Richard Woodman grew up in a London suburb, an unusual place to conceive a passion for ships and the sea where opportunities for sea-training in post-war Britain were limited. However, sea-scouting led him to crew in the 1960s Sail-training Race between Oslo and Ostend and, shortly afterwards, having successfully completed an Outward Bound Course and still only 16, he signed indentures as a midshipman in Alfred Holt’s Blue Funnel and Glen Lines. Although mainly serving on the company’s Far East routes, he sailed in a vessel on their round-the-world service and, after gaining his Second Mate’s certificate, returned to the Holt fleet for a further two years as a watchkeeping officer.

Read more: People in Shipping - Richard Woodman

Much of the success of the Roman Empire was due to the fact that the Romans were very good at standardisation. The Roman inheritance is still very much with us today, our word mile is from the Latin ‘mille’ (a soldier’s thousand paces); inch comes from ‘uncia’; lb as the symbol for pound weight and £ in money from ‘libra’ and ton, with its variations of spelling, from ‘tunna’ meaning cask. Although slightly old-fashioned, the English word ‘tun’ still means a large barrel or cask.

Read more: Tons of Tonnes - The Story of Ships' Tonnage

When Barack Obama assumed the role of Commander in Chief of the United States he inherited a navy that had seen its share of sacrifices. The fleet has never quite achieved the desired aim of the Ronald Reagan era of a 600 strong fleet to combat the might of the Soviet Navy. When Communism failed in Russia, the US Navy shrank back to a more manageable size with subsequent President’s presiding over the dismantling of many famous navy bases and warships. Since 1989 the US Navy has been undergoing a transformation from a blue water navy, ready to combat Soviet warships and submarines in the North Atlantic, to a force focused on taking the war to the borders of enemies, the so called Littoral area between the shoreline and the deep oceans.

Read more: Obama's Navy