Lion and the Eagle

The second volume of The Lion and The Eagle covers the months between the outbreak of war in 1914 and the conclusion of the 'Clearing of the Seas' in the Spring of 1915. This relatively short timespan encompassed a disproportionately large number of naval actions and campaigns that spanned every ocean of the globe and represented the most intensive, and extensive, period of naval warfare in the entire conflict. The account covers the disastrous, for the British, escape of the Goeben to Turkey, the Battle of the Heligoland Bight, and the subsequent East Coast raids that culminated in the Battle of the Dogger Bank. Outside the European sphere, it describes the prolonged operations involved in disposing of Germany's overseas detachments and countering their war against trade. The battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands are fully related and re-assessed, as is the epic cruise of the Emden. Essentially, this is a history of the period when the two flawed titans, Churchill and Fisher, were at the helm of naval affairs in the British Admiralty, and when Germany had its greatest opportunities to dispute Britain's maritime supremacy.

Born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, in 1945, David Gregory was brought up in Newfoundland and Pakistan before completing his education in England. He served in the Royal Navy as a seaman officer during the 1960s before spending six years in the Sea Wing of the Abu Dhabi Defence Force as it grew to become the nucleus of the present day UAE Navy. Subsequently, he worked worldwide in the offshore oil industry as Captain of salvage tugs and support ships. In 1980, having bought and lived on a yacht during leave periods for several years, he became a full time professional yacht skipper. Over the next twenty years, he captained, and supervised building of, vessels for the Saudi and Bahraini royal families, and for an Australian entrepreneur. During this period, he wrote a series of articles for Navy International and became involved in the campaign to preserve HMS Plymouth. In 2000, with his wife, he carried out a resurrection of an old, derelict motor sailor that they then cruised until family concerns required a permanent presence in the UK. David Gregory is now retired and lives in Todmorden, on the Yorkshire/Lancashire border in the Pennines.