Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #307489 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 136 pages

Customer Reviews

130 pages of historic photographs.
This is yet another photographic journey through time in a single place. In this case that "place" is the historic country of Gibraltar with it's equally historic dockyard and connections with the Royal Navy. From early photographs of the almost complete dry docks taken in 1904, right up to the latest visits by RN ships - including the latest HMS Ark Royal, in the new millennium, we are treated to a photographic journey through time and history itself..

Like so many people who have visited Gibraltar, I have had a love affair with this country ever since I first clapped eyes on the most famous rock in the world. That was in 1977 and whilst my own interest stems from the superb wreck-diving to be found offshore, in researching the history of those shipwrecks I found myself drawn into the wider elements of this truly historic piece of real estate time and again. It was, therefore, with a little knowledge of that history that I sat down to read this book. I was not disappointed.

Set out in date order, one of the early photographs is of HMS Cormorant which was the Gibraltar Depot ship for an incredible 52 years. Another shows HM Ships Hood, Repulse and Renown alongside the detached mole at the same time, yet another depicts a flight of Fairey 111D biplanes over the rock and yet another shows not one but two cruisers inside the same dry dock at the same time. Such is the calibre of the photographs included in this excellent book.

By the 1950's we are treated to such pictures as an aerial shot of the South Mole where HMS Vanguard and two Aircraft Carriers are berthed. Is that the famous, but ill-fated, Cruise Liner Andrea Doria behind HMS Agincourt in 1956? Another Aircraft Carrier HMS Victorious appears in 1959. HMS Belfast - as Flagship of the Reserve Fleet, makes an appearance in 1963 and the penultimate HMS Ark Royal makes her first appearance in 1965 and her last in 1978 - flying her paying-off pennant.

I could so easily go on - mentioning each and every photograph as the story of Gibraltar's dockyard and it's role throughout the 20th Century slowly unfolds in pictures.

Personally, I would like to see more text - but not at the expense of any photograph or even at the expense of reducing those photographs in size. But I would wouldn't I - after all I am a shipwreck historian and information on ships is my craving...

Otherwise an excellent book with many new and previously unpublished historic photographs.

NM.

There's a lot more to the Royal Navy than just ships!
There are indeed some very good photographs in this book and some will spark happy memories for many a sailor and visitor to 'the Rock'.

Like so many before and after me, as a young man in my first ship, Gibraltar (not 'Gibralter' as another reviewer writes here) was, in 1969, my first foreign 'run ashore'. In truth, I was hoping to see a good spread of photographs of a century or more, given the book's title, but well over a third of the pages cover the 1970s onwards.

What I really wanted, however, from this book was a pictorial memento of the Royal Navy's Gibraltar - in its fullest sense - not a book mostly of ships in photographs taken at Gibraltar, though some of them are important to the volume. The book yearns for an annotated map of the harbour and of the Royal Navy's estate around the Rock.

Nevertheless there are some great photographs and some that will bring back memories. Some of the early photographs are very good indeed but some are blurred and one wonders whether better examples could not have been found; there is no excuse for some of the poor quality of photographs taken in later years (pages 78, 92, 110, 111 for example). Some photographs have captions that refer to the original but not relevant to the printed page (just where are the carriers mentioned on page 70?). Too many photographs are not dated, the author not even steering the reader with an approximation of date; for HMS Whirlwind, on page 67, for example, we are told she was completed in 1944, converted in 1953 and expended in 1974 - all fine, but when was the photo taken? The reader is left knowing it was some time between 1953 and 1974!

Pages 30-33 are a treat: a two-page spread of two fleets in harbour in 1938, after joint manoeuvres, the Rock under the guns of HMS Rodney and that of Force H silhouetted against the east side of the Rock is stunning.

However, some of the photographs are of HM Ships that could, or might as well have been, anywhere, the Gibraltar connexion being hardly evident or not at all (e.g. pages 57, 90, 102). Others have real historical merit, yet lazy editing keeps it a secret from the average reader: on page 60, the destroyer HMS Agincourt is pictured passing an ocean liner with beautiful lines; she is the Italia Line's ss Andrea Doria, famously lost after a collision with another liner, ms Stockholm, in 1956, after just three and a half years afloat (the photograph is dated 1956, so is probably one of the last taken of her).

I was hoping to to learn something of the sheer legs (a structure comprising two upright spars, joined at the top to form a triangle, with a hoisting tackle suspended from the apex, it was used to lift heavy cargo, parts or machinery). The sheer legs are mentioned in the caption to the photograph of M2 on page 16, but only the feet are seen in this photograph. On page 20, the caption to the aerial photograph reads "... and the large sheer legs, which were a prominent feature of the dockyard for many years ...". If you don't know what the sheer legs were, or what to look for, then neither caption is useful, the latter not pointing out to the lay reader where in the photograph these sheer legs are located, their purpose, their dates of use and their fate (I am told they were 'pushed' into the harbour). Indeed, a search on the internet is not very fruitful either, unless one is exploring matters related to panty hose! The sheer legs are much more prominent in the photographs on pages 43, 45 and 63 but the captions do not even mention them.

And what of other naval aspects of Gibraltar that would jog the collective memory of the Royal Navy? Not one photograph of the Gibraltar guardship anchored in the disputed waters in the 1970s (perhaps with the Spanish warship, nicknamed "Smokey Joe", in attendance), or of any Flag Officer, the Admiral's house, the courtyard inside the Tower, the Commcen (communications centre) inside the Rock, the NAAFI Club, the United Services Officers' Club (USOC), the 'NOP' (I think this was the Naval Officers' Pavilion), the Royal Naval Hospital (RNH Gibraltar - it appears as part of a photograph on page 26 but is not mentioned in the index), the married quarters, the sports grounds (perhaps with a fleet sports competition taking place), the most popular bars (with Jolly Jack on a 'run ashore') such as the London Bar or Sugar's Bar. With runs ashore in mind, the photograph on page 49 of the Naval Patrol House ('Naval Picket House' according to the caption) will stir some hazy memories of a beer or two too many! There is a good photograph (page 93) of a team about to take place in the 'Top of the Rock' race - a good example of photographs that should be included, had the author had a better understanding of what the Royal Navy's Gibraltar really means.

The index should be correctly titled 'Index of Ships' because it is not an index of the book or of all the photographs. The 'Top of the Rock Race', the Naval Patrol House and none of the naval aircraft depicted are listed in the index, and none of the Rock's main or maritime features (harbour, mole, sheer legs, east side) are either.

This book would be better titled "Royal Navy warships at Gibraltar" for it is not truly a book about the Royal Navy at Gibraltar. It could have been a real evocation of Gibraltar as a naval base and dockyard, with some of the key naval infrastructure and paraphernalia; that would have made this book of interest to the hundreds of thousands of sailors who have been to Gib.

What is annoying is that, with not a great deal more effort, many of the captions could have been improved and the book made a lot more interesting, especially in relation to aspects of the Royal Navy's Gibraltar - and Gibraltar itself as a background to ships photographed. It's not a bad book but it could have been so much better; I hope both author and publisher take note because readers do deserve better than this.

How to Understand Gibralter
Highly recomended if you want have the real feeling for Gibralter with The Royal Navy. Excelent photographs on every page.

There are plenty of text only books about Gibralter but this would create interest for anyone without going into endless details.My favorote photograph is on page 57 showing the carrier HMS Eagle entering Gibralter in 1955.