This book is about the military Sea Service Mess Night, the Sea Services consisting of the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard. Mess Nights are traditional, time-honored events going back to at least the 18th Century. Formal military dining has historically been a way to communicate, to celebrate special events and a way to promote unity and camaraderie. The Mess Night, although a military formation and a formal event, is also a great deal of fun. Some of today's protocol and script is not exactly matching the past. Today's Mess Night is a bit more regimented and programmed but basically reflects all that was included in the old days and also reflects some of procedures used during the days of sail. This book is written because there are no books on Mess Nights, this is a first. Like many Sea Service customs and traditions, this custom has been handed down from generation to generation unwritten. Scripts and instructions were not necessary as Mess dinners were common. The British Navy can claim a continuous, unbroken tradition and they are basically the providers of the American tradition. They host Mess dinners much more frequently than the Americans do and the entire Navy traditionally celebrates the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. Americans have no set celebration and also have fewer Mess Nights. Many officers are not even aware of Mess Nights. This is because of several factors covered in the book. Hopefully, this book will stimulate greater interest in this important event. As the alcohol rule for ships rule has been loosened, it is particularly hopeful that shipboard Mess Nights can again become an event. It would be most appropriate to celebrate the event for which the ship is named or to begin the tradition of celebrating Navy Day or other famous event such as those listed in this book.

This book examines Anglo-Australian naval relations between 1945-75, a period of great change for both Australia and Great Britain and their respective navies. It explores the cultural and historical ties between the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), the efficacy of communications between the services, and the importance of personal relations to the overall inter-service relationship. The author assesses the dilemmas faced by Great Britain associated with that nation's declining power, and the impact of the retreat from 'East of Suez' on the strategic relationship between the United Kingdom and Australia. The book also considers operational co-operation between the Royal Navy and the RAN including conflicts such as the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, and confrontation with Indonesia, as well as peacetime pursuits such as port visits and the testing of atomic weapons in the 1950s. Co-operation in matters of personnel and training are also dealt with in great detail, along with the co-operation between the Royal Navy and the RAN in equipment procurement and design and the increased ability of the RAN to look to non-British sources for equipment procurement. The book considers the impact of stronger Australian-American ties on the RAN and appraises the role it played in the conflict in Vietnam.

'An extraordinary account of heroism and sacrifice. An unexpected and important story, rivetingly told. Rip roaring stuff. Get this into the paws of the sea dog in your life.' - Griff Rhys Jones 'A book that had to be written' - Let's Talk 'People ashore don’t realise what a grim war we are waging at sea with the Germans. A cold-blooded war, in a way I think requiring the maximum of bravery from the men of both sides in the long run, as it is so ceaseless and intangible. You just don’t know whether the next moment will be your last.' Robert Hichens, RNVSR Several years ago, Julia Jones was searching through long-forgotten items stored at her house and discovered some suitcases of old written material, which turned out to be accounts by her father of his experiences in the RNVSR (Royal Naval Volunteer Supplementary Reserve). She realised that as a child she’d met some of the people mentioned, and although she was too young to truly know them, these youthful impressions spurred her on to rediscovery and understanding. In this absorbing book Julia tells the compelling stories of the yachtsmen. Some were famous (such as Sir Peter Scott), others were wealthy (such as August Courtauld, who returned his pay to help with the war effort) but the majority were just 'ordinary' professionals such as publishers, lawyers and advertising agents, who signed up because they loved sailing. Few could ever have dreamed that they would end up acting in areas that were so far beyond their normal lives, as they found themselves commanding destroyers and submarines, and undertaking covert missions of sabotage. Some undertook the dangerous daily drudgery of minesweeping; others tackled unexploded bombs, engaged the enemy in high-speed attacks or played key roles in Ian Fleming's famous intelligence commandos. This varied crew of men were given tasks vital to the war effort, requiring endurance, extraordinary bravery, resourcefulness and quick thinking. Some died in the process, but for the ones who survived, Julia asks how their experiences changed them. Could their love of sailing and the sea survive the harsh realities of war?

