Product Description

Savor the story of the ultimate warship in Sovereigns of the Sea: The Quest to Build the Perfect Renaissance Battleship, which chronicles the history of Sovereign of the Seas, an immensely powerful floating fortress. You will enjoy this gripping tale of an arms race that created and ruined empires, changed the map of the world, and led Europe out of the Renaissance and into the Modern age. Understand how the Sovereign of the Seas became the model for a whole new generation of warships that would dominate naval warfare until the advent of steam power.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #130501 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From the Author
This book was almost a quarter century in the making. Back in the summer of 1983 I had just left the Navy, and was busy thinking about what to do next. I was up visiting my parents in Orkney when a magazine came in the mail. An old aunt had died, and while my mother was sorting out her estate the mail was being redirected. She had once been a graduate of St. Andrews University, and they were still sending her their annual Graduates' journal. One day I was idly flicking through it when I came across an article about the foundation of a new department - the Scottish Institute of Maritime Studies, run by a guy called Dr. Colin Martin. It was one of those career-defining moments. The postgraduate course it planned to run involved a combination of maritime archaeology and historical research. I sounded custom made for me. After all, I had dived in the Navy, and studied history at Aberdeen University. Amazingly my reading of the article was followed a week later by a visit to my father by an academic who was touring Orkney - Dr. Geoffrey Parker, then the Professor of Modern History at St. Andrews. He praised the course, and recommended that I should apply.

Three months later I was a student again, and immersing myself quite literally in the world of maritime archaeology. It was all fascinating stuff, but while I found the ships of the ancient world fascinating enough, my real interest lay a little later - the era of the Age of Discovery, and the early days of the sailing battlefleets. When the time came to write my Masters Degree I opted for exactly that period, and over the next year or so I wrote a thesis with the less than snappy title of Naval Artillery to 1550: Its design, evolution and employment. Another part of the appeal was that this was virgin territory - despite Dr. Colin Martin's excavations of Spanish Armada shipwrecks and the recent raising of the Mary Rose, very few people had really looked at the way guns played a major part in the evolution of the Renaissance warship.

Although it sounded glamorous enough, my subsequent career as a maritime archaeologist lasted less than a year. In the summer of 1985 I was hired by the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London to help organise a two week archaeological dig. I stayed for ten years, having discovered a whole new career as a museum curator. Naturally enough my main field was artillery, and over that decade I met hundreds of archaeologists and divers, museum professionals and academics - all of whom added something to my understanding of guns and ships. In 1995 I left for a new job in Florida, where I was immersed in a whole new world of Spanish shipwrecks, sunken treasure and yet more guns lying on the seabed. More than a decade later I found myself back in Scotland, surrounded by the piles of notes, books, photos and drawings accumulated during this 25 year quest to find out more about the ships of the Renaissance. I thought it might be time to put some of it down on paper. This is the result.

From the Inside Flap

It was the age of the great humanist scholars,of poets, architects, painters, inventors,scientists, sculptors, and doctors—and of oneof the most ferocious and costly arms racesin history. Beginning with the first marriage of guns and ships in the early fifteenth century,the monarchs of Europe launched a desperate competition to rule the waves with ever larger, more powerful, and more seaworthy warships. Driven by continuous advances in gunfounding technology, this deadly contest gave rise, almost immediately, to national navies, led to greatleaps in shipbuilding and design, and produced revolutions in naval strategy and tactics. The price of these advances was always enormous and, in some cases, ruinous.

In Sovereigns of the Sea, historian Angus Konstamcharts the dramatic course of this all–outstruggle for maritime supremacy. He explainswhy the very notion of placing heavy artilleryaboard a sailing vessel posed dauntingchallenges to Renaissance shipbuilders, and why trial–and–error efforts to overcome these challenges could easily result in disaster. Citing shipbuilding efforts in England, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and even Scotland, Konstam examines the two centuries of politics,technology, ambition, and savage sea battles that produced the ultimate military sailingvessel—the ship–of–the–line.

