Click here for a free preview of the Prologue of my second Total War novel, and witness the birth of the man who would meet the army of Rome in the greatest battle the world had ever seen ...
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Journal
Diving on the wreck of the Charles P. Minch (1898), Tobermory, Canada
These pictures show my daughter in August 2014 on the wreck of the Charles P. Minch, a wooden schooner that went down in 1898 …
Read MoreBlending fact with fiction: David Gibbins on wreck diving
Clan Macnair in the Mersey off Liverpool, photographed before the war.
SS Clan Macnair, convoy SL-74 and the sinking of the Bismarck, May 1941: Captain Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins
When the German battleship Bismarck put to sea on 19 May 1941 on her one and only offensive mission, ‘Operation Rheinubung’, she carried a boosted complement of sailors to provide prize crews for the many Allied merchant ships she was expected to capture. The naval action that followed, the most momentous of the war against Nazi Germany, is remembered for the relentless determination of the Royal Navy to pursue and sink Bismarck at whatever cost ...
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THE SWORD OF ATTILA: Hun Blitzkrieg
M.V. Empire Elaine and Operation Bullfrog, the cancelled 1944 seaborne assault on Burma: Captain Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins
This is my fourth blog on the British assault ship Empire Elaine and my grandfather’s experience as her Second Officer under Combined Operations, the British naval command responsible for seaborne landings during the Second World War. Empire Elaine had been designed for the Ministry of War Transport (M/T) as an L.S.C. (Landing Ship Carrier), one of few heavy-lift ships purpose-built to carry L.C.M.s (Landing Craft Mechanised). Despite her military role, the crew of Empire Elaine ...
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Audiobooks: the complete series, ATLANTIS to PHARAOH
Here's the complete series of CD Audiobooks of my novels from Atlantis to Pharaoh, read by James Langton. All are available from Amazon.com.
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MV Empire Elaine, convoy KMS 18B and Operation Husky, 10 July 1943
This blog, revised on 21 January 2024, is one of several detailing the experiences of my grandfather, Captain Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins, while he was Second Officer of the British assault ship MV Empire Elaine between November 1942 and November 1944 …
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The assault ship Empire Elaine on the Cyde in 1943 during her refit in preparation for Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily in July of that year.
M.V. Empire Elaine and Operation Dragoon, 15 August 1944: Captain Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins
'Operation Dragoon' was the codename for the Allied landings in the south of France on 15 August 1944, a massive naval and airborne assault that served as the counterpart to the Normandy landings a little over two months earlier. The assault was primarily a US operation, with most of the troops landed around Cavalaire Bay being from three US divisions, but many of the assault and supply ships and their escorts were British ...
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Video: a dive on the wreck of the SS Grip (1897), Cornwall, England
PYRAMID: free preview of the Prologue
The extraordinary wartime voyage of M.V. Empire Elaine, 1943-4: Captain Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins
The official history of the Clan Line during the Second World War, In Danger’s Hour by Gordon Holman (Hodder and Stoughton, 1948), contains many accounts of courage and loss among the Merchant Navy crews who provided a lifeline for Britain as well as support for Allied military operations in every theatre of the war. We are used to images of ships on Atlantic convoys, their crews enduring the constant threat of U-boat attack, but an oft-overlooked role of merchant seamen was the huge part they played in seaborne assaults and the dangers they faced there as well. Just what this involved is shown in the remarkable voyage of one of these ships ...
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ATLANTIS: over a million copies sold
DESTROY CARTHAGE: UK paperback publication
The UK paperback publication of the first Total War Rome novel, DESTROY CARTHAGE.
PYRAMID: an excerpt from the new novel
FOUND! Lost city of Atlantis
This two-page feature by Marcus Dunk on my first novel Atlantis appeared in The Daily Express on 23 July 2005. Since then Atlantis has sold well over a million copies and been published in thirty languages.
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DESTROY CARTHAGE: the UK paperback cover
Here's the brilliant new cover for the UK paperback edition of Destroy Carthage, published by Macmillan on 14 April.
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Free giveaway offer: Pharaoh postcard and Destroy Carthage sampler
David Gibbins talks about a sword gauntlet in his novel The Tiger Warrior: Colonel Walter Andrew Gale, Royal Engineers
Murder in Jhansi, 1915: Major Marmaduke Henry Littledale Gale, 8th (Indian) Cavalry
A few posts back I wrote of the First World War death of one of my great-great uncles in France in 1914. Another death on the other side of my family is recounted in the press release opposite, from July 1915. Two Muslim sowars – cavalry troopers – went on a murderous rampage in Jhansi in central India and killed four of their British officers, including my grandfather’s first cou sin Marmaduke Gale. Their regiment, the 8th Cavalry, had been kept in India for internal security duties ...
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