A detailed and riveting account of the U.S. Navy's greatest mutiny and its wide-ranging cultural and historical impact The greatest controversy in the history of the U.S. Navy of the early American Republic was the revelation that the son of the Secretary of War had seemingly plotted a bloody mutiny that would have turned the U.S. brig Somers into a pirate ship. The plot discovered, he and his co-conspirators were hastily condemned and hanged at sea. The repercussions of those acts brought headlines, scandal, a fistfight at a cabinet meeting, a court martial, ruined lives, lost reputations, and tales of a haunted ship "bound for the devil" and lost tragically at sea with many of its crew. The "Somers affair" led to the founding of the U.S. Naval Academy and it remains the Navy's only acknowledged mutiny in its history. The story also inspired Herman Melville's White-Jacket and Billy Budd. Others connected to the Somers included Commodore Perry, a relation and defender of the Somers' captain Mackenzie; James Fenimore Cooper, whose feud with the captain, dating back to the War of 1812, resurfaced in his reportage of the affair; and Raphael Semmes, the Somers' last caption who later served in the Confederate Navy. The Curse of the Somers is a thorough recreation of this classic tale, told with the help of recently uncovered evidence. Written by a maritime historian and archaeologist who helped identify the long-lost wreck and subsequently studied its sunken remains, this is a timeless tale of life and death at sea. James P. Delgado re-examines the circumstances, drawing from a rich historical record and from the investigation of the ship's sunken remains. What surfaces is an all-too-human tale that resonates and chills across the centuries.

The ocean is one of the few untamed places on earth, unpredictable and unsympathetic to the lives lost there. For this reason people remain fascinated by its tides, currents, and mysteries. Life and Death at Cape Disappointment is the author’s first-hand account of life as a surfman at one of the Coast Guard’s most dangerous stations, Cape Disappointment is one of the most notorious Coast Guard units on the Pacific Coast, its area of responsibility referred to as the “Graveyard of the Pacific.” The book focuses on five of the most significant search and rescue cases during the author’s tour and how such work affected him and his colleagues mentally and physically. It’s armchair entertainment for those enthralled by the ocean. During the author’s tenure at Station Cape Disappointment, he amassed over 2,200 hours of underway time, routinely operating on the hazardous Columbia River bar, where he earned a reputation as one of the most skilled boat handlers in the Coast Guard. He has worked on and supervised over 430 search and rescue cases. One of his rescues earned him the Association for Rescue at Sea’s gold lifesaving medal.

On a quiet Sunday morning in 1941, a ship designed to keep the peace was suddenly attacked. This book tells the remarkable story of a battleship, its brave crew, and how their lives were intertwined.

Jeff Phister and his coauthors have written the comprehensive history of the USS "Oklahoma" from its christening in 1914 to its final loss in 1947. Phister tells how the "Oklahoma" served in World War I, participated in the Great Cruise of 1925, and evacuated refugees from Spain in 1936. But the most memorable event of the ship's history occurred on December 7, 1941.

Phister weaves the personal narratives of surviving crewmen with the necessary technical information to recreate the attack and demonstrate the full scope of its devastation. Captured Japanese photographs and dozens of historic U.S. Navy photographs deepen our understanding of this monumental event.

Raised after the attack, the "Oklahoma" sank again while being towed stateside and now rests on the ocean floor, 540 miles northeast of Oahu. "Battleship" Oklahoma" BB-37" tells the complete story of a proud ship and her fall through the eyes of those who survived her loss.

Shows how the political turmoil of the Spanish American Wars of Independence allowed an upsurge in prize-taking activity by navies, privateers and pirates. Private maritime predation was integral to the Spanish American Wars of Independence. When colonists rebelled against Spanish rule in 1810 they deployed privateers - los corsarios insurgentes - to prosecute their revolutionary struggle at sea. Spain responded by commissioning privateers of its own, while the disintegration of Spanish authority in the New World created conditions in which unauthorised prize-taking - piracy - also flourished. This upsurge in privateering and piracy has been neglected by historians yet it posed a significant threat to British interests. As numerous vessels were captured and plundered, the British government - endeavouring to remain neutral in the Spanish American conflict - faced a dilemma. An insufficient response might hinder Britain's commercial expansion but an overly aggressive approach risked plunging the nation into another war. Privateering, Piracy and British Policy in Spanish America assesses the varied and flexible ways the British government responded to prize-taking activity in order to safeguard and enhance its wider commercial and political objectives. This analysis marks a significant and original contribution to the study of privateering and piracy, and informs key debates about the development of international law and the character of British imperialism in the nineteenth century. Matthew McCarthy is Research Officer at the Maritime Historical Studies Centre, University of Hull. He was awarded his PhD by the University of Hull in 2011 and won the British Commission for Maritime History/Boydell & Brewer prize for best doctoral thesis in maritime history.

