German cruiser SMS Konigsberg, displacing 3,400 tons, sailed from Germany for Africa in April 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I.

British Royal Navy

The German Cruiser Konigsberg

By Michael Vogel

The field telephone rang on the bridge of the trapped German cruiser SMS Konigsberg. On the other end of the line, the coast watcher spoke the words that had been dreaded for almost eight months—the British were coming. Read more

British Royal Navy

Operation Catapult: Churchill’s Desperate Measure

By Brooke C. Stoddard

Steaming through the summer Mediterranean night, the world having gone sour in two awful months, British Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville read the message just sent to him from London: “You are charged with one of the most disagreeable and difficult tasks that a British Admiral has ever been faced with, but we have complete confidence in you and rely on you to carry it out relentlessly.” Read more

Smoke billows from the German freighter Drachenfels after sustaining damage during a raid by the British.

British Royal Navy

The Daring Calcutta Light Horse Raid

By Robert Barr Smith

Freighter Ehrenfels’ siren shrieked through the muggy night across the harbor. As the captain pulled down hard on the alarm cord, the alarm howled out over the steaming darkness, screaming that British raiders were in the harbor, alerting Ehrenfels’ crew and calling for help from ashore. Read more

Japanese warships steam into Port Arthur, Manchuria, bombarding Russian defenses and ships. Sidney Reilly purportedly sold Japanese information about the port when he lived there just before the war.

British Royal Navy

The Mysterious Sidney Reilly

by Vince Hawkins

On the evening of November 5, 1925, Prisoner #73 was taken from his cell in the infamous Lubyanka Prison and driven to a woods in the Sokolniki district outside Moscow. Read more

Wellington’s artillery commander at Waterloo said that without Henry Shrapnel’s devastating new shell, Allied forces could not have taken a key position on the battlefield.

British Royal Navy

Henry Shrapnel & The Battle of Waterloo

by Robert Whiter

“And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air …”

That, as most people know, is a line from the American national anthem, words by Francis Scott Key, to the tune of Anacreon in Heaven by John Stafford Smith. Read more

British Royal Navy

German U-Boats: Scapa Flow Shock

By Jon Latimer

World War II had been in progress for six weeks when on the evening of October 12, 1939, the German submarine U-47 surfaced off the Orkney Islands at the northern tip of Scotland. Read more

American soldiers man an artillery post on the south end of San Juan Island. A dispute over the boundary between Washington Territory and British Columbia almost led to an armed conflict between the United States and Great Britain in 1859.

British Royal Navy

James Douglas’ Audacious Plans after the Trent Affair

By William Silvester

On November 8, 1861, two distinguished diplomats from the newly established Confederate States of America were arrested and removed from the British mail steamer Trent by the American ship San Jacinto in the Bahama Channel near Havana, Cuba. Read more

English battleships erupt in flames as their big guns answer German bombardment in the opening moments of the Battle of Jutland.

British Royal Navy

Trafalgar in Reverse: The Battle of Jutland

By James Dunn

In the spring of 1916, as the result of intense international pressure, Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer called in all his submarines after Germany announced an end to unrestricted underwater attacks on transatlantic merchant ships. Read more

British Royal Navy

Triumph of “The Nelson Touch”

By Jonas L. Goldstein

When the Treaty of Amiens was signed on April 1, 1802, bringing peace between France and Great Britain after nearly a decade of war, there was wild rejoicing in England. Read more

British commandos march through the ruins of the French town of Caen. An objective of the Allied D-Day landings that was supposed to have been captured on June 6, stiff German resistance prevented the city from being liberated until a month later.

British Royal Navy

Fleming, Ian Fleming

By Hervie Haufler

Some accounts of Ian Fleming’s life make it seem that only at the age of 44, as an antidote to the shock of finally agreeing to get married, did he suddenly commit himself to the unplanned task of creating his James Bond novels. Read more

A U.S. Navy destroyer escort was originally conceived as something of a stopgap measure during World War II. Later, the design proved to be effective in all theaters. Here, a destroyer escort is shown under way during sea trials.

British Royal Navy

Holding the Line on the High Seas

By Paul B. Cora

Also Through the first half of World War II, Allied shipping losses to German U-boats climbed steadily from over 400,000 tons in the last four months of 1939 to more than two million tons each in 1940 and 1941, before reaching a staggering 6,266,215 tons in 1942 following the entry of the United States into the war. Read more