A Mission of Honour

Covering more than two centuries, from Captain Cook to the handover of Hong Kong, the forty-nine chapters of A Mission of Honour deal with such diverse topics as exploration, marine surveying and charting, carrying convicts to Australia and taking New Zealand kauri spars back to Britain for the Royal Dockyards, maintaining stocks of provisions on remote islands for the benefit of shipwrecked sailors, fighting wars against the Russains, Chinese, Maori, Germans and Japanese, shipwrecks, mutiny, piracy, desertion, ceremonial, shore leave and raising the Union Jack on distant shores to create new colonies such as Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

“Britain’s gift to the Pacific has been sea power. By almost singlehandedly bringing peace, order and security to the Pacific the Royal Navy carved for itself the honour of being the most positive factor in the develpment of the peaceful trade of the world’s largest ocean. A Mission of Honour tells this remarkable and uplifing story with a sharp eye for detail and a sense of adventure”.

“By its constant presence and vigilance off the coast of British Columbia the Royal Navy ensured that Canada would be a nation on two oceans, by establishing and supplying Australia’s northern outposts it helped ensure that the southern continent would be a single country, by a subtle combination of persuasion and force it succeeded in eradicating cannibalism from New Zealand, Fiji and other islands, by its vital role in the Maori Wars it made New Zealand safe for settlement, by its victory in the First Opium War it enabled Britain to acquire Hong Kong and turn it into the world’s greatest and most dazzling free port, by eradicating piracy from the seas around Borneo it secured the safety of honest trade in and out of Singapore and, by compiling thousands of charts of virtually every part of the Pacific, it ensured that the world’s greatest ocean was made safe for mariners and known to the world. All this and much more is contained in this well researched and highly readable work of naval history
HB 518 pages