The 1990s saw a sea change in East Asian security concerns. The role of the ocean as a highway for trade and a location of vital resources became critical to the region's economic growth. Protection of territorial waters, the Exclusive Economic Zones established under the UN Law of the Sea, and strategic lines of communication grew in importance. Soon, a significant change in the size and sophistication of many of the region's naval forces began to occur as they acquired modern weapons platforms (ships and aircraft) and weapons systems. This study uses two approaches from quantitative arms race theory, the role of the armaments-tension spiral and that of enduring national rivalries, to examine the hard data on arms races in the region. The changing balance of naval forces has been interpreted in two very different ways. One camp has viewed the development as a largely benign and justifiable "modernization" of naval forces for legitimate defense purposes. A second camp has warned of a "naval arms race" in East Asia that will spawn armed conflict. Both camps have often relied on anecdotal evidence and rhetoric. While the argument was muted by the 1997 economic crisis, many naval projects have continued to move forward. Meconis and Wallace address the meaning of East Asian naval weapons acquisitions in the 1990s in a more formal and serious manner than any previous attempts, and they propose measures that might prevent naval conflict.

The twenty-first century has seen a sharp rise in privatization of the military, especially of logistics and security functions during the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The outbreak of Somali piracy that started in 2008 has prompted a similar revolution in maritime security. Private security companies began operating armed escort vessels to protect merchant shipping against pirates off the Horn of Africa. Private Anti-Piracy Navies is intended to provide a contextualized understanding of the historical origins, current state, and future prospects of this fast-changing sector. Centuries ago, the British East India Company used a private navy against piracy in the same waters with much success. Yet since then, international law has evolved to more tightly regulate the use of force by civilians, and to afford greater protections to suspected pirates. Thus, the development of what are in effect private warships has presented numerous legal and regulatory problems. How can the companies that operate these vessels be effectively licensed? Under what circumstances should they be allowed to use lethal force? This book explains how regulators in industry and government have attempted to answer such questions, and highlights the remaining areas of uncertainty. It also addresses the economic factors that drive the struggle between pirates and anti-piracy forces. Of equal concern are operational considerations such as defensive tactics, logistics, and rules of engagement. Security companies must carefully balance rights concerns against the need to defend ships effectively. Partly due to the contribution of private security, piracy in the Indian Ocean has dropped significantly over the past two years, leading to widespread overconfidence. Governments under severe budget pressure may withdraw their naval task forces from the region prematurely, leading to a resurgence of Somali piracy. At the same time, pirates are wreaking havoc in the Gulf of Guinea off West Africa. The book concludes with an assessment of private naval forces' prospects in these conflicts over the short term, as well as the implications for wider naval privatization in the long run.

Man lives on land, but the seas of the world are crucial to his lot. Focusing on navies as instruments of power and analysing what they indicate about the nature of state systems and cultures all over the world, Black provides an overview of the most significant debates within the field. Organised into key historical periods and accessibly framed, this wide-ranging account emphasises the links between past and present throughout the history of naval power.

Includes FULL COLOR maps and illustrations. Presents a significant look at the cold weather and mountain training facility of the U.S. Marine Corps in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California.

