War at Sea: A naval atlas 1939–1945 by Marcus Faulkner
Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley, 2012, £50 (hb)
288 pages, with numerous colour maps, bibliography, index
ISBN 978-1-84832-047-5
This is a profoundly disappointing book. Its arrival had been keenly anticipated as it has been widely advertised and promised a novel and valuable approach to naval warfare through cartography; it promised – and delivers – comprehensiveness; it has already been nominated for a book prize; it promised help in understanding complicated battles and campaigns and a pithy synthesis of the war at sea; it sounded like a necessary and welcome tool to assist in understanding the war at sea for any serious scholar. The contents page promises a satisfactorily rich and varied set of over 200 maps. Some are familiar but many unknown or little known actions are covered from the Baltic and Black Sea to the Pacific. This is very welcome. At first glance the maps are uniformly clear whether global in nature or covering only a few square sea miles, while the author's preface helpfully covers some of the conventions of time and place in the construction of the maps as well as notes on sources. The arrangement is chronological and each year of the war has a useful initial summary list of the maps to follow and the location of sea battles. Each map also has a useful brief and universally welllaid-out textual summary of the background to the action and its outcome. Some initial discomfort over errors on the contents page is then dispelled by an excellent preamble from Andrew Lambert.
But as one starts to look at the work in detail there is a dawning realization that all is not well. It might be supposed that the hallmarks of cartography are accuracy and consistency. Sadly this book fails on both counts. The book is riddled with spelling mistakes and errors. This applies much more to the maps themselves than to the accompanying text. Most of the errors and inconsistent usages may seem trivial (‘detatched’ for ‘detached’ or ‘Fulmer’ for ‘Fulmar’), but this reviewer counted over seventy in the maps relating to the RN alone at a first reading and more are discovered as one returns to the book. Cumulatively this sloppiness must cast doubt on the overall reliability and authority of the work. The errors range from unfortunate but forgivable solecisms such as declaring 8 May 1945 the last day of the war to the frankly risible and presumably unintended homage to The Navy Lark where we meet Captain Troutbridge [Troubridge] and the cruiser Barnacle [Berwick?].
The catalogue of misprints and errors begins on the dust jacket [‘forth for ‘fourth’], continues to the contents page which has at least two spelling mistakes, then moves immediately to the list of abbreviations. This is incomplete, stops at the letter ‘S’ (for space reasons?) and has at least one error describing the SBS as the Special Boat Service, a title not used until the 1980s, while KGV is given for the battleship King George V – but never used, although the ship is frequently shown on maps – while both R.V. and R/V are used, once on the same page, although the list of abbreviations prescribes RV. The text accompanying the maps is generally concise and helpful, although not error free, and the usage of placing ship names in italics is not universally applied. This seems a minor matter until, for example, the role of Australia and Australia appear in the Pacific War. When one finally reaches the index, it appears accurate but (without any explanation) is incomplete. It appears to list only capital ships of cruiser and above, making the tracking of destroyer actions difficult, it lists some US Headquarters ships but not comprehensively, yet does not list those of the RN and it does not include personal names. The list of convoys is uniformly British, partial, but with some, such as Pedestal indexed as operations not convoys.
Very damagingly, a proportion of ship names are wrong – Bitter for Biter or Ingfeld for Inglefield to give but two of the many errors. A smaller but still measurable number of personal names is also misspelt. Operation Chariot is moved to mid-Atlantic on one map. A new beach (BAND) appears without explanation at D-Day to add to GOLD, JUNO and SWORD. BAND certainly existed in planning for D-Day and Roskill has a single obscure reference to it as being never actually used. To then include it in a map of events without any comment is at best confusing. Also puzzling is the usage of personal names. To select only one example, Admiral Somerville appears on various maps with half a dozen variants: as Admiral or Vice-Admiral; with no forename or initials; as J., or J.F., or James; with or without RN as post-nominals. This is evidently not an issue of space, but if it is one of usage, this is nowhere explained. And it is the same with ships. Sometimes these are prefaced with titles (HMS, IJN, RNN, FS etc.) and sometimes not – and in some cases with different usages on the same page so HMS Exmoor is followed by Pindos (Gr). Mostly this does not matter, but where mixed forces are used, for example at D-Day it is quite unclear whether, say, the monitor Erebus is American or British, Polish or French. And other usage is inconsistent. For example, fire is variably checked, ceased or stopped.
While grammar is to some degree these days a personal matter as opposed to the certainties of the days when Fowler's English Usage ruled, the near universal (but again inconsistent!) use of ‘sunk’ for ‘sank’ grates. Thus ‘Bismarck sunk … the battle cruiser Hood’. The infamous grocer's apostrophe is also intermittently present.
It is perhaps the high expectations placed on the book which make the reality so disappointing. It had seemed a work to like and admire, but when the main effort of reading is to spot the mistakes and inconsistencies on almost every page, its claims to credibility are quite undermined.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2013.767571
© Derek Law