The Channel and the Crown: The Naval War of the Grand Alliance, 1688-1697 - Paperback
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The Channel and the Crown: The Naval War of the Grand Alliance, 1688-1697
On the morning of 10 July 1690, an Allied fleet sailed into the worst naval defeat in English history, and very nearly didn't survive it. The Channel and the Crown reconstructs the Nine Years' War at sea from the ground up: Louis XIV's ruthless machine of conquest, the mass exodus of persecuted Huguenots who armed his enemies with skill and secrets, and the revolution that fused England and the Dutch Republic into an uneasy maritime alliance. At the heart of the story stands the Battle of Beachy Head, told hour by hour, the fatal gap in the line, the Dutch vanguard trapped between two fires, and the extraordinary anchor stratagem that saved a shattered fleet from annihilation. Thorson Griffith follows the wreckage into the Tower of London, where a condemned admiral mounts a defense history would later vindicate, and across the Channel to Versailles, where a stunned France squandered the greatest naval opportunity of the century. From the burning ships of Sussex to the decisive reversal at La Hougue, this is a story of catastrophe, blame, and hard-won recovery, and of the doctrine, born from one commander's ruin, that would shape naval strategy for two hundred years. History has rarely offered a defeat this instructive, or a redemption this complete
Thorson Griffith traces his own family back to the Norse-Gaelic seafaring communities of Ireland's east coast, a heritage that first drew him to the sea lanes and rivalries of early modern Europe. He has spent two decades researching naval administration, coalition warfare, and the archives of Britain, France, and the Netherlands, with a particular fascination for the moments when professional judgment and political panic collide. The Channel and the Crown grew out of years spent walking the Sussex shoreline where the wrecks of Beachy Head still lie, and pressing through French and Dutch naval correspondence that English-language histories have long overlooked. Griffith lives on the Irish coast, within sight of the water, where he is already at work on his next book.
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