A Sub. of the R.N.R.: A Story of the Great War

Westerman, Percy F. (Percy Francis), 1876-1959Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
489K words
Chapters
49

Tags

English Originals War and Military Fiction Military StrategyAdventure JourneyMilitary CommandersHeroismComing of AgePopular Narrative

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 Sub. of the R.N.R.: A Story of the Great War by Percy F. WestermanAuthor: Westerman, Percy F. (Percy Francis), 1876-1959,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Nov 30, 2015

Editor's review

This novel by the English author Percy F. Westerman is set against the backdrop of the First World War and recounts the seafaring experiences of a junior officer in the Royal Naval Reserve. Westerman specialized in adventure and military fiction for young readers, and this book continues his hallmark attention to detail and brisk pacing, weaving naval combat, shipboard life, and the wartime atmosphere into a coming-of-age narrative. As a free Project Gutenberg eBook, it preserves the original English text and is well suited to examining the narrative methods and language style of early twentieth-century British popular war fiction. Readers can feel both the tension of an adventure story and encounter the military terminology and values of the era. It is best approached as a popular novel with historical context rather than as rigorous military history; for those studying British juvenile literature or naval-themed writing of the First World War, it offers a useful comparative text. Print editions are hard to find, while the electronic edition is convenient for searching and comparative reading.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the opening chapters first to become familiar with the characters and period background, then proceed chapter by chapter; there is no need to finish it in one sitting.
  2. Look up naval terminology as needed; this does not hinder grasp of the main plot and helps build a working vocabulary of wartime usage.
  3. Read it alongside other First World War novels and note how popular fiction handles themes of war and coming of age.
  4. Use the electronic edition's search function to trace keywords such as ships and ranks, and build your own background notes.

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
  23. 23
  24. 24
  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

FAQ

Is this book the original English edition, and what reading level does it require? This is the original English eBook released by Project Gutenberg, written in the popular fiction style of the early twentieth century: sentences are long but the plot moves directly. Readers with roughly CET-4 level English who are willing to look up a few naval terms should be able to read it through, and a dictionary and background notes will help on a first reading.
How closely is the story related to real First World War naval history? The novel is set during the First World War and bears clear period marks and military elements, but it is essentially an adventure story for young readers, with plot serving narrative rather than historical reconstruction. It can serve as supplementary reading for sensing the wartime atmosphere, but should not be cited as a historical source; for specific battles and ship details, consult specialized works.
Why recommend reading the electronic edition? The book is released free by Project Gutenberg, and print editions are hard to obtain. The electronic edition allows full-text searches for characters, ships, and terminology, and makes comparison with the author's other works easy, which suits thematic reading and quick reference during language study.

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

Westerman, Percy F. (Percy Francis), 1876-1959 Author

Percy F. Westerman (1876–1959) was a British author known for adventure novels for young readers. Public information about him is limited, and few details of his life are available. The library holds 36 of his works, mostly naval and war stories: A Watch-dog of the North Sea and Under the White Ensign are set against naval operations in the Great War; The Nameless Island is a modern Robinson Crusoe tale of survival on a deserted island; and The Quest of the Golden Hope returns to seventeenth-century maritime adventure. He also wrote early aviation fiction such as The Dreadnought of the Air, and battlefield stories like A Lively Bit of the Front, about the New Zealand Rifles on the Western Front. His novels are tightly plotted, with attention to technical detail and discipline, and were influential in early twentieth-century English boys' fiction.