DEFENDER DOLPHINS: The Story of Project Short Time is the first eyewitness account of a unique and daring SECRET project during the Vietnam War involving the first-ever military use of dolphins. Meet Garth, John, Slan, Tinker and Toad, Project Short Time's highly trained defender dolphins who protected a key ammunition pier in Vietnam - and laid a foundation for modern-day partnerships with dolphins, many of them their descendants. Learn how the author - the Navy's First Marine Mammal Officer - as well as all the scientists, engineers, military leaders, and trainers built the Navy's SECRET Marine Mammal Program literally from scratch, added to scientific knowledge, and successfully saved lives and high value resources during the Vietnam War. Included inside are Never-before-seen historic photographs. A timeline of events, a map, and a glossary. Behind-the-scenes human-interest stories. Profiles of key personnel. A look at the defender dolphins and other key marine mammals. A where-are-they-now summary. A refutation of common misconceptions and distortions about military dolphins. "Detailed and fascinating account of a clandestine effort undertaken decades ago during the Vietnam war..." --- U.S. Marine Lt. Col. (ret.) James Zumwalt, son of Admiral Elmo R. (Bud) Zumwalt Jr., the Chief of Naval Operations who ordered the deployment of Project Short Time. "Of great interest to readers..." --- Ricou Browning, author/creator the popular 1960s movie and television franchise Flipper "Hal Goforth's remarkable story details for the first time the partnership forged between man and dolphins..." - Terrie M. Williams., PhD, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz No one is in a better position to tell the dramatic story of the world's first military dolphins than CAPT (Ret) Harold W. Goforth, Jr., the U.S. Navy's first Marine Mammal Officer. For two years he lived and breathed dolphin training, deploying with the revolutionary Dolphin Swimmer Defense System to Vietnam until his tour ended in 1971. A marine scientist and professor of marine sciences and exercise physiology, Goforth spent 10 years researching DEFENDER DOLPHINS: The Story of Project Short Time. He and his wife, Sharon, divide their time between San Diego and South Florida.

The Royal Navy had most of its greatest triumphs in the decades up to 1815, but there has been relatively little study of its social life and shipboard administration, beyond popular myth and sensational accounts. This volume starts with the formal structure of naval discipline, with Admiralty instructions and captains' orderbooks. It then looks at how things really happened, using diaries, medical journals, petitions, court martial reports and even the menu book of a semi-literate steward. It reveals many strong characters and colourful incidents of shipboard life, while providing material for study.

This text considers the relationship between the Royal Navy and the US Navy during the years 1917-1919.

The single best work of reportage about the battlecruiser, ever, by a war correspondent who was with Beatty's Battlecruiser Squadron at Jutland. Filson Young: the Bob Woodward of battlecruisers.An excerpt: Here, then, was the ideal type for which Lord Fisher in our conversations had so often sighed; and I was secretly disappointed when, on my mentioning Fisher's name, Beatty merely smiled. And I was still more crestfallen when, a few days later, I spoke of Beatty enthusiastically to Lord Fisher, he gave me a blank, sour look and said: "Really? Never met him."I did not know the Navy as well in those days as I know it now, or I would have been less surprised than I was that the obviously ablest men in control of naval affairs were far from seeing eye to eye with one another, and even (what was more remarkable) neglected to make any real study of one another's aims and potentialities. Naval thought, where it existed, was divided into camps, each one regarding victory over the others as essential to victory over the Germans. Thus Lord Charles Beresford, whose best work in his retirement was his untiring public advocacy of naval efficiency, gave one in private a most alarming impression that the Navy was already practically in German control; and one of his mildest views of Lord Fisher was that he was a madman who, on the eve of war, had deliberately scrapped the majority of our cruisers. Winston Churchill was at one time probably one of the men most disliked by the Navy at large; but when one tried to discuss his administration seriously, one was told stories of his bad manners: as, for example, of his going on board a ship, entering the wardroom, ringing the bell and sending for the Commander - a solecism the gravity of which one must have lived in a wardroom to appreciate. And yet, one felt, it was not quite an argument against his efficiency as an administrator. But all the naval officer saw was a man to whose power our sacred naval traditions were committed, and who apparently knew or cared so little for the smallest of them that the greatest might well be in peril at his hands. The anti-Churchill camp was a very strong one. He, on the other hand, seemed to regard Lord Fisher as a dangerous genius to be caught, chained, tamed, and made careful use of; Lord Fisher regarded him (I am speaking of the two years before the war) as a politician to be fought or flattered, made or destroyed, according to his degree of adaptability to the great purpose.

For most of the Cold War naval arms control was the forgotten dimension of arms control. Beginning in the late 1980s, however, it has become increasingly prominent in the East-West dialogue. But it is usually studied from the perspective of Soviet-American relations. This book examines the subject from a European perspective. What role might naval arms control play in the European context? What impact might naval arms control have on the interests and perceptions of European states? What opportunities for and obstacles to naval arms control exist in Europe? The authors address these questions, describing the naval interests and attitudes towards naval arms control of European coastal states, as well as the Soviet Union and the United States, in the Norwegian, Baltic, and Mediterranean seas.