The Great War at Sea

By Richard Hough

The First World War witnessed the greatest naval battle of all time.

But the race to war, including the construction of the Dreadnought, the biggest, fastest, most heavily gunned battleship in the world, was set against a backdrop of feuds, scheming, and personality clashes at the Admiralty. It is a history as much of men as of ships; men like Sir John Jellicoe, ‘Jacky’ Fisher, and Winston Churchill, who together succeeded in jolting the Royal Navy out of its nineteenth-century complacency.

In The Great War At Sea: 1914-1918, the historian Richard Hough tells the story of those naval battles and how they shaped the eventual outcome of the war.

Richard Hough, the distinguished naval historian, was the author of many acclaimed books in the field, including The Fleet That Had to Die, Admirals in Collision, The Great War at Sea: 1914-18, and The Longest Battle: The War at Sea 1939-45. He was the biographer of Mountbatten, and his last biography, Captain James Cook, became a world bestseller.