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NickJClark
13-11-2010, 22:07
Churchill's Pirates: The Royal Naval Patrol Service in World War II by Jon Sutherland and Diane Canwell - Publisher: Pen & Sword Aviation (30 Sep 2010)

A completely missed opportunity to write a revised history of the Royal Naval Patrol Service since 'Trawlers Go To War' by Lund & Ludlam (Foulsham 1971)
It's now nearly 40 years ago when since TGTW was first published and in that time much more in the way of documentary evidence from both British and German archives has been made freely available. This new book shows nothing new on the subject and for that reason I find it quite basic.
Quite often the book seems to lack some much needed in-depth detail especially on the important achievements of the RNPS including the 24 trawlers that were sent out to protect the east cost of the United States in 1942.
Worse still, there is NOTHING in the book that lists references, sources or acknowledgements in relation to any research. Indeed most of this material seems to be lifted from already familiar titles - you can spot them all in Sutherland's and Cranwell's rather short and limited bibliography, which incidentally is shortened further by the inclusion of three of their own titles!
Someone just repeating what's already been published and doing a little research on the Internet could have easily written this book
Once again the lack of acknowledgements and references is some what suspect.

Rob Hoole
13-12-2010, 17:52
Before considering the purchase of this book, please note that the entries in Appendix 3 (Selected RNPS Second World War Awards for Minesweeping) comprising 32 pages of data (13% of the book), have been copied and pasted directly from the table of 'WW II Awards for RN Minesweeping (http://www.mcdoa.org.uk/ww_ii_awards_for_rn_minesweeping_A.htm)' in the 'Branch History' section of the Minewarfare & Clearance Diving Officers' Association website (www.mcdoa.org.uk) of which I am the webmaster. The authors have simply changed the heading of my "REMARKS" column to read "NOTES". The evidence, supposedly protected by copyright, is freely available on the MCDOA website for all to see.

The source of this data is incorrectly shown in the book as "Royal Navy". In fact, it was gathered, tabulated and annotated by me during the course of many weeks trawling through the London Gazette and cross-referencing names, awards, dates and units of recipients at the Naval Historical Branch and RN Museum Library in Portsmouth. The authors made no effort to contact me (let alone ask my permission) to simply copy the results of my research and publish them in their book. I am not pleased and other researchers have informed me that they share my disatisfaction with the casual manner these authors have copied their material for profit.

jpfoynes
14-01-2012, 14:17
I can confirm that this book by Jon Sutherland and Diane Canwell consists in large part of material (photos, text, appendices) taken in bulk and without acknowledgment from other copyrighted sources.
The authors had just done the same with material from my book "Battle of the East Coast", and Michael J F Bowyer's "Air Raid!"
Sutherland and Canwell "write" (that is to say throw together from other people's work) one book every 3-4 weeks, not just on naval history, but science, business, sport, cooking, politics, business, aviation farming and fishing.
I have myself taken legal action against them, and would advise forum members neither to buy their books nor lend them material.

Julian Foynes