John Barratt

The author of this book has written several books on the English Civil War period, but this seems to be his first medieval one. My initial response to this book was quite negative because it had several obvious errors --it referred to the Epiphany Rising of 1400 as the Pentecost Rising, it said that Richard II had the earl of Warwick killed and imprisoned the duke of Gloucester in 1397 instead of the other way round, etc. However, it seemed to get better as it went along, or else it got away from the period when I knew enough to catch the errors. It seemed fairly good on the Welsh Revolt and the fighting on the Scottish border which led up to the Percy Revolt of 1403, and it gave an acceptable account of the battle of Shrewsbury itself, though it is a smaller proportion of the book than I expected. It then went on to cover the earl of Northumberland's rising in 1405… (plus d'informations)

Barratt quickly covers the political situation, both in terms of the Commonwealth itself and the changes which took place in its navy. He goes into more detail on the various challenges which faced the Commonwealth's naval forces: the Royalists, the Dutch and its traditional enemies in France and Spain.
These are seen in an integrated fashion where the aims of the Commonwealth are concerned - economics stability, the destruction or assimilation of Royalist forces and control of the colonies.

Barratt examines the structure of the navy, its technology and doctrine in some detail, and compares it to the Dutch setup - these factors all play a part in the main body of the work, the wars and battles themselves, which are handled well. Barratt's style is quite straight-forward but is not without an appreciation of the complexities of the era.

There are solid tactical maps of the battles covered. Though you will notice that individual ships are not marked, only the squadrons (Not every sea battle can be as well documented as Trafalgar I suppose!). However there is little context given, so that in most cases we do not get a sense of the battle's geographical place.
The bibliography seems very light, and mostly confined to journal articles - though I wouldn't necessarily hold this against the book, the subject does seem like a niche expertise.

Not a subject which had really entered by awareness previously, even with my interest in the British Civil Wars and in naval warfare, but it can take some credit for enlightening me to this fascinating aspect of history - not least because it laid the foundations of the professional navy of the next century.… (plus d'informations)