Years of Endurance: Life Aboard the Battlecruiser Tiger 1914-16 by John R. Muir
This memoir is perhaps one of the most immediate and vivid recollections of life in a Royal Navy battlecruiser to come out of World War I. John Muir, a surgeon, was the senior medical officer aboard HMS Tiger from her commissioning in October 1914 until his departure in the autumn of 1916 when she was then undergoing repairs at Rosyth to the damage incurred at the battle of Jutland in June that year. Vivid, authoritative, empathetic and beautifully written, this memoir takes the reader right to the center of the action in the first years of the war. But more than a narrative of events, his story is also one about the officers and men who were his comrades in those years; about their qualities, their anxieties and the emotional dimension of their experiences. His insights are those of a man trained to understand the human heart, and they bring vividly to life a generation of men who fought at sea more than one hundred years ago. This is a spellbinding and gripping memoir, brought to a new audience in a handsome collectors' edition for the first time since its publication in 1936.