World's Worst Warships: More Than 140 Years of Naval Disasters

Preston is so damn cranky, and he lets it all out in this very idiosyncratic list of crappy warships. Some of them are hilariously bad: early ironclads that flipped over after a 20 degree list; the circular Popovkas which spun when firing their guns and could not make way against even a mild current; hydrogen-peroxide powered submarines that mostly choked their crews. However, the hilarious follies are outnumbered by the banally bad-pricey cruisers that couldn’t take heavy seas, attempts to outmatch falsely reported speeds on foreign ships, and way too many attempts to “fit a quart into a pint glass” by second-rate powers like the French and Japanese.

Unfortunately, this book is caught halfway between freakshow and system. Preston knows what kinds of ships he likes: tough, moderately-sized, seagoing ships, with conservative armor and armament. He is merciless on anything innovative, sometimes rightfully with a Swedish combined cruiser-aircraft carrier-minelayer, and sometimes unfairly as when he dismisses missile armed corvettes as a class. He hates it whenever “enthusiasts” get ahold of naval procurement, but I get the feeling he’d be happiest with 72 gun ships of the line, and damn this newfangled steam.