I’m a 38 year old motorcycle salesman who has spent over a decade systematically studying the Royal Navy from the entry of John Arbuthnot Fisher, first Baron Fisher, as a naval cadet in 1854 up to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. My focus has tended to be on the officers of the Military Branch of the Navy, to which end I have accumulated well over 4,000 Royal Navy service records, consulted dozens of collections of papers at archives, and have copies of nearly every naval memoir or biography written between 1850 and 1950.
My interest in naval history was rekindled through the efforts of Tony Lovell, who founded the online resource The Dreadnought Project, a world-class resource for naval history which I now have the honour of co-editing. My contributions centre mainly on personnel and Admiralty administration, but the site’s main strength lies in its detailed history of British fire control apparatus of the First World War. I have also had work published in peer-reviewed journals, and have been acknowledged in a number of publications (for which, see the Publications page). On the strength of this contribution to the historiography I was elected an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in February 2024. Also that month I became one of the two inaugural recipients of the Colin Bell Award from Churchill College, Cambridge.
On occasion I have given my expertise, such as it is, to production companies and other historians, and am always happy to assist both. If you are in the former category, see Research page. I can be reached at simon AT dreadnoughtproject.org.
I travel extensively both for work and research, and can regularly be found in archives up and down the length of the United Kingdom or abroad. For reasons unknown I have a relatively large following on 𝕏/Twitter under the handle @SimonHarley. The 𝕏/Twitter account of the Dreadnought Project is at @NavyHistorian.
If you feel like donating to the cause: https://paypal.me/navyhistorian.
Patreon: https://patreon.com/navalhistorian
A Blog on the Ocean Wave 
Can you provide an email for Tony Lowell, I am trying to find out when RN first conducted experiments in using search lights for Morse code signalling. Thanks. Tom Wildenberg, Tucson, AZ
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Hi Tom, sorry for the delay, you can contact him at tone ATSIGN dreadnoughtproject DOT org
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