date inside front flyleaves, spines faded and somewhat stained, some wear to edges of spines. John Fredrick Thomas Jane (6 August 1865 – 8 March 1916) was the founding editor of reference books on warships (All the World's Fighting Ships) and aircraft (All the World's Airships) and the namesake of what would become Jane's Information Group and many of its publications. He first began to sketch warships in his teens, and was notable in the 1890s for illustrating scientific romances by George Griffith and other authors, as well as for his own science fiction novels such as To Venus in Five Seconds (published in 1897) and The Violet Flame (1899).
An avid miniatures wargamer, Jane first published All the World's Fighting Ships (known as Jane's Fighting Ships after 1905) in 1898, which catalogued all the warships operated by each country, their armaments, and other details, as a supplement to a wargame he designed. It was a success from the start and has become the standard reference directory on the topic. The Naval Warrant Officer's Journal suggested that the book be on every ship, and in 1902 said that it should be available to every naval officer. The Admiralty were less enthusiastic, partly due to Jane's irreverent behavior - although some ships did acquire copies. In 1909, he created All the World's Aircraft. Jane was an accomplished artist whose works were widely published in periodicals and books, those illustrations are now collectable. This book is not intended to be a history of the British Navy in the generally accepted sense of the term. For this reason small space is devoted to various strategical and tactical matters of the past which generally bulk largely in more regular naval histories - Of which a sufficiency already exist. In such histories primary interest naturally attaches to what the admirals did with the ships provided for them. Here the author has sought rather to deal with how the ships came to be provided, and how they were developed from the crude warships Of the past to the intricate and complicated machines of to-day; and the strictly history part of the book is compressed with that idea principally in view. The lessons of naval construction is necessarily that which directly or indirectly concerns the ships of our own time. The warships of the past are of special interest in so far as they were steps to the warships of to-day but, outside that, practical interest seems confined to what led to these steps being what they were. Condition: fair.
Keywords: Great Britain, Naval, Royal Navy, Naval Power, Napoleonic Wars, Warships, Ironclad, Sir E. J. Reed, Sir Philip Watts, Shipbuilding, Naval Architecture
[Book #7095]
Price: $425.00