To a large extent the history of naval, and indeed military, intelligence has been written within national bounds. The reasons for this are clear though complex: documentation has often been restricted to inquirers, governments have been keen to monopolize use of their own files, and allies have often been mistrusted. To some degree the end of the cold war has opened the doors to the inquisitive, and from time to time an ally has made public a set of documents that a state would prefer to be kept shut to view. The state of affairs that led to the Anglo-American naval cooperation in 1917 and then again to that which developed after 1939 has hitherto been seen through individual national lenses. This book seeks to enlarge the scope of our historical understanding about these matters by confronting, head-on, the interrelationship of the United Kingdom and the United States in naval intelligence. The subject is an abundant challenge for a scholar, who must be conversant with the individual histories. Then the task is to show how the two blend together. It is in the latter matter that this book is on surer ground, and it is that area of interest that we find the biggest contribution.

The history of British naval intelligence dates from the late 1880s when the Admiralty wanted to know more about the state of affairs in the Balkans—and how this would relate to fleet needs and foreign policy direction there (for the Admiralty could advise on foreign policy, though could not dictate it). From that time forward, gathering details was the first desideratum, the next being analysis of same. The first was easiest, the second difficult and, often, uninfluential. Phyllis Soybel has a good review of the evolution of British naval intelligence in the First World War, where the star in the piece is Reginald “Blinker” Hall. There were some most unusual creatures among those directing the war at sea in London, as Walter Page, the U.S. ambassador, told President Woodrow Wilson in 1916; Hall was one of them. The evolution of British naval intelligence during this war was thwarted by staff officers frequently failing to pass on information to fleet commanders or to warn the several of them who might already be at sea on a certain, critical operation that such information ought to be shared. The biggest problem the Admiralty faced in 1917 was the U-boat peril responsible for the rising statistics of British merchant tonnage sinking. The U.S. Navy was soon involved once Woodrow Wilson gave an indication of support for a failing United Kingdom, and Rear-Admiral William Sims, USN, was dispatched to London to consult and advise. Admiral William Benson, commanding the U.S. Atlantic fleet, was no less determined to aid the British, and the differences between the two admirals have been wildly overplayed thanks to the misinformation of publicists Winston Churchill (the all-American one) and Arthur Pollen. The U.S. naval officers won a seat at the table of planning, and a reluctant Admiralty came to appreciate even more as time went on the valuable material contributions of the United States to the chances of success. Britannia was naturally reluctant to accommodate Columbia in these things, but in the end the necessary relationship was forged. There is useful comment here about Naval Intelligence Department (UK) and the Office of Naval Intelligence (U.S.). A list of abbreviations helps to follow the various offices and agencies in this web of data and analysis.

If the Americans had forced the hands of the British in 1917, they had to face some of their own music after 1939, for it seems that it was the British through their naval officers resident in Washington, DC, who had to keep up the pressure with a reluctant U.S. government. After the United States went to war, the British had to remind them about convoys and “lights out” along “torpedo alley,” the coastwise traffic that brought Gulf oil north to the American ports, then on to Canada or across to the British Isles. Captain George Creasy, head of British antisubmarine warfare division of the Admiralty, had this time to give the Americans advice. He did so handsomely, effectively. Indeed this was part of a larger mission headed up by Admiral John Godfrey, the director of Naval Intelligence. Like Hall and his superiors in the First World War, Godfrey was clearly a powerful force in the shaping of the intelligence alliance—and equally blunt, as Sims had been, about this necessity. At the end of this account we have good evidence of good working relationships, but with the Americans, personality often deflected the true state of policy. Admiral Harold Stark was keen on the relationship, Admiral Ernest King less so. The degree of difference may be mighty, and certainly biographers have played on this theme to their profit.

The author is not aware, or at least does not cite, the remarkable book by Donald McLachlan, Room 39: Naval Intelligence in Action (London, 1968), an insider's account of how naval intelligence worked in London. There are many references to U.S. policy and allied cooperation. McLachlan has the advantage as an insider, naturally, looking out. Soybel would have benefited from a reading of McLachlan, which, in addition to Patrick Beesly's three books, on “Blinker” Hall's Room 40, Godfrey, and British naval intelligence in the Second World War, has opened our eyes to what went on at the Admiralty. David Ramsay is completing a life of Hall that will fill many blanks. Soybel has combed many remarkable files in pursuit of the difficulties and successes of the alliance in naval intelligence. It will be interesting to see what sort of intelligence history of the Allies can be developed in years ahead, with regard to the cold war, the immediate post–cold war era, and such episodes as the war to liberate Kuwait and the war to topple Saddam Hussein. A bright future awaits such historians willing to do research on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and then to combine and analyze the results. This book is a good start toward that end.