I’ve been writing articles for the US website Navy General Board for a while now. The latest is up – so, without further ado, hie thee hence and check it out! Click the photo to jump across, and please do admire the marvellous scrollwork on the bows on the way. Copyright © Matthew Wright 2019 … More The ‘other’ HMS Hood – my latest article for the Navy General Board.
It’s the anniversary of the Battle of Jutland this week – the clash of British and German fleets on 31 May-1 June 1916 – and one of the tangible connections I have to it, aside from my professional historical work, is through my great uncle’s old navy mess fork. It was issued to him when … More This week in history: Jutland and my great uncle’s navy mess fork
It’s 78 years this week since the battlecruiser HMS Hood went down in the Denmark Strait while fighting the German battleship Bismarck. At about 6.00 am on 24 May 1941, around eight minutes after the battle began, she exploded in a massive ball of fire and smoke as her two after magazines, X and Y, … More This week in history: the loss of HMS Hood
I’ve been writing for a US website, the Navy General Board, for a couple of years now. They are building up a wide array of reference articles on naval history, a fair number of them by Yours Truly. The NGB have a strong presence on Facebook and a major website – and that’s only the … More Check out the Navy General Board’s incredible history website
Have you ever been grabbed by history and had the raw emotion of a past event suddenly explode across you in all its human depth and drama? It’s this – and not lists of numbers – that makes history interesting. Add music to the mix and you can create a historical account that has tremendous … More Capturing the feeling of history with music… and the Bismarck
Today, 25 April, is New Zealand’s memorial day – Anzac Day. It’s the day when we remember all our war dead, more than half of whom died in just one campaign, the Western Front. Today I’m re-posting a short extract from my book, The New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front, pondering the … More Lest we forget: the memory of war
Back in 2001 I wrote a book on New Zealand’s naval history. Blue Water Kiwis was picked up by the Royal New Zealand Navy to mark their sixtieth anniversary that year, and launched (but not literally) on the flight-deck of HMNZS Te Mana. I remember that evening rather well, not least because my wife and … More Blue Water Kiwis – second edition out now!
