W. Laird Clowes

Sir William Laird Clowes (1 February 1856 – 14 August 1905) was a British journalist and historian whose principal work was The Royal Navy, A History from the Earliest Times to 1900, a text that is still in print. He also wrote numerous technical pieces on naval technology and strategy and was also noted for his articles concerning racial politics in the Southern United States. Despite having trained as a lawyer, Clowes had always preferred literature and writing, publishing his first work in 1876 and becoming a full-time journalist in 1879. For the services rendered in his career, Clowes was knighted, awarded the gold medal of the United States Naval Institute and given a civil list pension. He died in Sussex in 1905 after years of ill health.

Life

Born in 1856 in Hampstead, Clowes was educated at Aldenham School and studied law at King's College London and Lincoln's Inn. In 1876 his first work, a poetic Egyptian love story named Meroë was published and in 1879 he left the law to become a journalist, training outside London but returning in 1882 with his new wife Ethel Mary Louise. Clowes first job was with the Army and Navy Gazette, at which he rapidly learned about the British military, in particular the Royal Navy. Writing under the pseudonym Nauticus, Clowes covered the Royal Navy's manoeuvres in home waters for several newspapers and became an established authority on naval tactics and technology, publishing articles on gunnery, torpedoes and other naval issues of the time. An article written in 1893 has been credited with affecting the naval estimates of that year, the standard by which the relative power of navies was assessed. His 1894 novel, The Captain of the Mary Rose described a fictional modern naval war between Britain and France.