This is the story of how the luxurious steam yachts of the Victorian and Edwardian eras were transformed into weapons of war. These beautiful vessels were the ultimate status symbols of British and European royalty, American magnates, the landed aristocracy and the nouveau riche, but when wars came, in 1898 and 1914, they were quickly transformed into warships, and many of their crews became warriors rather than servants.

The US Navy was the first to recognise the potential of these elegant vessels. In the Spanish-American war of 1898, the USN – short of ships to operate a blockade of Spanish-owned Cuba – purchased twenty-eight of them and turned them into patrol craft and bombardment ships. In Britain in 1914 steam yachts became a stop gap navy, filling in for neglected investment in small craft. The USN followed suit in 1917. Their wonderful interiors were ripped out, antiquated guns and sometimes depth charges fitted, and their crews signed into the naval reserves. Around the coasts of the Britain and France, in the Mediterranean and the USA, Canada, these former luxurious playthings now attacked land positions and fought surface warships and U-boats. They interdicted blockade runners, escorted convoys, were used as depot ships, served as hospitals afloat and undertook a host of other functions. In all, some 300 yachts fought at sea.

This new book, lavishly illustrated with photographs and plans of pre-war and wartime steam yachts from a world now lost to view, tells their story and the stories of the men who served in them. It examines their peacetime origins and development, describes their owners and designers, and considers their naval deployment, the conditions under which the crews lived and worked, the many and varied duties assigned to the yachts, and their successes and failures together with the losses sustained.

In just a couple of generations these beautiful craft progressed from status symbols to instruments of war to complete extinction; Steam Yachts at War tells this compelling story.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• 1 The Rise of the Steam Yacht
• 2 Steam Yachts and the Hispano-American War
• 3 Let Slip the Yachts of War
• 4 Steam Yachts on Patrol
• 5 Yachts and Men
• 6 Royal Navy Yacht Losses
• 7 America Joins the War
• 8 US Yachts in French and Mediterranean Waters
• 9 Naval Steam Yachts Around the World
• 10 Service Aboard
• 11 After the Armistice
  • Envoi
  • Author’s Notes
• Appendices
  • 1 A Typical Crew Agreement
  • 2 RN Armed Yachts Sunk During the First World War and Immediately Afterwards
  • 3 USN Yachts Serving in French Coastal and Mediterranean Waters, 1917–18
  • 4 Royal Navy Armed Yachts Receiving Naval Salvage and Prize Money
  • 5 Numbers of Steam Yachts in 1913
  • 6 G L Watson Steam Yachts on War Service, 1914–18
• The Plans
  • Carmen
  • Scorpion
  • Calumet
  • Maid of Honour
  • Speedy
  • Falise
  • North Star II/Venetia
  • Branwen
• Sources
• Bibliography