Chesney, Margaret

Indifference to the Navy? Security, identity and naval power 1870–84

“…Chesney managed to do both, with much of the fleet scattered around imperial possessions and that which was in home waters destroyed by 'fatal engines which sent our ships, one after another, to the bottom'. 120 In establishing a new genre of fiction, 121 Chesney clearly linked into pre-existing fears of invasion, only now these fears were presented as a ghastly insight into what the future might hold. With the May 1871 issue of Blackwood's reprinted six times and the story when re-issued as a six-penny pamphlet selling 110,000 copies by July, 122 it is clear that Chesney hit a nerve -or just produced a romping read.…”