Navies of the world — Story, Setting & Ideas

A Self-Limiting Technical Compendium

Very’s preface establishes a curious tension: he insists on the transience of his data while simultaneously presenting it as authoritative. The work is explicitly a compilation, not an analysis. He writes that he has “simply aimed at representing in as detailed a manner as possible all the elements which go to make up the active naval strength,” and that he has “in no case given his own independent ideas.” This self-effacing stance is unusual for a military handbook of the period, which might be expected to offer strategic judgments. Instead, Very positions himself as a conduit for official records, citing figures such as Reed, White, and Dislere as his authorities. The result is a text that feels less like a narrative and more like a ledger—a collection of specifications whose value, Very implies, will soon expire.

The Mechanics of Armament in Detail

The excerpts reveal a relentless focus on mechanical minutiae. Descriptions of slide-carriages for guns of various calibers—24-cm, 17-cm, 15-cm, 12-cm, and 30½-cm—occupy much of the text. Very details the arrangement of rollers, elevating-gear (rack and pinion vs. simple screw), breechings, compressors (Elswick or hydraulic recoil cylinders), and housing-bolts. He notes that in carriages before 1875, breechings are used; after that date, newer types employ hydraulic cylinders. The language is precise and technical: “The forward slide-rollers are permanently in action, the rear ones are worked by levers.” For half-slide carriages, he explains that a single long roller under the rear of the carriage “does not touch the deck” when the gun is run out but drops to support the carriage during recoil. This granularity suggests the intended audience is naval officers and ordnance specialists, not general readers.

Catalog Subjects vs. Actual Content

The catalog subjects—Naval battles, Navies, Torpedoes, Naval architecture, Ordnance, Naval—are broadly accurate, but the excerpts show a striking imbalance. The preface promises a summary of principal naval battles from 1860 to 1880, yet the surviving text is overwhelmingly devoted to ordnance and carriage mechanics. No battle descriptions appear in the provided material. Similarly, torpedoes are mentioned in the preface as a new arm, but the excerpts focus on gun carriages. The subject “Naval architecture” is represented only indirectly through references to slide design and displacement figures. Readers expecting a balanced overview of fleets and engagements will find instead a specialist’s manual on artillery mounting. The work’s subtitle—“giving concise descriptions of the plans, armament and armor of the naval vessels of twenty of the principal nations”—is more accurate than the catalog tags, but even that promise is only partially fulfilled in the available text.

Readers should approach this work as a technical reference rather than a strategic analysis. The preface’s emphasis on the rapid obsolescence of its data invites a historical reading: what did a U.S. Navy lieutenant in 1880 consider the essential facts of naval power? The detailed carriage descriptions, while dry, reveal the state of artillery engineering at a moment when hydraulic recoil systems were just beginning to replace older methods. For those interested in the material culture of late-19th-century navies, this book offers a primary source of specifications, but it will frustrate anyone seeking narrative or comparative judgments.

That rainy afternoon, I lost myself in Lieutenant Very’s careful, already-doomed lists of warships—twenty navies rendered obsolete even as he wrote. The quiet melancholy of that permanence stuck with me. Later, I found myself reaching for something else, a study of how armies actually adapted when machinery failed. The link led me to The Making of a Modern Army and its Operations in the Field A study based on the experience of three years on the French front (1914-1917) — Context and Discussion, and the rain felt heavier, somehow.