Customer Reviews
A wonderful history of a great ship - By: B. G. Barker, 06 Aug 2008 
I was surprised to recently come across this bookin Waterstones (more expensive than on Amazon!) & bought this book on a whim. My late father was a young stoker on HMS Rodney - joiningin 1943 - after Bismark - butin time for D-Day & the Russian convoys. He left the ship following Victoryin Europe & wasin Vancouver ready to join the Pacific fleet when the war ended.
This is a wonderful history - accessible for non-specialists like myself. Following a brief introduction to the Admiral himself & the first ships that subsequently bore his name, the book focuses on the battleship laid downin the 1920s & finally broken upin 1948.
The strange shape of the Rodney & her sister ship Nelson resulted from the constraints of the Washington Naval treaty (vague memories of this from history at school). Similarly, I had a vague recollection of the Invergordon mutiny - but wasn't fully aware of the role of the crew of the `Red Rodney'in leading the revolt. Most people know of the role of Rodneyin the sinking of the Bismark, perhaps fewer the key role she played around D-Day - not helped by reports crediting many of her actions to HMS Nelson.
The book gives a real feel for life on a battleshipin peacetime & war. Fascinating how the crew managed to keep the worn-out ship functioning towards the end of the war - & putting back the bits that fell off every time the guns were fired.
I just wish this wonderful book had been published while my father was still alive - I just imagine the discussions we would have had.
ps no mention of sheep - so still not sure if this story is true or not.....
Ballantyne's best yet - By: R. J. Hargreaves, 04 Jun 2008 ON Sunday November 12 1944, 12,000lb bombs smashed through the armour plating of Hitler's flagshipin a Norwegian fjord, causing the vaunted Tirpitz to capsize.
Several hundred miles away, the men of HMS Rodney were returning from gunnery off Cape Wrath. They didn't know it yet, but Tirpitz's demise also sounded the death knell for their own battleship.
There was no longer a threat from enemy big shipsin European waters.
All could be dispatched to the Far East to plunge the knife into the belly of the Japanese beast.
But not Rodney. She was tired - she had sailed more than 150,000 miles since her last refit. She would not receive another one.
It was a rather lacklustre end to the career of a ship which,in the words of one former marine, "saw as much action" as any other British battleship.
Her story is now told definitively by Iain Ballantynein HMS Rodney (Pen & Sword, £25, ISBN 978-1844-154067).
Rodney is not perhaps the obvious choice for a biography - of WW2 vintage ships, Nelson, Warspite, Ark Royal spring more immediately to mind.
Yet Rodney's is a story rich with incident & drama. Indeed,in almost every major engagement of the second global conflagration, HMS Rodney was there.
Norway, the Bismarck chase, the Malta Convoys, Salerno, Normandy, the Murmansk run, HMS Rodney saw action at each one.
In keeping with the author's previous biographies of ships - Warspite, London & Victory - this is a story less of the machine than the men who sailedin her.
And it is not just the most recent Rodney with which Ballantyne is interested in.
He begins his storyin the 18th Century, from which time on there was a succession of Rodneys, ending with the pre-dreadnought of the 1880s (the last RN vessel to mount a figurehead).
The core of the book, however, is devoted to the Inter-War & WW2 battleship.
Rodney & her sister Nelson were Britain's newest battleshipsin 1939 (the King George V class were still being built).
They were also the most unusual dreadnoughts Britain ever built; restrictions on displacement limited the vessels to 35,000-tons.
The resulting design was unorthodox: all Rodney's main armament - 16in guns - was foreward of her superstructure.
She could have been a very different ship, however. Work had begunin 1916 on another Rodney, a super battle-cruiser, sister to the Mighty Hood. The Admiralty pulled the plug on the project; only
Hood was completed.
Hood came to epitomise the Inter-War Royal Navy. But facing Rodneyin battle was a far more fearsome proposition.
"I challenge any one who claims to possess a soul to stand on Rodney's fo'c'sle & contemplate the stark, grey mass of turret & gun that stretches before him," one officer enthused. "I challenge him to stand there by himself & not feel a definite tingle of pride & fear."
In the late summer of 1931, no-one would face Rodney's guns, however. The leviathan was branded `the red ship' for her rolein the Invergordon mutiny.
Rodney's sailors learned of pay cuts imposed on them by Whitehall from the BBC & newspapers just three weeks before such cuts were introduced.
