Ships and Soldiers
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€23.99
Many books about Guernsey history, published from the 1750's on, briefly summarized the history of Alderney and the other islands in the Bailiwick in small sections, perhaps 25-50 pages long,at the end, and most of the limited number of published books purely about Alderney concern specific subjects, such as the Victorian Fortifications, or periods, such as World War II. This book is an attempt to document the history of the two most important things about Alderney; the need of the English Crown to defend and protect its personal possession of the Channel Islands since the Norman Conquest of Britain, against intrusion by the French; and the Sea;-the only means of access to the islands until the 20th Century, limiting the amount of commercial activity or later, of tourism, possible. Over the last millennium, these two factors have given rise to periods of alternating prosperity and poverty for the islanders depending on the presence or absence of British garrisons and the construction of necessary defence works and the activity of the Island's inhabitants in privateering, licensed by the Crown, or smuggling and the British Government's attempts to prevent it.
At a time when Brian Bonnard's late wife, a retired HMI, was Honorary Curator of the Alderney Museum, he discovered in an old chest full of newspapers an 8-page sheepskin parchment bound with pink ribbon and written in Latin which had never been recorded in the Museum Accession Book. This is probably a 17th century copy of the 1560 charter of Queen Elizabeth 1st granting the Fief of Alderney to George Chamberlain as a reward for evicting a force of French pirates occupying the island. This started Brian researching and writing a full history of the island .