Navy Records Society

23/03/2026

Registration for the Naval Dockyards Society's 30th Annual Conference (hybrid) is now open.

The event takes place at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich on Saturday 28 March 2026. For further details and to reserve your place see:https://navaldockyards.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/suez-aftermath-2026-booking-form_5.pdf

16/03/2026

in 1917 HMS Achilles and SS Dundee fought the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Leopard, which sank with the loss of all 319 hands and six men of a British boarding party.

🔱 The action of 16th of March 1917 is captured in a series of watercolours, signed and dated 'EL 17' - sadly the identity of 'EL' is unknown. The paintings come from the collection of Vice-Admiral Francis Martin Leake.

To discover more about this action and this unique collection visit our online magazine: https://www.navyrecords.org.uk/magazine_posts/hms-achilles-and-sms-leopard-16-march-1917/nggallery/image/p1230188/

11/03/2026

📣The latest article from our online magazine 📣

https://www.navyrecords.org.uk/magazine_posts/we-came-out-without-a-scratch-the-battle-of-heligoland-bight-august-1914/

This article introduces a fascinating letter written on 30 August 1914 by Stoker Thomas Victor Rayson of HMS Falmouth, offering a rare firsthand account of naval warfare at the outbreak of the First World War. Addressed to his parents, the letter describes Rayson’s experiences during the Battle of Heligoland Bight, the war’s first major naval engagement. Writing from a lower-deck perspective, Rayson recounts combat, shipboard life, and moments of camaraderie with vivid immediacy. The document is historically valuable for its insight into enlisted sailors’ experiences, wartime censorship, and the rapid circulation of news in early wartime Britain.

Read it now on the Navy Records Society Online Magazine!

11/03/2026

📣 The latest from our Online magazine: https://www.navyrecords.org.uk/magazine_posts/we-came-out-without-a-scratch-the-battle-of-heligoland-bight-august-1914/

This article introduces a fascinating letter written on 30 August 1914 by Stoker Thomas Victor Rayson of HMS Falmouth, offering a rare firsthand account of naval warfare at the outbreak of the First World War. Addressed to his parents, the letter describes Rayson’s experiences during the Battle of Heligoland Bight, the war’s first major naval engagement. Writing from a lower-deck perspective, Rayson recounts combat, shipboard life, and moments of camaraderie with vivid immediacy. The document is historically valuable for its insight into enlisted sailors’ experiences, wartime censorship, and the rapid circulation of news in early wartime Britain.

26/02/2026

in 1852, HMS Birkinhead sank near Cape Town, South Africa. It was one of the first iron-hulled ships built for the Royal Navy, but it met a famously chivalric end.

Smashing into uncharted rock, still churning her paddle wheels, was ripped apart at a huge cost to life. Hundreds of soldiers were trapped and drowned in their hammocks as they slept, as the lower troop deck almost instantly filled with water. All the surviving officers and men who could, assembled on the upper deck.

With seven women and thirteen children onboard, the great naval tradition of "women and children first" was established as two cutters and a gig were launched they were rowed away from the wreck to safety. Only then did Captain Salmond order his men to save themselves.

Since then, the "Birkenhead drill" has been memorialised, including in Rudyard Kipling's poem:
"To stand and be still,
to the Birkin'ead Drill
is a damn tough bullet to chew"

Image: Wiki Commons

26/02/2026

The latest from our Online Magazine examines how shipbuilding was organised, funded, and controlled between the late ninth and early eleventh centuries. Using evidence from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other written sources, it challenges the common idea that King Alfred the Great founded the English navy.

🔗 : https://www.navyrecords.org.uk/magazine_posts/creating-a-navy-in-anglo-saxon-england/

15/02/2026

Our latest Online Magazine post is up!

Creating a Navy in Anglo-Saxon England by Matthew Firth.

