A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688

Hannay, David, 1853-1934Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
1.1M words
Chapters
113

Tags

English Originals World HistoryMilitary Institutional ChangeMilitary StrategyTechnical EvolutionMaritime RecordsNaval HistoryNaval SupremacyMilitary CommandersPower GameGlobal PerspectiveEarly Modern Era

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688 by David HannayAuthor: Hannay, David, 1853-1934,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Sep 2, 2014

Editor's review

This is a general history by the British naval historian David Hannay, focusing on the crucial period from 1217 to 1688, when the Royal Navy took shape from its early beginnings. In a narrative style, the author traces changes in fleet organization, naval tactics, shipbuilding technology, and concepts of sea power, while also taking into account political and commercial contexts. Concise and clearly structured, it is well suited as an introductory reader on the early history of the Royal Navy. As a public-domain eBook from Project Gutenberg, it is easy to search and read across platforms; readers may consult maps and chronologies alongside the text to understand how sea power influenced Britain's national destiny.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and chapter introductions to outline the key milestones from 1217 to 1688, then read each chapter closely.
  2. While reading, keep a map of Britain and a naval chronology at hand, marking the waters where fleets operated and how opponents changed.
  3. For long English sentences, first read for the gist of the paragraph, then return to terminology and names, so that looking up every word does not interrupt the rhythm.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
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  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97
  98. 98
  99. 99
  100. 100
  101. 101
  102. 102
  103. 103
  104. 104
  105. 105
  106. 106
  107. 107
  108. 108
  109. 109
  110. 110
  111. 111
  112. 112
  113. 113

FAQ

What period does this book cover? According to the title and the materials, the book narrates the history of the Royal Navy from 1217 to 1688, concentrating on the early stages of naval organization and the development of sea power rather than the modern navy.
Can I read it if my English is only average? This is an English public-domain book with a relatively plain narrative, but it involves historical names, place names, and naval terminology. It is advisable to read with a dictionary and a chronology, or to first read a Chinese overview of British history to build background.
Is it suitable as an academic citation source? The author was a naval history writer at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The book can serve as an introduction and a source of leads; for rigorous academic writing, primary sources and contemporary research should still be checked, and it should not be relied on alone.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Hannay, David, 1853-1934 Author

David Hannay (1853-1934) was a British writer and student of naval history, though details of his life are limited in publicly available sources. Five of his works are held here, centred on the history of the Royal Navy and on literary history. A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688 and the second volume of A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217-1815 (1689-1815) trace naval development in a concise narrative; Rodney is a biography of the admiral; Life of Frederick Marryat concerns the novelist who began as a naval officer; and The Later Renaissance turns to literary history. His writing favours broad historical narrative, attending to factual sequence and biography in plain language for general readers, and retains some reference value for popularising naval and literary history.