Set up in August 1905, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary – unofficial motto: Ready for Anything – was originally a logistic support organization, Admiralty-owned but run on civilian lines, comprising a miscellaneous and very unglamorous collection of colliers, store ships and harbor craft. This book charts its rise in fleet strength, capability and importance, through two world wars and a technical revolution, until the time when naval operations became simply impossible without it.
Its earliest tasks were mainly fr…
