Ordered by the Royal Navy in 1941, the destroyers of the 5th Emergency Flotilla became known as S-class and served as fleet and convoy escorts in World War II. In the last months of the war, three were transferred to the Royal Netherlands Navy for service in the Far East. HMS Serapis was renamed HNLMS Piet Hein and served in the Indonesian War of Independence and saw action in the Korean War. She was sold for scrap in 1962.

The image of the naval sailor is that of an enigmatic but compelling figure, a globe-trotting adventurer, swaggering and irresponsible in port but swift to flex the national muscle at sea and beyond. Appealing as this popular image may be, scant effort has been expended to reveal the truth behind the stereotype.

Thanks to Christopher McKee's groundbreaking work, it is now possible to hear from sailors themselves--in this case, those who served in Great Britain's Royal Navy during the first half of the twentieth century. McKee has scoured sailors' unpublished diaries, letters, memoirs, and oral interviews to uncover the lives and secret thoughts of British men of the lower deck. From working-class childhoods teetering on the edge of poverty to the hardships of finding civilian employment after leaving the navy; from sexual initiation in the brothels of Oran and Alexandria to the terror of battle, the former sailors speak with candor about all aspects of naval life: the harsh discipline and deep comradeship, the shipboard homoeroticism, the pleasures and temptations of world travel, and the responsibilities of marriage and family.

McKee has shaped the first authentic model of the naval enlisted experience, an account not crafted by officers or civilian reformers but deftly told in the sailors' own voices. The result is a poignant and complex portrait of lower-deck lives.

The ss 'Australis' was a well known ocean liner which entered service in 1940 as the
ss 'America' for the United States Lines. The ship was sold to the Greek Chandris Lines in 1964 and served until 1977 very succesfully on the route Western-Europe-Australia-New Zealand. Later the route became a full round-the-world-service. After her Australian period the liner sailed under the names of 'America' (for the third time), 'Italis', 'Noga', 'Alferdoss' and finally 'American Star'. In this volume of Liners the history of the great liner from when she was purchased by the Greek interest in 1964 until her sad wracking in January 1994.

Examination of the Creek War which integrates that struggle into the larger conflict that broke out in 1812 between Great Britain and the United States
 
Using American, British, and Spanish documents, many previously unknown, Frank Owsley’s study establishes the Creek War and the struggle to control the Gulf borderlands as integral parts of the War of 1812. The war between the United States and a large part of the Creek nation is usually studied as local or regional history. These documentary sources, however, show the larger picture. They show Spain to have been a major influence in the Creek War and indicate the extent to which the British were aiding the Indians and using them to redirect American troops. On the other hand, Andrew Jackson, in charge of the American forces on the Gulf Coast, emerged from the conflict as a first-rate military commander. His victories on the Gulf gave the West a leader and aided in shifting political power from the eastern seaboard to the South and West.
 
Owsley concludes that the victories in the Gulf region were of sufficient magnitude to justify the claim that the War of 1812 was not a draw but a decisive American victory and that had there been a general of Jackson's caliber on the northern frontier, the United States might have had a clear-cut victory there.
 
As a result of the war, the United States held its claim on Louisiana, annexed the Mobile district, forced Spain out of Florida, and broke the power of the southern Indians, thus opening vast lands for settlement from the new nation on the eastern seaboard.