Product Description

Britain, in common with other colonial powers, established and controlled her empire from the seas. In defending this realm, the gunboat was developed to preserve secure trading conditions and operate in shallow coastal waters. This book explores 13 episodes of gunboat action.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #437952 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

About the Author
Bryan Perrett left the army as a successful career officer to take up the pen as a full-time writer. Able to write to any brief (he was captioning picture-strips for schoolgirl comics at one point), he found his metier as a military historian and writer of good, fast, episodic, narrative popular histories. His many books, all founded on meticulous research from primary sources, find a wide popular readership. He is the bestselling author in the bestselling Cassell Military Classics series

Customer Reviews

Unfortunately flawed book covering interesting topic
Brian Perrett's book covers interesting topic material from a fresh viewpoint. Examining several historical military campaigns from a naval gunboat perspective sheds new light on them, and even a reader with no particular interest in the topic will find it interesting reading.

The first part of the book is exceptionally good, covering the gunboat diplomacy exercised by the British around the world. The time period covered extends right up to the 'Brown Water Navy' US riverine operations in Vietnam.

That said, the book has several flaws which unfortunately prevent it from being a 'great' book rather than merely 'good'.

Firstly, he has an irritating tendency to mention the US-UK 'special relationship' as often as he can, often when it has no direct bearing on the material being explored. This can get a little grating as it does get quite noticeable by the end.

Secondly, he seems to take a very simplistic view of certain key areas of his book. 'The Orient' and China are used, it seems at times, interchangeably. He also mentions the heavily cliched 'loss of face' again and again when referring to the Chinese. Sentences such as 'the communists never did go in for subtlety' have more place in a Tom Clancy novel than a serious historical text.

Thirdly, the ending is extremely poor when compared to the strong opening. Rather than have an 'epilogue' chapter (or something similar), he lumps the ending in with a very short (and, one feels, very rushed) final chapter on Vietnam riverine operations.

However, these minor points should not detract from what is overall a very interesting book. The book is reinforced by a 10 page (or so) photo section in the middle which adds interest and provides visual reference. The book is also liberally laced with maps, not particularly high quality (being of the computer-generated variety that seem to be creeping in nowadays), but enough to give you a 'feel' of the area in discussion.