Geoffrey Bennett (1909–1983)
Author of Naval Battles of the First World War
About the Author
Disambiguation Notice:
Also used the alias "Sea-Lion". Please don't separate that out.
Works by Geoffrey Bennett
The Falkland Island Mystery 3 copies
The Pepper Trader: True Tales of the German East Asia Squadron and the Man who Cast them in Stone (2006) 3 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Bennett, Geoffrey Martin
- Other names
- Sea-Lion
- Birthdate
- 1909-06-07
- Date of death
- 1983-09-05
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- England
- Birthplace
- London, England, UK
- Place of death
- Ludlow, Shropshire, England
- Places of residence
- Ludlow, Shropshire, England
London, England, UK - Education
- Royal Naval College, Dartmouth (1923-26), (attended)
Royal Naval College, Greenwich (1929-30) - Organizations
- Royal Historical Society (fellow)
Royal United Services Institute
Institute for Defence Studies
Naval Records Society (fellow)
Royal Navy - Awards and honors
- Military: Distinguished Service Cross, 1943; . Civilian: Gold Medal and Trench-Gascoigne Prize of Royal United Service Institution, 1935, 1941, 1942 [1943, 1972, 1935, 1941, 1942]
Order of Orange Nassau (1972) - Short biography
- Associated with the Royal Navy from 1923 until 1958, author Geoffrey Bennett was a signal officer in the South Atlantic and Mediterranean stations from 1940 until 1945, when he was appointed to a post in the British Admiralty. Bennett also served as captain of the H.M.S. St. Brides' Bay in 1948 and as a naval attache in Moscow, Warsaw, and Helsinki from 1953, the year he attained the rank of captain, until 1955. Bennett wrote several books drawing on his military knowledge, including Nelson the Commander and Battle of Trafalgar. Under the pseudonym Sea-Lion, the captain published numerous novels, among them This Creeping Evil, Wrecked on the Goodwins, and Death in the Dog Watches. Bennett also wrote several radio plays for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC-Radio).
- Disambiguation notice
- Also used the alias "Sea-Lion". Please don't separate that out.
Members
Reviews
Freeing the Baltic by Geoffrey Bennett
Wonderful little book about the post World war one conflicts in the "newly freed"" Baltic region. Almost belongs in Oxfords Greater war series as Bennett clearly explains that the war to end all wars didn't actually end.
½
Geoffrey Bennett was a naval officer whose career had begun prior to WWII. Though only eight at the time of the Battle of Jutland, he was born into a naval family, and spent the bulk of his wartime career as a signals officer, eventually commanding a "Bay" Class Corvette in the latter days of WWII. His account of Jutland has had the compliment of being translated into German. The difficulties of the RN's signal service during the encounter receive adequate discussion in this competent book. I read a 1964 initial printing copy.… (more)
This book was first published by Batsford in 1968. It has been reprinted at least three times since. A readable Account of the Royal Navy's War in the North Sea, Outer Oceans and the Mediterranean. The Baltic actions are largely ignored, but the maps and prose are adequate. Do not look for controversy in these pages, but it is a basic account.
While I've been interested in military history since I was a kid, I've never been too keen on naval history. Perhaps it say more about me than about naval history, but I've always found the movements of ships on the sea harder to follow than the movements of armies on land. That is compounded in the case of a battle like Jutland, that even its protagonists found hard to follow.
Yet I was able, more or less, to follow the course of these events in Geoffrey Bennett's book. I was also struck by the parallels between Jellicoe's situation in the North Sea and that of the commanders on the Western Front. Jellicoe's fleet covered many miles compared to the fleets of Nelson a century earlier, yet command and control techniques had changed little. As French and Haig had to command modern armies with the tools of Wellington, so Jellicoe had to command a modern fleet with the tools of Nelson - visual observation and flags to communicate the findings thereof. Not surprisingly, these tools were insufficient for him to spring his moderately complex trap and wipe out Scheer's fleet at Jutland.… (more)
Yet I was able, more or less, to follow the course of these events in Geoffrey Bennett's book. I was also struck by the parallels between Jellicoe's situation in the North Sea and that of the commanders on the Western Front. Jellicoe's fleet covered many miles compared to the fleets of Nelson a century earlier, yet command and control techniques had changed little. As French and Haig had to command modern armies with the tools of Wellington, so Jellicoe had to command a modern fleet with the tools of Nelson - visual observation and flags to communicate the findings thereof. Not surprisingly, these tools were insufficient for him to spring his moderately complex trap and wipe out Scheer's fleet at Jutland.… (more)
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Statistics
- Works
- 20
- Members
- 553
- Popularity
- #45,138
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 9
- ISBNs
- 54
- Languages
- 2