Throughout the period of the Royal Navy's dominance of the seas its ability to project force ashore was a central part of its role, and indeed for most of the 19th century sailors saw most of their fighting on land as Naval Brigades participating in 'Queen Victoria's Little Wars'. In this book a group of naval historians examine the Navy's role on land from Sidney Smith's defence of Acre in 1799 and Nelson's campaign on Corsica, through the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny and the Boer War, to the Royal Naval Division's service on the Western Front in the First World War, and right up to the modern period of Tomahawk missiles. Little-known incidents such as the Anglo-Japanese War of 1863-4 and the landing of a field gun crew by HMS Hood during the Norwegian campaign of 1940 complete this overview of the Royal Navy's role in land warfare over the past 200 years.
