Featured battle : Malta 1800

Part of The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Date : 03 June 1798 - 05 September 1800

The Maltese rose against the French who retreated in the fortified citis around the harbour of Valletta and the three cities. The British blockaded the harbour on request of help from the Maltese whilst the Maltese forces besieged the French. Some Portuguese,British and Neapolitan troops were landed to assist the Maltese. This long blockade brought considerable suffering to the island. The French concentrated in Valetta and by the end of the siege were dying at the rate of 100 per day through sickness. The French survivors were transported to France in British ships. The British occupied the island.

The Last British Battleship HMS Vanguard 1946-1960

R A Burt
The last books I reviewed, published by Seaforth, were two volumes on Coastal Forces [see elsewhere on this site] which dealt with the smallest WW2 Naval craft so it is quite a jump to the largest battleship we ever built. Vanguard’s displacement was about 500 MTBs a truly magnificent ship which I know from personal experience having been on board at a Navy Day in Portsmouth in the late 1950s. So my question was is this book as good as the Coastal Forces books and will it do the ship justice?
My hopes were fully realised by the text, the photographs and the technical drawings. The text is very technical in parts which truly reflects the subject but in the main can be easily followed. Although there are a few difficult bits where unexplained initials are use. The photographs are many and varied showing every stage of the ship from builders yard to breakers yard. One very poignant picture, the last in the book, is of the bow section just lying forlorn in the mud.
The technical drawings, nearly all by the author, are superb. The drawings are of the whole ship including two three page and one four page spreads. There are also many detailed drawings of weapons systems, radar etc. All drawings are fully annotated as appropriate to their scale.
All this is presented in a beautifully produced large portrait format, about 260mm X 300mm.
We very highly recommend this well researched work.
Footnote: There is an error in the title as the Royal Navy still has a battleship in commission
i.e. H M S Victory, flying the flag of the Second Sea Lord/C-in-C Naval Home Command.
Seaforth Publishing, 2019