Here is an account of life at sea in the Royal Navy during the first half of the 20th Century, seen through the eyes of two successive generations of officers, father and son. The first part, based on letters to mother (the authors's grandmother) presents a view of the Empire's naval scene between 1905 and 1916, closing with the material witness' account of the clash of the Titans off Jutland written at sea immediately afterwards. It ends with a biographical note on the father's subsequent career with an amusing aside on the fate of senior officers who ran foul of the ruling powers. Admiral Sir Dudley North, Flag Officer at Gibraltar when the Vichy French broke out of the Mediterranean , was banished in disgrace by a furious Churchill to command of the Marshwood Vale platoon of the Home Guard. Far from sulking over his fate Admiral North entered into his new role with enthusiasm and humour and Gibraltar's loss became Marshwood Vale's gain.

Part II continues the story-thread of life at sea against the background of the author's own experiences. Starting at the tail-end of the War he joins a battleship in the Eastern Fleet based on Ceylon. A few months later the ship breaks her back when the floating dock in which she is having a bottom scrape collapses; and the author moves to an Australian destroyer about to join the British Pacific Fleet then operating off the Philippines. Post-war his career took him through some of the most interesting episodes of the period, the Communist incursion in Malaya and the first Cod War amongst them. This story ends in 1963 after a tour in the Far East in command of an old Battle class destroyer by then re-built as a radar picket ship and kept busy as ever by the "confrontation" strategy of the Indonesians in the run-up to Independence for Malaya.

Review

This is a story of the Royal Navy in its last, arguably its greatest days just before and during that era in which British politicians decided to dispose of the Empire with undignified haste. However, true to his Service the author leaves the politics to his reader as he sets out an entertaining and informed tale of ships, men and the sea in the now all-but-extinct British tradition. I must admit to some trepidation when approaching this book, expecting yet another in the growing school of nonentical autobiographies. But I was mistaken and read on with unreserved enjoyment, relaxing in the company of a naval officer with a talent for a good yarn. Commander Corson does himself a disservice by confessing, rather disingeneously, to a "not very competent" portrayal of life at sea in what he calls the "Steam Turbine and Rifled Gun" period. On the contrary, his eye for the main theme, his ear for the amusing, even the ridiculous and most of all his sound grasp of the drift and import of current events, make his an accomplished piece of writing. -- The Nautical Magazine - winter 1997/8

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