From first joining the Royal Navy in 1940 until the end of the campaign against Japan, Tony Ditcham was in the front line of the naval war. After brief service in the battlecruiser Renown off Norway and against the Italians, he went into destroyers and saw action in most European theatres _ against S-boats and aircraft in 'bomb alley' off Britain's East Coast, on Arctic convoys to Russia, and eventually in a flotilla screening the Home Fleet. During the dramatic Battle of the North Cape in December 1943 he was probably the first man to actually see the Scharnhorst and from his position in the gun director of HMS Scorpion enjoyed a grandstand view of the sinking of the great German battleship (his account was so vivid that it formed the basis of the description in the official history). Later his ship operated off the American beaches during D-Day, where two of her sister ships were sunk with heavy loss of life, and he ended the war en route for the British Pacific Fleet and the invasion of Japan.??This incident-packed career is recounted with restraint, plenty of humour and colourful descriptive power _ his account of broaching and almost capsizing in an Arctic winter storm is as good as anything in the literature of the sea. The result makes enthralling reading, and as the surviving veterans rapidly decline in numbers, this may turn out to be one of the last great eyewitness narratives of the naval war.

"Three months after Hitler's storm troopers marched into Poland on September 1, 1939, Ian Stuart Menzies was called from his job as an embryo reporter on the Glasgow Herald to become an embryo midshipman in the Royal Navy. His service took him from the Shetland Islands to the West Indies, to Africa's Belgian Congo; from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, from Dakar to Malta and then to Algiers, and on five different ships, three of them destroyers. He took part in the landings in North African [sic], Sicily, Italy and on D-Day in Normandy... His first visit to the United States was in 1943 to take over as executive officer of H.M.S. Stayner then being built at the Hingham Shipyard. The second visit in 1945 was to become British Naval Information Officer in New York City and to marry Barbara Newton of Hingham, Massachusetts, whom he had met at the shipyard on his first visit. The marriage took place in the oldest church of public worship in continuous service in the United States - The Old Ship Church in Hingham on June 16, 1945."--p. [4] cover.

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In 1801 the newly forged United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland commenced life at war with France and her allies and remained so until 1815. After 1812 she had to shoulder the extra burden of a war against the United States of America. With conflict on multiple fronts, hardships continued to be inflicted at home. Trade was made precarious. People became bone-weary of hostilities and the threat of invasion ran high. Napoléon Bonaparte was no ordinary opponent, and the United States navy showed the world the worth of her ships, but what stood in their way was the Royal Navy. Despite notable losses, after the victory of Trafalgar in 1805 she dominated the seas. Although not the only means, her warships were the nation’s first line of defence that helped keep British shores safe. As the era ended it was obvious the navy had to change. Steam began to alter perspectives with new opportunities. From the vantage point of later decades it could be seen what the Royal Navy had once been and still was. A naval superpower. Britain’s oldest continual military force. The senior service.