This article uses a brief extract from the Anglo-Saxon chronicle to look at how naval power developed in Anglo-Saxon England, focusing on how shipbuilding was organised, funded, and controlled between the late ninth and early eleventh centuries. Using evidence from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other written sources, it challenges the common idea that King Alfred the Great founded the English navy, and instead points to the more organised and fully developed naval system created under King Æthelred II. Although Alfred and later kings—such as Edward the Elder, Æthelstan, and Edgar the Peaceful—did use ships to fight Viking attacks, the evidence for permanent or well-maintained fleets before the eleventh century is limited and uneven.

https://www.navyrecords.org.uk/magazine_posts/

26/01/2026

Our latest Online Magazine post is up!

Journal of David Talbot Part 5: Escape On Foot to Rotterdam

This posts continues our extracts from the colourful diaries of David Talbot, impressed to HMS Calliope in December 1809. He had newly been appointed as master of the brig Isabella so legally he should not have been pressed but circumstances were against him and he spent four years on HMS Calliope off the Dutch shores. This extract follows his exploits as he escapes on foot and heads to Rotterdam. It is edited by Chris Davidson, David Talbot’s 3 x great grandson.

'Not willing to enter any more into the towns, especially as the English soldiers was in it, I determined to walk higher up the river to the place I had been directed, and not far from this was a small, thatched house which I thought had the appearance of a public house in a small way. Being at this time pretty tired and hungry, I would go into the house, and if I could git nothing to eat or drink, perhaps they might let me rest awhile, and git some information how to git across the river.....'

https://www.navyrecords.org.uk/magazine_posts/

17/12/2025

in 1939 the German warship Admiral Graf Spee was sunk after the Battle of the River Plate.

Following the battle, Captain Hans Langsdorff was forced to take the damaged ship to the neutral port of Montevideo, Uruguay. What followed was a game of diplomacy, intrigue and deception on both sides. The Germans wanted more time to make repairs, while the British first wanted Graf Spee evicted. Eventually, Langsdorff succumbed to the British deception that a carrier and battle cruiser were in close proximity and, on the 17th, took the Graf Spee out with a skeleton crew and scuttled her rather than engage in a costly battle against superior odds.

Read more on the Navy Records Society's Online Magazine:
The Sinking of the Admiral Graf Spee, 17 December 1939 – The Navy Records Society https://www.navyrecords.org.uk/magazine_posts/the-sinking-of-the-admiral-graf-spee-17-december-1939/
Written by Marcus Faulkner

Image: The pursuit of the 'Graf Spee' by HMS 'Ajax' and 'Achilles' [at the Battle of the River Plate, 13 December 1939], credit of National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1947.

This painting forms part of Norman Wilkinson's ‘The War at Sea’ series, depicting the work of the Royal Navy, Merchant Navy and RAF Coastal Command, of which 53 were exhibited under that title at the National Gallery in 1944, and the full set of 54 presented by him to the nation via the War Artists Advisory Committee (this item's WAAC number being LD 4318).

This article covers the strategic position at sea at the beginning of WWII, the deployment of the Kriegsmarine commerce raiders Admiral Graf Spee and Gneisenau, the Battle of the River Plate and the subsequent scuttling of the Admiral Graf Spee. The damaged Admiral Graf Spee entered Montevideo harbo...

03/12/2025

‘It appears unfortunate to me…’ Squaring a circle in the Atlantic war of words – The Navy Records Society's Members Blog
https://buff.ly/ywptAEf

A flurry of letters, minutes and memoranda between the C-in-C United States Fleet (COMINCH), Admiral Ernest J. King and Admiral Sir Percy Noble, head of the British Admiralty Delegation (BAD) and other senior officers in Washington in the autumn of 1943 reveal some of the underlying tensions between...

26/11/2025

Invasion or Annexation? How Heligoland became Britain’s smallest island possession. – The Navy Records Society's Members Blog https://buff.ly/J3Rejxj

In the early 1870s, a little-known engagement between a Royal Navy squadron of turret ironclads and a German invasion force bound for England ended in confusion and catastrophe for the invaders amid the mists of the North Sea. Several ships of the invading fleet were lost, including the British-buil...

25/11/2025

Did you know we recently established an account on Instagram ?!
⚓️Why not give us a follow ⚓️

https://www.instagram.com/navyrecordssociety?igsh=MXh4Nmw1cW1sd3Z3OQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr