Band of Brothers: Boy Seamen in the Royal Navy, 1800-1956 [Hardcover]

David Phillipson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1997

A revealing history of the boy seaman rating in the Royal Navy, beginning with its evolution from the 18th-century "Officer's Servant" through to its abolition in 1956. It tells of an astonishing Victorian naval tradition which continued into modern times. HMS Ganges, a byword on the lower deck of the Royal Navy for vigorous - not to say harsh - discipline, was the hardest of the boy seaman training establishments. The tradition for which the Ganges was widely regarded as the archetype, lasted almost to the threshold of the permissive society of the 1960s. Throughout those years the Royal Navy was a supremely traditionalist and conservative institution, never more so than in its attitude to and treatment of its lower deck people - its boys in particular. This led a future First Sea Lord to describe HMS Ganges as late as the 1950s as "the most feudal of the Navy's institutions". This history describes in detail such aspects of service life as recruitment, feeding and clothing, training, discipline and punishment, and daily life ashore and afloat, in peace and war. The narrative is supported by a selection of personal accounts by boy seamen who later went on to serve in the Royal Navy as men. The author concludes the history with an in-depth personal account of his own life aboard HMS Ganges as a boy entrant after World War II, drawn from his personal diaries.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Phillipson enlisted in the Royal Navy as a boy seaman in 1946 and trained at HMS. Ganges. He served in the Royal Navy for 11 years. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 150 pages
• Publisher: Naval Inst Pr (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557500991
• ISBN-13: 978-1557500991
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,264,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Splendid Read, March 13, 2005

By 

B. J. O'Brien (Rotterdam Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Band of Brothers Pb (Paperback)

Beautifully written. Absorbing. I read it all in one go through the night.
Admittedly, my father was on the Ganges.
Still, if you have the remotest interest in the subject you'll enjoy this.