When The US Navy Came Of Age, Showing For The First Time What It Could Do
Sweat poured down the brows of eight American sailors, their white-knuckled fists gripping long oars. The bosun bellowed at them to pull for their lives…
How HMS Speedy Captured The El Gamo, Which Was 3 Times Her Size & Had 5 Times Her Crew
On March 28th, 1800, a Scottish aristocrat took command of the small Brig-Sloop HMS Speedy, based at Port Mahon. The Scotsman, Thomas Cochrane, was an…
How the Royal Navy kept order, Through Caning, Flogging, and Hanging
By the end of the 18th century, the wooden walls of England, as her Navy was so often called, was comprised of one of the…
VC: Despite Being Shot And With His Plane On Fire, This Pilot Refused To Bail Out Without Taking Down A German Fighter
On a bright sunny morning in August 1940, No. 249 Squadron, Royal Air Force, was patrolling near Southampton, in southern England. There was hardly any…
How the Jewish Brigade Saved Lives, and Helped to Found a Nation’s Army
In the spring of 1945, a new unit arrived on the British lines in northern Italy: His Majesty’s Jewish Brigade Group. Made up Jewish volunteers…
The Man Who Helped Create The US Navy, And Brought About A New Class Of Warship
Looking back through history it is rare to find a single person who was responsible for a major shift in thought. It is rarer to…
How The Royal Navy Fed Its Sailors Over 200 Years Ago
An army marches on its stomach, and while a Navy sails on the sea, its sailors still need feeding. In the 1790s and early 1800s,…
How 500 Canadian parachutists helped secure victory on D-Day – The 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion was one of the few units to effectively capture all of their given objectives at D-Day
On the evening of June 5th 1944, just over 540 Canadians boarded planes on the Southern English coast. These men were about to be a…
Frank H. Newcomb – Hero Of Cardenas – Her Two Six-Pounder Cannons Succeeded In Firing 135 Rounds In 20 Minutes
“I revere that long line of expert seamen who by their devotion to duty and sacrifice of self have made it possible for me to…
How 50 German Sailors Sailed, Marched And Rowed Home From A Tiny Island Halfway Around The World
The Keeling Islands are little more than overgrown coral reefs, but in 1914 they saw the beginning of one the most epic adventure stories of…
When The Coast Guard Supported The D.E.A. & Flew Resupply & Bombing Missions Against The Shining Path
The U.S. Coast Guard has always been there to help those in distress, but that doesn’t always mean ships in a storm. In the Fall…
Battle of WWI merchant raiders: HMS Alcantara v SMS Greif
On February 27, 1916, the Norwegian cargo ship Rena steamed out of Cuxhaven on Germany’s North Sea coast. In peacetime, this would not have been…