For three hundred years or more the Royal Navy really did Rule the Waves, in the sense that during the numerous wars with our overseas enemies, British fleets and individual ships more often than not emerged victorious from combat. One French Admiral wa

When Cyclone Tracy flattened Darwin on Christmas Day 1974, it was the worst natural disaster Australians had ever experienced. Stationed in the city with the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service, Patricia Collins not only lived through Tracy but was part of the massive clean-up effort. This is her extraordinary story. The experience of living through a terrifying natural disaster is chillingly told by Collins as she recounts her own dark hours that Christmas, along with those of her contemporaries. They sat huddled in doorways and bathtubs as the winds raged, lifting off roofs, picking up cars and sinking ships. Most of the city was destroyed. Seventy-one people died. The Navy suffered terrible losses. A patrol boat was sunk with the loss of two crewmen and another was driven onto rocks. A sailor lost his wife and two children, and another lost his young son. In the days after Tracy, the majority of Darwin's population was evacuated interstate as the Navy's Task Force arrived to clean up and rebuild. Collins was there as a survivor of Tracy and now an integral part of the recovery. Rock and Tempest contains astonishing first-person accounts of terror and uncertainty as well as courage and survival. It is fascinating and moving, and absolutely essential reading.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1871.

 During the Pacific War between the United States and Imperial Japanese navies, the author's father, Francis Gelzheiser, deployed with Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 16A, from New Orleans to Panama to Seattle and to Attu Island in the Aleutians. After their return voyage, the PT boats journeyed to New Guinea, then battled Japanese kamikazes for the Philippine Island of Mindoro. Like many World War II veterans, Gelzheiser only shared his recollections of combat later in life. The author chronicles his father's experience, details the roles PT boats played in the war and examines why, despite America's overwhelming wartime manufacturing capacity, the Japanese believed they could still win the war.