Product Description

The Royal Navy battleship HMS Rodney was one of the most famous warships of the Second World War. Rodney and sister ship Nelson were, at the beginning of the conflict, the most modern battleships Britain possessed. As such, Winston Churchill referred to them as the country's "Captains of the Gate". This book tells Rodney's story, from her inception in the 1920s, through the notorious Invergordon Mutiny to her key roles in many crucial naval engagements. In May 1941 Rodney turned Bismarck, the pride of Hitler's navy, into twisted metal. She also participated in hard-fought Malta convoys, and supported the D-Day landings. Through the eyewitness accounts of her sailors and marines the reader discovers what it was like to serve in a battleship at war. We also learn of the many famous fighting admirals who served in, or commanded, Rodney, including Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham and Admiral Sir John Tovey. Cunningham's harsh management style is highlighted as a possible cause of mutinous conduct by her sailors, which led to Rodney being unjustly branded `The Red Ship'. The stories of previous British warships to carry the name Rodney, dating back to the 1750s, are also covered, including the vessel that took on the batteries at Sevastopol during the Crimean War. The Barnard-built 74-gun ship of the line that supported Wellington's troops in the Peninsular War is also featured, possibly the most detailed account yet of her life. As well as presenting a fresh perspective on Bismarck's destruction, the author provides new insights into a bomb hit on Rodney off Norway in 1940, which nearly made her the first British battleship lost to air attack. The book also contains an account of how a group of the battleship's sailors took part in the first ever British commando raid. Rodney's vital role, through her formidable naval gunfire support, in breaking the morale of Waffen SS divisions during the battle for Normandy, is covered, including the remarkable part played by code-breakers in directing the ship's guns. It all makes for an exciting, epic account of naval warfare.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #110153 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

About the Author
In a twenty-six year career as a journalist, Iain Ballantyne has written on naval and military matters for publications as varied as The Naval Architect, Evening Herald (Plymouth), Somerset County Gazette, Scotland on Sunday, Western Morning News, FOCUS (now BBC FOCUS), Maxim and ECDIS Today (the latter for the UK Hydrographic Office). Iain was the Defence Reporter of the Evening Herald between 1990 and 1995 and still contributes commentaries on naval matters to the Western Morning News on a regular basis, occasionally writing for The Herald, too. However, it was for his work over the past decade, as Editor of the global naval news magazine WARSHIPS International Fleet Review, that Iain received a Special Recognition Award from the British Maritime Charitable Foundation in late 2007. It paid tribute to his `consistent and unwavering contribution to raising maritime awareness over the years.'
An established author of naval history books, Iain has written four other titles published by Pen & Sword, 'WARSPITE' (2001), 'H.M.S. LONDON' (2003), 'STRIKE FROM THE SEA' (2004) and 'H.M.S. VICTORY' (2005), the last with Jonathan Eastland. As with `H.M.S. RODNEY', his latest book, the human experience is to the fore in all those titles.

Customer Reviews

A most complete work.
As the illustration on the book's cover reveals, this is a book about the mighty battleship HMS Rodney but, in getting to the subject itself, author Iain Ballantyne provides the reader with 42 fascinating pages of previous Royal Navy vessels of the same name. The first HMS Rodney, for example, was a cutter, the second a 16 gun brig-sloop. With the next being a 74 gun 3rd rate ship of the line and the one after that sporting 92 guns, a picture is painted whereby each successive ship to bear this illustrious name was destined to be larger than its predecessor.

The penultimate Rodney was a Battleship of 10,300 tons launched in 1884 and sold in 1909. Whilst a Battlecruiser of 33,600 tons was ordered in 1916 - as a sister ship to the famous HMS Hood, she was cancelled long before completion. The last HMS Rodney, the subject of this book, was a Battleship of 33,900 tons launched in 1925 and scrapped in 1948 after a career as equally as illustrious as the Admiral after which she was named.

The thing I like most about this book is the attention to detail. HMS Rodney was the last British warship launched with an ornate figurehead - a bust of Admiral Rodney of course. Elsewhere, we learn that, not only was a Royal Marine hanged in 1837 from the yardarm of a previous HMS Rodney, but we also learn much about the implications of his death because he was an Irishman. Whilst that particular incident may be of small consequence to those with an interest in the battleship itself, I mention it in order to underline the fine attention to detail contained within.

This is a book which will reveal something to almost everyone who thought they knew all there was to know about this once great ship. This was one of the capital ships which finally sank the Bismarck, this is the ship which was commanded by Cunningham and later by Tovey - long before they became admirals themselves.

It is a work of supreme research and fascinating insight and I congratulate the author on an excellent achievement.

NM

Ballantyne's best yet
ON Sunday November 12 1944, 12,000lb bombs smashed through the armour plating of Hitler's flagship in a Norwegian fjord, causing the vaunted Tirpitz to capsize.

Several hundred miles away, the men of HMS Rodney were returning from gunnery off Cape Wrath. They didn't know it yet, but Tirpitz's demise also sounded the death knell for their own battleship.

There was no longer a threat from enemy big ships in European waters.
All could be dispatched to the Far East to plunge the knife into the belly of the Japanese beast.

But not Rodney. She was tired - she had sailed more than 150,000 miles since her last refit. She would not receive another one.

