This is the first study in depth of the Royal Navy's vital, but largely ignored small craft. In the age of sail they were built in huge numbers and in far greater variety than the more regulated major warships, so they present a particular challenge to any historian attempting a coherent design history. However, for the first time this book charts the development of the ancillary types, variously described in the 17th century as sloops, ketches, brigantines, advice boats and even yachts, as they coalesce into the single 18th-century category of Sloop of War. In this era they were generally two-masted, although they set a bewildering variety of sail plans from them. The author traces their origins to open boats, like those carried by Basque whalers, shows how developments in Europe influenced English craft, and homes in on the relationship between rigs, hull-form and the duties they were designed to undertake. ??Visual documentation is scanty, but this book draws together a unique collection of rare and unseen images, coupled with the author's own reconstructions in line drawings and watercolour sketches to provide the most convincing depictions of the appearance of these vessels. By tackling some of the most obscure questions about the early history of small-boat rigs, the book adds a dimension that will be of interest to historians of coastal sail and practical yachtsman, as well as warship enthusiasts.

Meet Joe Carini: youthful renegade, independent thinker, compassionate husband and corpsman of the US Navy as the Vietnam War begins to surface. Joe was never the ambitious type. He liked to keep his head down and do an honest day's work whilst dreaming of seeing Europe. He wasn't interested in war, or in learning discipline in the US Navy. And it seemed like Joe was about to get his way when he got transferred to San Diego, where being sent away to 'Nam was unheard of. When he's assigned to a red-line brig, however, amongst hardened, unaccommodating marines and even less friendly inmates, Joe finds himself in a whole world of trouble. Contained within is 'dimrats', the toughest zone in the area - nothing short of a nauseating torture chamber. Joe struggles to keep himself in line and follow orders, but finds himself pissing off the marines and aggravating his superior officer, risking getting tossed into dimrats himself...

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Many of war's lethal failures are attributable to ignorance caused by a dearth of contemporary, accessible theory to inform warfighting, strategy, and policy. To remedy this problem, Colonel Geoffrey F. Weiss offers an ambitious new survey of war's nature, character, and future in the tradition of Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. He begins by melding philosophical and military concepts to reveal war's origins and to analyze war theory's foundational ideas. Then, leveraging science, philosophy, and the wisdom of war's master theorists, Colonel Weiss presents a genuinely original framework and lexicon that characterizes and clarifies the relationships between humanity, politics, strategy, and combat; explains how and why war changes form; offers a methodology for forecasting future war; and ponders the permanence of war as a human activity. The New Art of War is an indispensable guide for understanding human conflict that will change how we think and communicate about war.

The tragic tale of the sinking of the famine ship, the St. John in Massachusetts Bay in 1849. The Great Irish Famine drove huge numbers of Irish men and women to leave the island and pursue their survival in foreign lands. In 1847, some 200,000 people sailed for Boston alone. Of this massive group, 2,000 never made it to their destination, killed by disease and hunger during the voyages, their remains consigned to a watery grave. The sinking of the brig St. John off the coast of Massachusetts in October 1849, was only one of many tragic events to occur during this mass exodus. The ship had sailed from Galway, loaded with passengers so desperate to escape the effects of famine that some had walked from as far afield as Clare to reach the ship. The passengers on the St. John made it to within sight of the New World before their ship went down and they were abandoned by their captain, who denied that there had been any survivors when he and some of his crew made it ashore. For those who died in the seas off Massachusetts, there was nothing to mark their last resting place; no name, no memory of them ever having existed, just another statistic in a terrible tragedy.

This classic gay BDSM novel, set near the end of the Viet Nam war, has been out of print for almost 20 years. The Brig is a brutally dark erotic drama of a young sailor confined to a military prison where he tortured with pain, fear, sexuality, and mind games to force changes in his psyche and break his spirit. The sailor learns things about himself and his captors that will transform him and challenge those who hold him. (M/M)