Reddit reviews Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea

Also worth looking at Castles of Steel

That and Dreadnought by the same author are my favorites of the era.

I am glad that you referenced Roger's book. His related book, The Safeguard of the Sea, looks at Britain's (England's, Wessex's, etc.) navy from 660-1649 and is also an excellent read.

If you don't mind, I would expand on your comment to say this: One of the major arguments that both books make is that a major contributor to Britain's naval success was also the bureaucracy that grew up around the Navy. We tend to think of bureaucracy in negative terms today, but in having a regularized, systemic way of casting and distributing guns and ordnance; building and repairing ships; victualling ships; and manning ships, the British navy was far ahead of its competitors, even by the time of the Armada.

It's also worth pointing out that Britain's naval strength was helped by the establishment of dockyards, drydocks, and associated naval "bases" (although that's an anachronistic term) in various places, including the Thames and Portsmouth but also in other places along England's coast. Not to put too fine a point on it, but wooden ships rot, and regular maintenance was a major reason why Britain was able to keep up its naval strength.

This moves a bit past OP's timeframe, but allow me to recommend two other books by Robert K. Massie, that specifically look at the Anglo-German naval race in the run-up to World War I:

http://www.amazon.com/Dreadnought-Robert-K-Massie/dp/0345375564

http://www.amazon.com/Castles-Steel-Britain-Germany-Winning/dp/0345408780/ref=la_B000AQ6XVE_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1370812631&sr=1-6

That is awesome! I'm currently reading "Castles of Steel" on my Kindle so any photos in the book don't really turn out. But this is great. It's incredible to see the Imperial German fleet all together like this.

I’d highly recommend Robert Massie’s Castles of Steel for an excellent overview of the naval conflict of WWI. He goes into great detail about the ramifications of the submarine campaign and how it ultimately pulled America into the war.


Previous to WWI, commerce raiding was done by well-armed ships which would force a merchantman to stop, board, determine its nationality, pull off the crew, and then scuttle the ship. Initially, submarines attempted to follow this model. Unfortunately, they had no space or crew to detain potentially hostile passengers and enemy crews. Furthermore, they were extremely fragile things and, once the British began using Q ships (merchantmen with naval crews and hidden guns), the Germans could no longer risk surfacing and engaging with gunfire.


These factors, compounded with the problem of identifying a ship’s (possibly fake) flag from a dim periscope a few feet above the waves lead the Germans to declare the entire North Sea a battle zone in which any ship of any nationality might be fired upon. It was this factor, which America saw as an unjust abrogation of its rights as a neutral, combined with the loss of American lives and ships from the submarine campaign that drew the nation into the war.

Yes, there's a big distinction. Here's a link that scratches the surface of dreadnought background & development to get you started.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dreadnought_(1906)

If you get really curious, here's two books that round out the subject of how dreadnoughts fit into naval history...

http://www.amazon.com/Dreadnought-Robert-K-Massie/dp/0345375564/ref=la_B000AQ6XVE_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406314026&sr=1-6

http://www.amazon.com/Castles-Steel-Britain-Germany-Winning/dp/0345408780

I have a Time-Life book titled Dreadnought which concentrates on the time period of 1900 thru 1919. At least a couple very large chapters are dedicated to Jutland.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Dreadnoughts-David-Howarth/dp/0809427117

Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert K. Massie is also right up your alley. Jutland is the centerpiece of the book.

http://www.amazon.com/Castles-Steel-Britain-Germany-Winning/dp/0345408780

Robert Massie is my favorite historian, and he has 3 amazing books on the period. Dreadnought, about the Anglo-German naval rivalry that led to WWI, Nicholas and Alexander, a biography of the last Czar and the fall of the Russian Empire, and the beautifully titled Castles of Steel, about the naval battles of WWI.

> http://www.amazon.com/Dreadnought-Robert-K-Massie/dp/0345375564/ref=la_B000AQ6XVE_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406314026&sr=1-6[2]
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Castles-Steel-Britain-Germany-Winning/dp/0345408780[3]

Cannot recommend these books highly enough! Everyone on this sub should read them :)

The hopelessness and the inevitability leading up to it fascinate me. I find WWI (more so than any other) to be a pointless, depressing affair; it is like watching a train wreck in slow motion, with a 2 mile lead up. If you are interested in the causes, Robert Massie's book Dreadnought is a phenomenal read, and its followup Castles of Steel regarding the navel battle is equally interesting.

