Hardback 160 pages
ISBN: 9781848842298
Published: 30 August 2010
Pen and Sword, Barnsley, 2010
If you want to read a series of what the author calls "Boys' Own Annual stuff" (p.67) about the Merchant Navy in the Great War then this is the book for you. It chronicles the fates of numerous merchantmen at the hands of both surface raiders and submarines.
War Under the Red Ensign is not a full-blown history of the Merchant Navy during the Great War but rather a selection of some of the more dramatic incidents which befell some of those who were at sea in the merchant service during that conflict, although unfortunately the story of the most famous German commerce raider of the Great War, SMS Emden, has received only a passing reference.
As a merchant skipper himself the author has immense sympathy for the two main subjects of this book: the merchant seamen and their ships. His response to their suffering shines through on almost every page of his text, although sometimes in a style rather too emotive for this reviewer's taste.
War Under the Red Ensign has a short bibliography but no detailed references and with such a wealth of personal accounts deployed here it would be advantageous for those wishing to follow up some of these stories had references been available. For example, I eventually tracked down the source used by the author for the wireless officer's account of the moments just before the City of Winchester was confronted by SMS Konigsberg but references would have made the task so much easier.
For those who wish to take their study of the British Merchant Navy further a crucial starting point is the National Maritime Museum's "Research Guide C9: The Merchant Navy: World War One" which is available online. Also available are Archibald Hurd's three volume official history: The Merchant Navy and C. Ernest Fayle's three volume official history: Seaborne Trade, as well as John Terraine's splendid Business in Great Waters: the U-boat Wars, 1916-1945. For an excellent first-hand account of life at sea during the Great War, privately printed but deserving of a much wider readership, try the early chapters of Bernard Anson King's Our Little Hour.
By comparison with the number of books which have been published dealing with the army in World War One the Merchant Navy's role in the conflict has been under-represented. In War Under the Red Ensign Bernard Edwards' great empathy with the Merchant Service is clear and he is rightly keen to show that, for many of them, their war was every bit as difficult, dangerous, and unpleasant as the war of the men in the trenches.
Reviewed by: David Seymour, WFA Education Trustee
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