E. Keble Chatterton (1878–1944)

Well;, I suppose if I wanted to read a book on a relatively unknown aspect of WWI I succeeded. The subject is German sea raiders - nominally cruisers but converted merchantmen. They were armed and their mission was to escape the net of the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and then capture 'prizes' of allied merchant ships. Clearly, they were superseded by submarines. While these ships were armed they were little competition for military ships as they were slow, poorly protected, compartments couldn't be sealed and so on, so it hit they were gone quickly. So they survived primarily by guile.

They roamed the world and all its oceans. Unlike how submarine warfare would soon develop they would take crews off ships and often transfer their cargo, especially if valuable coal, before dispatching them. Reflecting on the times they often released ships with women and children on board and held services for slain foes.

So, if you like this sort of thing, and are fascinated by how grand the scope of WWI was, and not just the European eastern front, you might like this.

Written in 1931 the English is different and words like descried and elsewhither crop up!… (más)

... Mr Chatterton tells the story of English settlement in North America beginning with Cabot's voyage and ending with the Declaration of Liberty nearly three hundred years later. He believes that in the idea of liberty, which he traces through settlement afrer settlement, was one of the chief inspirations for that long series of unsuccesssful adventures, each one of which must, like Columbus's, have been disappointing to the greedy stay-at-homes who had sunk money in it in the hope of immediate returns.

[Arthur Ransome in The Observer, 17 Aug. 1930; reproduced in Christina Hardyment, Ransome on blue water sailing, pp. 62-64].… (más)