The Glorious First of June 1794: A Naval Battle and its Aftermath(Exeter Maritime Studies)

The Glorious First of June 1794 was the first great naval engagement of the Great War with France (1793-1815). Participants on both sides considered it the hardest-fought battle between them in the 18th century and both sides felt they attained their objectives: the British captured or sank seven French battleships, the French saved their big grain convoy from America. In this book experts explore the naval campaign from both British and French perspectives, setting it in its wider context of the war strategy of the rival powers. The intensity of the encounter is demonstrated through the accounts of eyewitnesses, three of which are here published for the first time, and the impact of the battle on public imagination is traced through plays, prints and paintings, and through the artefacts and memorials by which it was commemorated.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations 1 Introduction: The Battle of the Glorious First of June 1794 MICHAEL DUFFY AND ROGER MORRISS 2 The Prairial Battles: The French Viewpoint ANDRE DELAPORTE 3 The Glorious First of June: The British Strategic Perspective CHRISTOPHER WARE Document; 3.i. The Admiralty's Instructions to Earl Howe, 17 April 1794 4 The Glorious First of June: The British View of the Actions of 28, 29 May and 1 June 1794 ROGER MORRISS Documents 4.i. Nicholas Pocock's Notebook 4.ii. Letter from Jonathan Wilkinson to John Clark, 2 July 1794 4.iii. Letter from William Parker to his Father, 17 June 1794 4.iv. Letter from Rowland Bevan to T. Morgan 4.v. Report of Captain George Cranfield Berkeley and Lieutenant Jonathan Monkton to Admiral Earl Howe, 6 June 1794 5 The Man who Missed the Grain Convoy: Rear Admiral George Montagu and the Arrival of Vanstabel's Convoy from America in 1794 MICHAEL DUFFY 6 The Convoy, the Grain and their Influence on the French Revolution LAWRENCE EVANS 7 The Glorious First of June: A Battle of Art and Theatre PIETER VAN DER MERWE 8 The Battle Sanctified: Some Memorials and Relics BARBARA TOMLINSON List of Contributors Index

About the Author :
Michael Duffy is Head of History and Director of the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies at the University of Exeter and General Editor of Exeter Maritime Studies. He is the author of The Younger Pitt (Longman, 2000), and editor of Parameters of British Naval Power 1650-1850 (UEP, 1992) and The New Maritime History of Devon (Conway Maritime, 1992). Roger Morriss was a Curator at the National Maritime Museum, London until 1995. He is an Honorary Research Fellow in the University of Exeter Centre for Maritime Studies, and in the History Department, University College London.

Review :
This book is the result of a conference devoted to one naval battle, and it is a model of its kind. The editors are of course old hands at this sort of thing. Michael Duffy, who as editor of the Mariners Mirror became friend and confidant to so many naval and maritime historians, was the editor of the proceedings from another ground breaking conference. Roger Morriss, one of those productive naval and military historians - a veritable North Atlantic triangle of scholarship - from Ian R. Christie's graduate seminar in the 1960s at King's College, London, is one of the foremost authorities on the Royal Navy during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Both these fine historians teach at that relatively new and highly successful centre of naval history, Exeter University, in Devon, England ... This is a thoroughly good read. Those who... value a contextual placing of naval history within British and French culture will be stimulated by the authorial range and newly transcribed primary sources in this book. The quality of scholarship and design justify its relatively high price.