It was a rather lacklustre end to the career of a ship which, in the words of one former marine, "saw as much action" as any other British battleship.
Her story is now told definitively by Iain Ballantyne in HMS Rodney (Pen & Sword, £25, ISBN 978-1844-154067).

Rodney is not perhaps the obvious choice for a biography - of WW2 vintage ships, Nelson, Warspite, Ark Royal spring more immediately to mind.
Yet Rodney's is a story rich with incident and drama. Indeed, in almost every major engagement of the second global conflagration, HMS Rodney was there.

Norway, the Bismarck chase, the Malta Convoys, Salerno, Normandy, the Murmansk run, HMS Rodney saw action at each one.

In keeping with the author's previous biographies of ships - Warspite, London and Victory - this is a story less of the machine than the men who sailed in her.

And it is not just the most recent Rodney with which Ballantyne is interested in.

He begins his story in the 18th Century, from which time on there was a succession of Rodneys, ending with the pre-dreadnought of the 1880s (the last RN vessel to mount a figurehead).

The core of the book, however, is devoted to the Inter-War and WW2 battleship.

Rodney and her sister Nelson were Britain's newest battleships in 1939 (the King George V class were still being built).

They were also the most unusual dreadnoughts Britain ever built; restrictions on displacement limited the vessels to 35,000-tons.
The resulting design was unorthodox: all Rodney's main armament - 16in guns - was foreward of her superstructure.

She could have been a very different ship, however. Work had begun in 1916 on another Rodney, a super battle-cruiser, sister to the Mighty Hood. The Admiralty pulled the plug on the project; only
Hood was completed.

Hood came to epitomise the Inter-War Royal Navy. But facing Rodney in battle was a far more fearsome proposition.

"I challenge any one who claims to possess a soul to stand on Rodney's fo'c'sle and contemplate the stark, grey mass of turret and gun that stretches before him," one officer enthused. "I challenge him to stand there by himself and not feel a definite tingle of pride and fear."

In the late summer of 1931, no-one would face Rodney's guns, however. The leviathan was branded `the red ship' for her role in the Invergordon mutiny.
Rodney's sailors learned of pay cuts imposed on them by Whitehall from the BBC and newspapers just three weeks before such cuts were introduced.

There was uproar - uproar entirely preventable, one of her junior officers observed. "The Board of the Admiralty were completely out of touch with the feelings of the lower deck," he fumed. "A despicable bunch of sods was our immediate, undisciplinary, feeling about them."

The men of Rodney mutinied for a simple cause: they were not communists, not anti-patriotic. They were simply trying to pay their mortgages, loans and other bills.

Rodney's subsequent deeds eclipsed her role in the Invergordon mutiny.
She was bombed in the ill-starred Norwegian campaign, played a key role in Operation Pedestal, and hammered the Wehrmacht in Normandy.

No man who witnessed her barrage on D-Day would ever forget it.

"The sheer volume of noise, the blast of the guns was incredible and you could feel it through your body even if you were quite a distance from the gun doing the firing," recalled Allan Snowden. "You couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for the guys on the receiving end."

There was no such magnanimity shown in May 1941, however.

News reached the bridge of Rodney that Bismarck had sunk the Hood. The Rodneys were determined, one officer rememebered, "to square the deal".
That she did on the morning of May 27 - after Bismarck had been crippled by Swordfish torpedo bombers.

A sub-lieutenant marvelled at the men in his turret delivering Bismarck's mortal blows.

"They remember Coventry, London, Plymouth - especially the latter which is home to most of them," he observed. "Justice, you still exist in this world."

Today there are few Rodneys left. The ship herself was broken up in 1948. But the men of Rodney still remember her fondly.

One former marine told the author that he considered her "the finest battleship ever built".

Another's sentiments will no doubt be shared by many who go to sea. "It's hard to explain to a civilian one's feeling for a ship. You forget the hardships, the discomforts, the monotonous food and the dangers, but you remember the comradeship, the runs ashore, the lower deck, indestructible humour. How can you full in love with a big hunk of steel? But you do, and you never forget."

A wonderful history of a great ship
I was surprised to recently come across this book in Waterstones (more expensive than on Amazon!) and bought this book on a whim. My late father was a young stoker on HMS Rodney - joining in 1943 - after Bismark - but in time for D-Day and the Russian convoys. He left the ship following Victory in Europe and was in Vancouver ready to join the Pacific fleet when the war ended.

This is a wonderful history - accessible for non-specialists like myself. Following a brief introduction to the Admiral himself and the first ships that subsequently bore his name, the book focuses on the battleship laid down in the 1920s and finally broken up in 1948.

The strange shape of the Rodney and her sister ship Nelson resulted from the constraints of the Washington Naval treaty (vague memories of this from history at school). Similarly, I had a vague recollection of the Invergordon mutiny - but wasn't fully aware of the role of the crew of the `Red Rodney' in leading the revolt. Most people know of the role of Rodney in the sinking of the Bismark, perhaps fewer the key role she played around D-Day - not helped by reports crediting many of her actions to HMS Nelson.

The book gives a real feel for life on a battleship in peacetime and war. Fascinating how the crew managed to keep the worn-out ship functioning towards the end of the war - and putting back the bits that fell off every time the guns were fired.

I just wish this wonderful book had been published while my father was still alive - I just imagine the discussions we would have had.

ps no mention of sheep - so still not sure if this story is true or not.....