For armchair admirals, history buffs, and naval enthusiasts everywhere, A Naval Miscellany is an indispensable and entertaining collection of fascinating and often little-known facts, anecdotes, lists, curiosities and stories from our naval past. Forgotten heroes, amazing blunders, surprising trivia, and strange-but-true stories overlooked by historians - it is all here in a book that will enlighten and amaze even the most avid student of naval history.

What was the Nelson touch? Who were the naval heroes of the ancient world, and the world's worst admirals? How do mines work? What is a two-ocean navy? How much did a midshipman get paid in the eighteenth century? What was the Anaconda plan, and what are the origins of sea shanties? Where are the biggest naval bases in the world today? How significant was the use of torpedoes in the American Civil War? When did women first serve at sea? And how does a ship float?

Open this book anywhere and you'll find yourself instantly captivated. From flogging, sodomy and the lash, to naval medicine in the age of sail; from hidden facts about Pearl Harbor to how to navigate by the stars; from tales of shipwrecked sailors and castaways to inside a nuclear submarine; from roundshot, grapeshot and chainshot to pirate hunters; from ships' pets and mascots, to keelhauling and hanging by the yardarm; from wooden legs and one-eyed cooks to naval superstitions; and from mutinies and a buffer's guide to naval acronyms to Donald Duck and the war effort.

There is plenty of fascinating sea lore here - from the monumental to the trivial - plus the low-down on different types of warship and profiles of fighting admirals throughout history. This work takes up where ordinary naval history books leave off.