There was uproar - uproar entirely preventable, one of her junior officers observed. "The Board of the Admiralty were completely out of touch with the feelings of the lower deck," he fumed. "A despicable bunch of sods was our immediate, undisciplinary, feeling about them."
The men of Rodney mutinied for a simple cause: they were not communists, not anti-patriotic. They were simply trying to pay their mortgages, loans & other bills.
Rodney's subsequent deeds eclipsed her rolein the Invergordon mutiny.
She was bombedin the ill-starred Norwegian campaign, played a key rolein Operation Pedestal, & hammered the Wehrmachtin Normandy.
No man who witnessed her barrage on D-Day would ever forget it.
"The sheer volume of noise, the blast of the guns was incredible & you could feel it through your body even if you were quite a distance from the gun doing the firing," recalled Allan Snowden. "You couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for the guys on the receiving end."
There was no such magnanimity shownin May 1941, however.
News reached the bridge of Rodney that Bismarck had sunk the Hood. The Rodneys were determined, one officer rememebered, "to square the deal".
That she did on the morning of May 27 - after Bismarck had been crippled by Swordfish torpedo bombers.
A sub-lieutenant marvelled at the menin his turret delivering Bismarck's mortal blows.
"They remember Coventry, London, Plymouth - especially the latter which is home to most of them," he observed. "Justice, you still existin this world."
Today there are few Rodneys left. The ship herself was broken upin 1948. But the men of Rodney still remember her fondly.
One former marine told the author that he considered her "the finest battleship ever built".
Another's sentiments will no doubt be shared by many who go to sea. "It's hard to explain to a civilian one's feeling for a ship. You forget the hardships, the discomforts, the monotonous food & the dangers, but you remember the comradeship, the runs ashore, the lower deck, indestructible humour. How can you fullin love with a big hunk of steel? But you do, & you never forget."
A most complete work. - By: Ned Middleton, 02 Jun 2008 As the illustration on the book's cover reveals, this is a book about the mighty battleship HMS Rodney but,in getting to the subject itself, author Iain Ballantyne provides the reader with 42 fascinating pages of previous Royal Navy vessels of the same name. The first HMS Rodney, for example, was a cutter, the second a 16 gun brig-sloop. With the next being a 74 gun 3rd rate ship of the line & the one after that sporting 92 guns, a picture is painted whereby each successive ship to bear this illustrious name was destined to be larger than its predecessor.
The penultimate Rodney was a Battleship of 10,300 tons launchedin 1884 & soldin 1909. Whilst a Battlecruiser of 33,600 tons was orderedin 1916 - as a sister ship to the famous HMS Hood, she was cancelled long before completion. The last HMS Rodney, the subject of this book, was a Battleship of 33,900 tons launchedin 1925 & scrappedin 1948 after a career as equally as illustrious as the Admiral after which she was named.
The thing I like most about this book is the attention to detail. HMS Rodney was the last British warship launched with an ornate figurehead - a bust of Admiral Rodney of course. Elsewhere, we learn that, not only was a Royal Marine hangedin 1837 from the yardarm of a previous HMS Rodney, but we also learn much about the implications of his death because he was an Irishman. Whilst that particular incident may be of small consequence to those with an interestin the battleship itself, I mention itin order to underline the fine attention to detail contained within.
This is a book which will reveal something to almost everyone who thought they knew all there was to know about this once great ship. This was one of the capital ships which finally sank the Bismarck, this is the ship which was commanded by Cunningham & later by Tovey - long before they became admirals themselves.
It is a work of supreme research & fascinating insight & I congratulate the author on an excellent achievement.
NM
An inspirational book - By: T. Hart, 21 Apr 2008 I bought this book for a relative who had links with HMS Rodney, but I ended up reading it myself first & I am certainly glad that I did. I have no experience of War or the Navy beyond history lessons at school, however this book teaches us what it was like from the point of view of those that took part. The book itself tell the story of all the ships which were named `HMS Rodney', something which I am not sure many people are aware of, this renaming of a series of ships each of which inherits the name. A major part of the book however is taken up with the most famous Rodney of them all, the one which played a major partin the sinking of the Bismarck. The experiences of young & frightened sailors are vividly described & the numerous photographs bring it all to life. Iain Ballantyne has done an excellent jobin ensuring that these men will never be forgotten, & for that we should be very grateful. I can recommend this book to anyone whether they are interestedin War or Naval History or not, because it is also a social history which goes way beyond the usual books of this kind.
