Town Class Cruisers

Town Class Cruisers by Neil McCart

Maritime Books, Liskeard, 2012. £29.

334p., with numerous black and white photographs

ISBN: 978-1-904-45952-1

The Town Class Cruisers were designed to meet the constraints imposed by the London Naval Treaty of 1930. Like their US and Japanese contemporaries, the Towns were considered to be "light cruisers" within the narrow terms of the Treaty. The London Treaty defined a "light cruiser" as being one having a main armament no greater than 6.1 in (155 mm) calibre. The major naval powers then sought to get round the limitations on the heavy cruiser numbers set by the Treaty by building "light cruisers" that were equal in size and effective power to heavy cruisers. These ships made up for their smaller calibre guns by carrying larger numbers of them. The Towns were built in three sub-groups with differing armaments and D.K. Brown considered them the most beautiful ships ever built for the Royal Navy.

The ten ships of the Town Class - Southampton, Newcastle, Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Gloucester, Edinburgh and Belfast - bear names redolent of hard fought and famous actions fought at pivotal points of the Second World War – indeed four of them were lost in action. They saw hard service in all the major theatres of the war involving the RN and served on beyond that. Many of the surviving ships saw successful service during the Korean War and continued in active service to the end of the 1950s. Their post-war service is much less well-known, and one of the strengths of the book is the due weight and coverage given to this post-WW2 service.

The author gives us a concise operational history of each ship in this important class of cruiser, in effect ten separate essays. It is not a long book so each history is necessarily short, averaging thirty pages. Some are of course longer than others as the last ship but one, HMS Sheffield, was only and finally sold for scrap in the late 1960s. The last Town-class — Belfast — remains, moored on the River Thames in London as a much loved museum-ship of the Imperial War Museum, a role she has performed since 1971.

This is a good strong series of essays describing in detail the operational history of each member of the class. The style is simple, chronological and direct. It is fact rich and in places usefully interspersed with sometimes lengthy personal reminiscences of key events. It describes perfectly where each vessel was and what she was doing at every stage of her career. It is refreshingly well proof read and seems extremely accurate in its details.

It would be unfair to criticise a book for not delivering what it does not set out to do, however this perfectly workmanlike and useful set of accounts falls some way short of being a definitive history of the class. There is no background as to why they were built; there are no design details, no building specifications, no description of the important armament evolution, nor is there any information as to how these excellent cruisers evolved. There is no index, bibliography or references. More positively, the book is liberally laced with well-chosen and well-reproduced photographs.

Derek Law

Strathclyde University