A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217-1815. Volume II, 1689-1815

This is the story of how a regional European navy became the instrument that ruled the waves for two centuries. Beginning with the political earthquake of 1688, when the Crown's control of the fleet became accountable to Parliament, Hannay traces the Royal Navy's transformation through nearly 130 years of almost unbroken conflict with France. The narrative moves through the great amphibious operations of the War of Spanish Succession, the desperate struggles of the Seven Years' War, and the revolutionary upheavals that produced both the Spithead and Nore mutinies of 1797 and the unparalleled seamanship of the Nile and Trafalgar. What emerges is not merely a chronicle of battles, but an account of how administrative reform, tactical innovation, and a gradually democratic command structure created the most effective naval force the world had seen. Hannay writes with the authority of a scholar who understood that the Navy's story is inseparable from the evolution of the British state itself.