The Command of the Ocean" describes with unprecedented authority & scholarship the rise of Britain to naval greatness & the central place of the Navy & naval activity in the life of the nation & government. It describes not just battles voyages & cruises but how the Navy was manned how it was supplied with timber hemp & iron how its men (and sometimes women) were fed & above all how it was financed & directed. It was during the century & a half covered by this book that the successful organizing of these last three
- victualling money & management
- took the Navy to the heart of the British state. It is the great achievement of the book to show how completely integrated & mutually dependent Britain & the Navy then became."