The Armed Merchant Cruiser—the passenger liner or fast cargo ship equipped with a few light guns and sent out to protect the trade routes—was a creature of necessity, the desperate answer to a shortage of real warships. In both World Wars they were the "Cinderellas" of the fleet, often ignored or forgotten until disaster struck.
Yet their story is one of the most heroic in naval history. Ships like the Rawalpindi and the Jervis Bay, which sacrificed themselves against overwhelming odds to save their convoys, have become legendary. Others, like the Carmania, fought classic single-ship duels with their German counterparts.
Kenneth Poolman, whose father served in the AMC Salopian, tells the whole dramatic story of these ships and the men who sailed in them. He traces their history from the early days of the nineteenth century, through the grim battles of 1914–18 and 1939–45, to their final appearances in the Falklands conflict.
It is a record of courage and endurance against the sea and the enemy, a tribute to the "liners in grey" and the merchant seamen and Reservists who fought them.