When they appeared nearly twenty years ago, Mr. James Colledge’s historical indices, the two volumes of Ships of the Royal Navy, immediately became a standard work of reference, indispensable to researchers and enthusiasts alike. Amateurs and professionals appreciated the almost unique combination of simplicity and completeness which, in effect, eliminated a basic level of research.
The one disadvantage of the first edition of Ships of the Royal Navy was that it soon became a collector’s item, to be found by the fortunate and/or in specialist second hand booksellers, at several times its original publication price. The appearance of this long overdue edition will be welcomed by those who were disappointed the first time around – the feelings of owners of the first edition may, in some cases, be mixed, for it is now superseded.
Since the original text of Volume 1 – ‘Major ships’ went to press in 1968 there have been many changes in the List of the Navy. Nearly 100 ships’ names have been resurrected (and Ships of the Royal Navy has been at the collective elbow of the Ships’ Names Committee as an invaluable source) and some have lived out the full span of their careers during the two decades. While these additions would justify a revised edition, they are, in practice, almost a minor aspect.
It was inevitable, in collating data on 13, 000 ships, that there would be a number of errors and omissions, as well as blanks which the author could not fill. In the years which have passed, Mr. Colledge has steadily worked to correct the errors, supplement the data and eliminate the lacunae. In this he has been assisted by members of the World Ship Society, who have already seen, in a special column of their magazine, Warship Supplement, the first published form of the amendments. A further significant contribution has also been made by Mr. David Lyons, another indefatigably helpful researcher, well known to users of the National Maritime Museum’s documentary collection of naval records.
But the work as whole remains that of J.J. Colledge, who has now improved on excellence. The Naval Historical Library’s two battered, broken and annotated copies of the original will now go into honourable retirement to join other ‘first editions’ – I suspect that many others will be similarly retired.
David Brown, Naval Historical Library, 1987.