Coal Ship!: How Black Diamonds Transformed the Royal Navy 1830-1918

The vast British fleet that enabled Allied victory in the First World War was one largely fuelled by coal.During the preceding century the burgeoning industrial revolution, and the Royal Navy that emerged out of new technologies, had become entirely dependent on the precious ‘black diamonds’.When Queen Victoria had ascended the throne in 1837 ships were powered entirely by wind; by the end of her reign the navy was driven by coal. What happened in the intervening years forms the core of this new book.It is the story of a naval revolution greater than any that had gone before.Free and inexhaustible wind was replaced by expensive coal; ships became faster, their offensive capabilities more devastating and the Royal Navy’s control of the seas of Britain’s emerging empire undisputed. Steve Dunn embraces a whole range of themes and topics to demonstrate how coal, at the very heart of this revolution, affected every aspect of the Navy.The impact of steam propulsion on ship design; the evolut