{"id":3332,"date":"2025-03-14T17:07:24","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T17:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=3332"},"modified":"2025-03-14T17:07:24","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T17:07:24","slug":"wartime-representations-of-the-royal-navy-submarine-service-in-the-british-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=3332","title":{"rendered":"Wartime representations of the Royal Navy submarine service in the British press"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer and Course Lead for the MA Naval, Maritime and Coastal History, has recently published an article<\/a>, co-written with one of the MA\u2019s alumni students, Martin Backhouse, in the journal War in History. <\/em><\/p>\n

The article, \u2018Un-silencing \u201cThe Most Silent Section of \u2018The Silent Service\u2019\u2019\u2019: The Portrayal of Royal Navy Submarines and Submariners in the Illustrated London News, 1939-1945\u2019, examines the portrayal of Royal Navy submarines and their crews in the world\u2019s first weekly illustrated newspaper, the Illustrated London News<\/em>, during the Second World War. It argues that the newspaper depicted Britain as having a technologically advanced and potent submarine service, whose personnel were part of an elite force of men.<\/p>\n

\"Four<\/a>

\u2018Life in a Submarine: Men of the Royal Navy Whose Gallant Work is an Outstanding Feature of the War\u2019, Illustrated London New<\/em>s, 27 June 1942. Used with the permission of the Mary Evans Picture Library.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Significantly, the Illustrated London News<\/em> suggested to its readership that Britain had a distinct advantage over its enemies in submarine warfare, and was thus capable of winning the war. In that sense, while the messages provided in the newspaper performed an instructive role by educating and informing the British public about the service\u2019s wartime conduct, they could have also served a much greater role in helping to boost civilian morale at a time when the country was engaged in a battle for national survival. In that way, the newspaper\u2019s coverage could generate not only pride, but also confidence, in Britain\u2019s submarine warfare capabilities.<\/p>\n

The Illustrated London News<\/em> thus followed a tradition of using popular media publications to inform the British public of the submarine service\u2019s role in wartime. However, in keeping with the \u2018People\u2019s War\u2019 ethos of the Second World War, greater attention was paid to the service\u2019s personnel (see Image 1). Both submarine and submariner were thus adopted as ideal subjects for popular media representation to help bolster the war effort. In short, by un-silencing \u2018the most silent section of the \u201csilent service\u201d\u2019, the Illustrated London News <\/em>helped to reinforce the status of the submarine service and its personnel at a crucial time in both the Royal Navy\u2019s and country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer and Course Lead for the MA Naval, Maritime and Coastal History, has recently published an article, co-written with one of the MA\u2019s alumni students, Martin Backhouse, in the journal War in History. The article, \u2018Un-silencing \u201cThe Most Silent Section of \u2018The Silent Service\u2019\u2019\u2019: The Portrayal of Royal Navy Submarines and Submariners in the Illustrated London News, 1939-1945\u2019, examines the portrayal of Royal Navy submarines and their crews in the world\u2019s first weekly illustrated newspaper, the Illustrated London News, during the Second World War. It argues that the newspaper depicted Britain as having a technologically advanced and potent submarine service, whose personnel were part of an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,4,1],"tags":[822,377,742,61,821,98],"class_list":["post-3332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new_publications","category-research-in-focus","category-uncategorized","tag-illustrated-london-news","tag-naval-history","tag-press","tag-second-world-war","tag-submarines","tag-twentieth-century"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p91PlX-RK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3332"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3336,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3332\/revisions\/3336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}