Empire of the Deep - The Rise and Fall of the British Navy

Few other nations have fallen so deeply in love with a branch of the armed forces as the British did with its Navy, when, for a few decades after the Battle of Trafalgar, Britain truly ruled the world's waves. Yet there was nothing inevitable about this rise to global domination, nor was it ever an easy path. As Wilson shows in this fascinating voyage through Britain's maritime past, for much of its history, Britain was a third-rate maritime power on the periphery of Europe, assailed by myriad seaborne threats from the lawless waters that surrounded her....