3 JANUARY 1914, Page 37

The King's Ships. By Halton Stirling Lecky, Lieutenant, Royal Navy.

(Horace Mnirhead, £12 12s. ; to subscribers, £9 15s.)—In The King's Slaps Lieutenant H. B. Leaky has produced a chronological history of the ships whose names now appear on the Navy List. The first volume shows it to be a profusely illustrated history of the Royal Navy, which will keep alive the memory not only of ships long passed away, bat also of those about to disappear. In the complete work of six volumes the reader will be able to trace the gradual changes in the instruments used by the seamen of this country to maintain her position in the world and her shores inviolate Not only are shown the rise, development, and passing of the' sailing ship.of.war, but also the development of the steamer and of the ironclad; and, further, the actions in which those ships took part are also related and in many cases pictorially represented. Containing as it does the history of three thousand five hundred ships and extending over a period of more than eight hundred years, The King's Ships cannot fail to become a standard work of reference.