ABSTRACT
John Beeler provides a detailed account of how the idea of the merchant fleet being an armed auxiliary force, able to support the regular navy in times of emergency in areas of commerce raiding and patrolling, was a controversial issue in a time of careful defence spending. Budgets versus defence needs and concerns over building too many ships during periods of technological change are familiar themes to most naval officers today, as is the cry for multipurpose or off-the-shelf solutions in all western navies. Beeler provides convincing evidence that this is not a new problem for the Royal Navy, nor is it simply a naval issue. How similar is the strategic concept of using fast merchant ships as commerce raiders in the nineteenth century to the use of modern container vessels as helicopter platforms in the late twentieth?
