The History of Coast Artillery in the British Army

As any of my regular blog readers who have visited my YouTube channel will know, I have an interest in coastal defences. Toby Ewin - the noted naval wargame historian - recommended that I buy a copy of the reprint of Colonel K W Maurice-Jones' THE HISTORY OF COAST ARTILLERY IN THE BRITISH ARMY. I did so ... and I could not have asked for a more detailed history of British coastal defences.

The book is over three hundred pages and contains seventeen maps that show the location of the coastal defences built by Britain to defend the coasts of the British Empire. The book has a Foreword (written by General Sir Cameron Nicholson GCB, KBE, DSO, MC), Preface, Bibliography, List of Abbreviations, Introduction, and twenty-six Chapters.

The chapters deal with blocks of history as follows:

1. 1540 to 1603
2. 1603 to 1667
3. 1667 to 1716
4. 1716 to 1748
5. 1748 to 1763
6. 1763 to 1774
7. 1774 to 1783
8. 1774 to 1783 (concluded)
9. 1784 to 1793
10. 1793 to 1815
11. 1793 to 1815 (continued)
12. 1793 to 1815 (continued)
13. 1793 to 1815 (concluded)
14. 1815 to 1856
15. 1856 to 1914
16. 1856 to 1914 (continued)
17. 1856 to 1914 (concluded)
18. 1914 to 1918
19. 1914 to 1918 (concluded)
20. 1918 to 1939
21. 1918 to 1939 (concluded)
22. 1939 to 1945
23. 1939 to 1945 (continued)
24. 1939 to 1945 (continued)
25. 1939 to 1945 (concluded)
26. Conclusion

The book contains several charts and ORBATs that list the numbers and types of guns located at each coastal defence site at different times and a breakdown of the units manning them. This alone makes the book a very useful sources of information for anyone interested in Britain's coastal defences from 1540 until the abolition of the Coastal Defence branch of the Royal Artillery in 1957.

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THE HISTORY OF COAST ARTILLERY IN THE BRITISH ARMY was written by Colonel K W Maurice-Jones DSO and originally published in 1959 by the Royal Artillery Institution. It was republished in 2009 by Naval and Military Press in association with Firepower, the Royal Artillery Museum (ISBN 1 84574 031 9).