Rules of the Game is a must read for understanding Jutland.

The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591143365/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_W4MWCbDSQT8PP

Castles of Steel is a good book on the history of the war at sea.

Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345408780/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_F5MWCb3C2YZC0

https://www.amazon.com/Castles-Steel-Britain-Germany-Winning/dp/0345408780/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474414975&sr=8-1&keywords=castles+of+steel

This book was, in a word, riveting. I am not a naval history fan but I could not put it down. Covers this battle and the personalities involved in it and much more. Worth the time and money 100 times over to read it!

> The idea—to create a make-believe battle squadron that could pass itself off at sea as real—was entirely Churchill’s. On October 21, [1914] he wrote to Prince Louis, then still First Sea Lord:


>>It is necessary to construct without delay a dummy fleet; ten merchant vessels . . . mocked up to represent battleships. . . . The actual size need not correspond exactly, as it is notoriously difficult to judge the size of vessels at sea, and frequently even destroyers are mistaken for cruisers. We are bearing in mind particularly aerial and periscope observations where deception is much more easy. It is not necessary that the structures be strong enough to stand rough weather. Very little metal would be required and practically the whole work should be executed in wood and canvas. . . . Even when the enemy knows we have such a fleet . . . he will always be in doubt as to which is the real and which is the dummy fleet. . .

> [...] before the end of the month, steamships were commandeered and brought to the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. [...] Within a week, wood and canvas structures were reproducing guns, turrets, boats, tripod masts, and bridges. Because a liner rises higher out of the water than a battleship, the merchantmen were filled with thousands of tons of ballast to push the hulls lower. The shapes of bows and sterns were altered. False funnels were added and were equipped with fireplaces to burn combustible materials that would emit thick clouds of smoke. Navy anchors were made of wood or were simply painted on the bows.

> [...]

> No one was fooled. Real battleship squadrons were usually made up of generally homogeneous ships. But when the dummies came together, some were twice the size of the others. Their speeds varied greatly. Some could make 15 knots, others 10, others only 7, and, as a squadron’s speed must be that of the slowest member, 7 knots became the speed at which the dummies could steam together. A 7-knot squadron could not operate with the 20-knot Grand Fleet. “The ships,” said Jellicoe, “could not accompany the fleet to sea and it was very difficult to find a use for them in home waters.” The suggestion that they be used as bait was rejected. An encounter with the enemy would have led to massacre.

> [...] At the end of April, the dummy Queen Mary was sent to patrol off New York City as a message to the German liners interned in the harbor that, if they violated their internment and tried to break out, a British battle cruiser was waiting to gobble them up. The assault on the Dardanelles suggested another use; the dummy battle cruisers Indomitable and Tiger departed Loch Ewe on February 19. To avoid being seen, they passed through the Strait of Gibraltar at midnight, and they were forbidden to enter the harbors of Gibraltar or Malta where they could be studied close up. The dummy Invincible followed six weeks later. Churchill hoped that by sending them to the Mediterranean, where they might be seen at a distance, they might “mislead the Germans as to the margin of British strength in home waters” and tempt the enemy to come out and do battle in the North Sea. The Turks did misidentify the dummy Tiger and reported her to a German submarine. On May 30, she was hit and sunk by torpedo and four British seamen drowned. A British midshipman with the Dardanelles fleet found grim humor in the event, imagining the U-boat captain “astonished to see the surviving crew clinging to the floating wooden turrets.”

> Thereafter, the curtain came down on the theatrical. Once Churchill left the Admiralty, the dummy fleet, which had cost Britain £1 million and four lives and Germany a single torpedo, quickly disappeared.

from Massie, Castles of Steel

Dreadnought. It's a history of the naval build-up prior to WWI. And it's sequel Castles of Steel about the naval history of WWI coincidentally.

• The Art of Racing in the Rain
  
• Castles of Steel
  
• Seveneves (pretty much anything by Stephenson)
  
• The Dead Hand
  
• The Century Trilogy by Ken Follett
  
• The Laundry Files by Charles Stross

If you haven't read it already, you would probably enjoy this book.

There's a great write up on this in the book Castles of Steel