18 Phillips

The Royal Navy Day by Day (5th edn) by Lawrie Phillips, 2018

Mariners’ Mirror Vol 105, Issue 2, 2019 Pages 240-242 | Published online: 01 Apr 2019

https://doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2019.1592966

First published in 1979, this fifth edition, published seven years after the previous edition and again with Lieutenant Commander Lawrie Phillips as author, has been described by Admiral Sir Jonathon Band as ‘An essential work of reference and of inspiration throughout the Fleet’. Phillips himself is a distinguished naval historian of long standing. The book itself now runs to some 850 pages, compared with the 390 of the first edition.

It is arranged in calendar style with two pages for each day, typically with one or two photographs per double page, with the events of the day arranged chronologically, the entries normally varying between 15 and 150 words. It begins on 1 January 1586 with Drake’s capture of San Domingo and ends on 31 December 2015 with the Ice Patrol Ship Protector in the Ross Sea in Antarctica, the furthest south achieved by a British warship since Erebus in 1842. Scattered throughout the book are slightly larger pieces of text covering date independent topics as varied as the Royal Naval Hospital at Haslar, operations against piracy around the Horn of Africa since 2008, the commissioning of the new carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth and a biography of Admiral Duncan of Camperdown.

One of the joys of the book is the huge variety of illustrations. Apart from the obvious, one can almost randomly find a poster for the film of The Cruel Sea, a British female dance troupe rescued by the cruiser London from Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War as well as portraits of significant figures. Phillips has a dry but wonderful sense of humour. For example, 27 July records in full the Admiralty fleet order from 1939 regarding the supply of earthenware butter coolers to replace enamelled butter dishes for ships on foreign service, as well as the closure of the Fleet Laundry Training Unit in 1973. On 21 January we discover from 1955 a snowball fight between students supporting the First Sea Lord, newly elected as rector of Aberdeen University, and the deputy chief constable of Aberdeen and his force of police.

Major events are, of course covered in full, but what enlivens the book is a slew of interesting minor events such as the first night gunnery exercise by searchlight in 1885 or the paying off of the last dockyard paddle tug, the first Royal Marine to swim the Channel, the discontinuing of use of the term ‘Larboard’, or Cook’s discovery of Hawaii.

As all of the examples above imply, this is a reference book to be dipped into rather than a text to be read. It is a treasure trove of fact recording the oddities of the Royal Navy as well as its central impact on British history throughout the world.

But perhaps the most interesting issue is how much this edition has been updated from the previous edition. Each two-page spread has between ten and 25 events briefly listed, the difference reflecting whether there are pictures and/or larger articles on a topic. To pick one day at random: for 19 June the fourth edition lists 12 events and has a picture of a modern RNZN frigate as well as a three-paragraph article on naval gunnery. The fifth edition reduces this to nine events by dropping the picture, dropping four events but adding a larger than average new item on the 1810 build of the two decker Minden in Bombay with some description of her service. There is also a new brief piece on the service of the Armed Trawler Moonstone at Aden in 1940. These demonstrate a substantial revision of the text. As far as can be judged somewhere between 20 and 25 per cent of the text has been changed, typically by adding new events and dropping some of the perhaps more marginal Victorian items.

The same is then true for the illustrations. There are around a thousand images scattered throughout the text. Some 90 per cent appear to have been changed from the previous edition, a huge reworking. Happily, and rather in the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock playing cameo roles in the films he directed, Phillips sneaks in a picture of himself as a tourist inspecting the site in Corsica where Nelson lost his eye.

As in previous editions there is no overt criticism of or comment on the workings of the Royal Navy, but the author very cleverly uses cross references to demonstrate issues. Thus, 16 December records a case of bullying and harassment in 2004. This is then linked to a series of cases on other dates as far back as 1658. The author makes no overt comment but the point that this is a long-standing issue dealt with over the centuries is clearly made. The very detailed index of the previous edition, some 100 pages long, is somewhat unhelpfully halved to 50 pages, while the ten-page bibliography is usefully expanded to almost double that of the previous edition. All in all, this is a substantially revised, rejuvenated and excellent new edition. One can perhaps best summarize with the laconic signal to Admiral Fraser from the Admiralty on 26 Dec 1943 after the sinking of Scharnhorst, ‘Grand. Well done’.