Anson's Navy: Building a Fleet for Empire 1744-1763

Despite a supreme belief, the Royal Navy of the early eighteenth century was becoming over-confident and outdated, and it had more than its share of disasters including the devastating sickness in Admiral Hosier‘s fleet in 1727; failure at Cartagena, and an embarrassing action off Toulon in 1744. Anson‘s great circumnavigation, though presented as a triumph, was achieved at huge cost in ships and lives. And in 1756 Admiral Byng was shot after failure off Minorca. In this new book, the bests...