One of the great pleasures of wargaming research is the naval register – those great big encyclopedias of warships, packed full of data on a class-by-class basis, that tell you everything you wanted to know about the world's fleets in a given era.
In English, two readily available publications predominate. "Jane's" was a traditional annual, begun in 1898, and available in the originals or in the Arco reprints for selected years (1898, 1904/5, 1905/6, 1914, 1919, 1939, 1944/5, 1950, and probably a couple of other historically significant years that I have forgotten) and "Conway's," written originally in the 1980s with the benefit of considerable hindsight and better information, and covering whole historic periods (1860-1905, 1906-1921, 1922-1945, and 1947-1995). Jane's has published "WWI" and "WWII" collections, with ship information drawn from individual annuals, and they are also useful.
Each type has its useful points to the wargamer. Jane's was an early attempt to imagine how graphics and tables could maximize the presentation of information, and it contains diagrams (detail, quality and accuracy vary, of course), and notes that transmit considerable insight- some of it inaccurate, in some cases because of official secrecy, in others because the authors fell victim to deliberate attempts by governments to mislead. While the details always require checking, it remains an invaluable guide to the ships in service for the world's navies at any given point.
For technical statistics, "Conway's" benefits from considerable post hoc research, and each ship gets a written monograph detailing history, variants, performance, and changes over a ship's service life. Because the eras are so large, it could take considerable work to determine ships in service in any given year, but it complements "Jane's" very well.
For many years, with the occasional addition of a useful monograph that dove deeply into a national fleet, or a certain type (Norman Friedman's prolific pen deserves a nod), those were your two choices for large scale fleet guides.
A man named Dimitri Malkov has authored a very interesting attempt to improve upon the original concept of "Jane's" that makes use of modern printing and database techniques to improve on the tabular and diagrammatic approach pioneered by Fred Jane and Thomas Brassey. It's a qualified success.
Starting his first volume with the British and several smaller fleets, Malloy chose the year 1890- an interesting breakpoint. Using a comprehensive database, he created diagrams that in some ways improve significantly on "Jane's," showing not just gun locations, but arcs of fire. Every ship is chronicled, including those under construction, and where it is known, he provides information on station for the RN. Port and dockyard information is provided, and the presentation of information is well designed and thought out. The inclusion of ships under construction gives the reader a real sense for what the RN's transition looked like, and gives a clearer understanding of the enormous ranges in ship types during this transition era.
It is not perfect: the statistical presentation is not much enlivened by notes or commentary, and the resolution of the graphics could be a little clearer. Some of the port maps in particular were clearly blurry, and although the books is usable and comprehensible, it would have benefited from a bit more editing and perhaps a bit higher resolution print quality. All of the tabular information in the ship entries is in metric, although a conversion and identification table is presented for each fleet's ordnance.
These comments notwithstanding, the book is a unique snapshot of the organization and composition of the RN when its fleet included wooden ships, central battery ironclads, and turret and barbette ships, and I recommend it to anyone interested in having good data on the early predreadnought era. The first volume covers the RN and smaller fleets, but he promises that French, Russian, American and other major fleets will be addressed in a second volume, and hints at the possibility that other individual years will be treated in future sets. For those who wished for a guide to the early 1890s (or even just an improvement on the data in the original 1898 edition of "Jane's", this book will be of interest, and is worth the price.
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goes to sea with the Terrain Mat.