For Britain, as an island nation, the Navy has always had a special significance and has remained embedded in the national consciousness, finding continuing cultural expression in art, music, and literature. This book presents a total history of the Royal Navy by drawing on the specialist knowledge of 14 expert contributors who between them cover every aspect of naval history from the Anglo-Saxon period to submarine warfare in the nuclear age.

Accounts are given of major actions and campaigns - such as the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the seventeenth century, Trafalgar, the Battle of Jutland, the Atlantic Campaign of 1939-45, and the Falklands conflict. Emphasis is also placed on a range of other naval functions, from navigational advances, surveying, and constructional developments to disaster relief and the suppression of the slave trade.

The range of personalities is equally diverse, from great national heroes like Drake and Nelson, to administrators such as Samuel Pepys, technicians (including the great hydrographer, Francis Beaufort), and men of power and influence such as Jackie Fisher, Lord Charles Beresford, and Lord Jellicoe.

There is also a wealth of information on shipboard life at different periods, recruitment (including press gangs, training, education, and discipline), tactics, gunnery and armaments, amphibious operations, wages and conditions, victualling and supply, and systems of preferment. A unique feature is a series of 'Action Stations' - diagrams showing the manner in which ships of various periods went into battle.

With a full complement of reference material, including a chronology and extensive list of further reading, this is an authoritative and highly readable account of a unique fighting service and its people.