The Navy Chiefs: Australia’s Naval Leaders, 1911–1997
The Navy Chiefs
The Navy Chiefs: Australia's Naval Leaders, 1911-1997
Edited by James Goldrick and Alastair Cooper
Details: Allen & Unwin, published 2024
Format: 576 pages hardback
The Navy Chiefs offers a fascinating new look at the history of the Royal Australian Navy. The book originated with a request from the then Chief of Navy, Vice-Admiral Tim Barrett, for a study of the professional heads of the Royal Australian Navy to mirror similar work on the heads of the Royal Navy and United States Navy. From this request a substantial book has developed, initially under the eye of the late Rear-Admiral James Goldrick, and brought to publication by Captain Alastair Cooper. The Navy Chiefs seeks to do two things – to provide an account of the 24 men who led the RAN between 1911 and 1997,
and to shed light on what that role actually entails.
The result is a fascinating product. The stories of some of these men, including William Creswell and John Collins, will be well known to many readers of Wartime. By contrast, other names have largely disappeared from view and the stories will be new to most students of Australian military history. The format of the book, allocating a chapter to each of the men who served as Chief of the Naval Staff, enforces this even spread of attention. An important result is that the book focuses heavily on the activities of the RAN in peacetime, unlike much of the previous scholarship.
The Navy Chiefs also offers fascinating insight into the challenges of leading a military service, most notably the need to bridge both the military and the political worlds.
The editors have generally done a good job in keeping the different authors in this edited collection focused and maintaining clear themes running through the volume. The book is also beautifully produced. Overall, this is a really important new contribution to the scholarship on the Royal Australian Navy and Australian defence policy. It deserves a place on the bookshelves of anyone interested in Australian military history.
