This book was lauded for giving an absorbing education in naval strategy and tactics, as well as Victorian social views and the impact of character on history. The author comes closer than any historian yet to describing what was underlying the much recounted actions of this legendary 1916 conflict at Jutland by contrasting an operational with a cultural subject. Despite the fact that the British fleet defeated the Germans, the cost in ships and men was great, and disputes have raged ever since in British naval circles over why the Royal Navy was unable to capitalize on the situation. Andrew Gordon focuses on what he considers a fault-line between two incompatible types of tactical leadership and distinct understandings of the rules of the game inside the Royal Navy in this book.
At a time of deep naval peace, when social connections were a means to the top, when royal yachts brought career advantage, and when officers had to use whatever leverage they could to stand out from the crowd – when obedience and paintwork, pomp and circumstance, were what made the Fleet tick – it was a simple matter for the Craft to step onto the quarterdecks of the Royal Navy’s flagships. And there it found an ample supply of recruits.
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