The Habit of Victory: The Story of the Royal Navy, 1545-1945 (review)

The Royal Navy's long history as an institution has been the subject of numerous surveys, both general and scholarly. With the Trafalgar bicentenary this year, Nelson and the Navy in general have become quite topical. Captain Peter Hoare's The Habit of Victory is the latest work in this genre. According to Hoare, the book is not a history, anthology, or encyclopedia but an attempt, "to tell a story in which the Royal Navy itself is the hero" (p. v) via select documents from the National Maritime Museum's (NMM) archives and bibliographical sources in the Caird Library. Essentially, it is little more than a promotional piece, "to advertise the variety and wealth of the resources available at Greenwich" (p. vi), which is problematic from a scholarly perspective. Since the author does not indicate what themes are to be explored to justify the exact meaning of the book's title, the reader is left to interpret the validity and establish the context of the manuscripts presented with respect to issues such as personnel, training, command, technological evolutions and adaptability, combined operations, strategic and tactical doctrine, etc.—aspects which made the service's long tradition of success a reality. Clouding the work's scholarly merit is the avoidance of formal citations, coupled with a relatively sparse bibliography, given the scale of the topic and the availability of new interpretations.

The Royal Navy's "story" focuses on individuals and events, both significant and lesser known. The approach is competent, especially in the book's first half covering the period from the Elizabethan era to 1815. These chapters recount critical engagements and the successes of prominent admirals including: Drake, Howard, Boscawen, Hawke, Anson, Nelson, Howe, Jervis, and Collingwood. Beyond brief biographies of each, however, no comparative analysis emerges to chart their qualities as seamen, tacticians, or commanders (i.e., Hawke's 1759 victory at Quiberon Bay)—themes which might reveal the reasons for their victories and the Navy's continual success. The book's strength lies in the chapters encapsulating the period from the American War of Independence to the beginning of "the Long Peace" in 1815. Effective documents from the NMM collection stress successful combined operations and inter-service cooperation during the American Revolution, such as the retaking of Charleston. The Royal Navy's aptitude at combined operations in this example and others throughout the book is, however, yet another theme not pursued in explaining "the habit of victory."

The book's second half is much weaker. The attention paid to the service's technological and strategic transformation and its reformers, such as John Fisher, from the 1840s to 1914 is minimal. Another significant omission, dealing with strategic thought (pp. 282–86), is the ignoring of the influence of Sir John Knox Laughton on both Alfred Mahan and Julian Corbett as historian-theorists—a point established by Andrew Lambert. As a promotional work extolling the value and diversity of the NMM's manuscript collections, The Habit of Victory fulfills its task and inadvertently functions as yet another general history of the Royal Navy. Professional naval historians will find that this study generates no new debates, avoids crucial themes, and highlights documents of questionable importance.