Beginning with Henry V′s Grace à Dieu, a colossusof its day, Konstam tells the tales behind aseries of "super–ships," state–of–the–art behemoths designed to overpower any vessel that stood in their way. From Scotland′s never–tested GreatMichael and Sweden′s ill–fated Vasa to Henry VIII′s fearsome Regent and Charles I′s Sovereign ofthe Seas, their stories follow the path of shipbuilding, politics, and technological innovation during this crucial period of world history.

Also key to this evolution was the experience ofships′ captains and crews who, with no formalinstruction in the use of these powerful newweapons, had to learn under the worst possible conditions—in the heat of battle at sea. Konstam′saccounts of this perilous on–the–job trainingbring the thrill, horror, and confusion of seabattle to life.

Complete with a fascinating description of the raising of Henry VIII′s flagship Mary Rose, whose amazingly well–preserved hull and interior have changed modern understanding of Renaissance ship building, Sovereigns of the Sea is compelling reading for anyone interested in the Renaissance, naval and military history, and the age of fighting sail.

From the Back Cover
The Ultimate Warship

Her keel measured 126 feet, and she stretched to 160 feet overall. Her 46.5–foot beam sacrificed speed for the sake of stability, and the 19 feet of water she drew denied her access to smaller ports. Some saw her enormous size and ungainly proportions as serious drawbacks, but the 102 heavy bronze cannon that bristled from her flanks guaranteed that this black–hulled, ornately decorated monster would live up to her name: Sovereign of the Seas. The Dutch sailors who faced her in battle called her by another name, "The Golden Devil."

This immensely powerful floating fortress was the culmination of more than two hundred years of competition among the kingdoms of Europe to create the perfect marriage between guns and ships. Their relentless quest for maritime supremacy had produced a seemingly endless succession of grandiose flagships, from Henry V′s Grace à Dieu to Sweden′s ill–fated Vasa. Emerging nation–states had invested vast portions of their treasuries, kings had vied as much for prestige as for power, and thousands of hapless seamen had perished in pursuit of this goal.

Sovereigns of the Sea is a gripping tale of an arms race that created and ruined empires, changed the map of the world, and led Europe out of the Renaissance and into the modern age.

Customer Reviews

Galleons and other naval ships.............

This book effectively sets out how the fighting sailing ship was created. In the 1300's warships were largely not purpose built but by the late 1600's the ancestor to ships such as HMS Victory had been created. The book charts this story and is especially interested in how the use of guns in ships caused a revolution in the thinking of naval strategists.

The author is very knowledgeable about his subject and this comes across to the reader. The discussion about naval strategy and tactics is set in the proper historical/political context and this heightens the book's interest to the general non-specialised maritime reader. We are also treated to the story of the great ships of the period such as the Mary Rose and the Vasa (perhaps the most well known of the ships of the period).

The only drawbacks to the book are that (a) it would definitely benefit from some drawings of ships of the period which show the different parts of the ships and show where, for example, the mizzen mast or the bonaventure masts are found, and (b) likewise with the guns being described - both would certainly enhance the reader's enjoyment. I acknowledge that the author explains what the difference between a muzzle loading and a breech loading cannon is but this is certainly not done on the first mention of these different types of gun but only several chapters after they are introduced. For these reasons I have marked it down one star, otherwise a very good read and definitely to be recommended.

An excellent book
This is an excellent survey of the fight for naval supremacy in a period that is often overlooked by naval historians. Konstam has done a sterling job of revealing the intricacies of a period that was pivotal to the development of European naval warfare and naval strategy. This is the period that sees the development of so much of the naval technology that was to become mature over the early modern period and this book details that history in a clear and readable way. Highly recommended.

An excellent and entertaining read
Angus Konstam has indeed raised the bar on this subject - a wealth of research has obviously gone into this book, and it reveals so many fascinating insights into ship building during this period, even up to the 1600s. He is to be commended for sharing his passion to the general reader, I thought it might be too specialist, but found it both to be easy to understand the terminology of the day, as well as the general overview of the political/ military situation of the time. To me, it seems that simnce the Mary Rose was excavated over 20 years ago, the subject/ genre has slowly lost interest, let's hope this book rekindles it!