First Blood. Australia's First Great Sea Battle

Cover Type: Softcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Jacket Condition: None Issued
Publisher: Media 21 Publishing P/L
Publisher Place: Double Bay, Sydney
Publisher Year: 2009
Edition: First Edition

Description: 296 pages. Ex-Library. Book is in Very good condition throughout. On November 9, 1914, HMAS Sydney And SMS Emden Dueled To The Death In Australia's First Great Sea Battle.

Publishers Description: In the first months of World War I, the German cruiser SMS Emden cut a swathe through Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean. Its masterful and gallant captain Karl Friedrich Max von Muller and his colourful officers and crew struck hard and fast, bombing Madras and Penang, and ambushing a score of cargo ships. Meanwhile, HMAS Sydney, a new Australian cruiser, swift and bristling with powerful weapons and skippered by the redoubtable Captain John C.T. Glossop was escorting the First Australian and New Zealand Infantry Force to Egypt and the battlefields of Europe. When word came that Emden had attacked a strategically-vital wireless station in the Cocos Islands, 2750 kilometres north-west of Perth, Sydney was detached from the convoy. Her orders: seek and destroy the German fighting ship. In the ferocious sea battle that ensued, Sydney and Emden engaged each other, now advancing, now retreating amid the idyllic tropical isles, until one ship was victorious and the other was scuttled and ablaze. First Blood takes readers into the very cauldron of war at sea. Using new and detailed research and, poignantly, the diaries and official reports of the seamen themselves, it is a saga rich in heroism, hardship, chivalry, sacrifice and respect between captains, officers and men forged in murderous conflict.

ISBN: 9781876624057