"the Story of HMS Revenge" by Alexander Stilwell, Pen & Sword Books copyright 2009. 210pps. ISBN 978-1-844105981-7. This not a very good account of the careers of the ships bearing the name of "Revenge" in the Royal Navy. The intent of the writer seems quite confused. While he wishes to rival the account of the HMS Warspite, so ably done by Stephen Roskill, he has fallen short of that work in several respects. While Roskill's work is clearly stated to be most particularly of that of the WWI and WWII "HMS Warspite", Mr. Stilwell does not do that. While being fullest about the career of the Initial "Revenge", the ship which Richard Grenville lost to the Spanish in the Azores in 1591, the coverage of the other vessels varies a great deal.. Stilwell, devotes 65 out of 201 pages to the first vessel, and the most extensive exploration of the Spanish and Papal attempts to stir up unrest and religious conflict in the England of Elizabeth. All the names and exploits of the Catholic terrorists are treated most sympathetically. In fact, for a book about warships and technology, I have never seen so much space devoted to the religious affiliation and reasoning of the Spanish/papal cause. The Restoration navy and "Revenge" then get 30 pages, a good deal devoted to the Catholic Monarch James II when he was First Lord of the Admiralty. and the attempts to settle the succession of England upon the Catholic members of the Stuart family get fifteen of those pages. the Dutch War period is hampered by a typo which states that the "Revenge" then serving was launched in 1699(sic) and not as was most likely, launched in 1669. At last, with the "Revenge " of 1746, with the Protestant Hanoverian dynasty on the throne, we get a brief coverage of the ship built in 1755 in Bombay for Indian Ocean duties. Later in the paragraph, the ship founders without an exploration of the British East India company's expansion in the period. The next "Revenge" was launched as a 74 gun ship, in 1805, and was one of the cleanest, and fastest ships at Trafalgar. This ship gets full (38 pps) coverage until the conclusion of the early 19th century Wars. The "Revenge" of 1859 comes next, and instead of an exploration of the Victorian colonial Navy similar in scale to the Elizabethan and Napoleonic coverage, we get two pages. Slipping along to the "Revenge" of 1892, we get four pages, a cursory sketch of the activities of this pre-Dreadnought which participated in some interesting episodes of WWI up to the name change in 1916. That year the name of the pre-dreadnought was shifted to the ship launched that year. Though there is a discussion of the differences between the Dreyer fire control system and the Arthur Pollen fire control system. The Royal Navy took the Dreyer system, and what difference the religion of Pollen (Catholic) had to do with this decision is clearly beyond me, and I hope anyone with an interest in ballistics. There is some coverage of interwar naval life, including a description of the Chanak crisis,and then we get to WWII. There is a long description of the "Bismarck" sortie in which the "Revenge" played a very minor part as was her non -involvement in the Battle of the River Platte, also covered.. The ship's time in the Eastern fleet is covered climaxing in her coverage of a troop convoy in February of 1943. After that, the ship had nothing to do, and was placed in reserve to use the seamen more efficiently. The author does not use his time to cover any activity by the other ships of the class, some of whom had far more interesting WWIIs. There is a chapter trying to give some idea of the "Revenge" a nuclear submarine placed in storage until a means is found of disposing of these nuclear powered "R" class ships. The reason the book got a half star is that the dust jacket has an attractive side view and deck plan of the WWI configuration of the ship. ( )