Salt Horse: Memoir of a Maverick Admiral

Claude Cumberledge (ed. Robin Knight)

Whittles

£18.99

Claude Cumberledge was born in 1877 and entered the Royal Naval College Dartmouth aged 12. He started as a midshipman in sail, then moved to the developing fast torpedo boats and destroyers. His account of his twenty-two years of service before WW1, then war service with the Australian Navy is racy and readable, tall tales from a vanished world. It includes a fine description of an expedition up the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea.

Retired in 1922 he spent most of the rest of his life afloat, mainly in the Mediterranean. Then in 1938, with a second wife and new young family, he wrote this memoir which has been skilfully edited for publication by Robin Knight.