The Black Battlefleet
BALLARD, G. A.
[A Study of the Capital Ship in Transition. With a Foreword by Admiral of the Fleet Earl Mountbatten of Burma].
SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY
Published: Nautical Publishing Company Lymington & The Society for Nautical Research Greenwich, [1980]
Stock code: 12709
Price: £112.00
Roy. 4to., First Edition, with very numerous photographs and double-page detailed line drawings in the text; cloth gilt, gilt back, a very good, bright, clean copy in unclipped, lightly sunned dustwrapper.
A PRESENTATION COPY FROM THE AUTHOR WITH HIS SIGNED HOLOGRAPH INSCRIPTION ON FRONT FREE ENDPAPER. The culmination of almost twenty years' research by the author, this is a standard reference on the evolution of the mid-Victorian Royal Navy. Crucially, Ballard was an eye-witness of the latter part of the period of which he wrote; even in 1929 there were not many men remaining with such experience first-hand. Much of the text appeared first as an extended series of papers in 'The Mariner's Mirror' from 1929 until the author's death in 1948.