I'm still working on a massive scholarly work on the Royal Navy, about 88 pages to go, but am listening to Ben Rhodes "After the Fall," about geopolitics, with my wife, as an audio book. After centuries of sail, I'm finally up to submarines with the Royal Navy. On a trip to New England in the eighties, we stayed at a B&B run by a woman and her retired Royal Navy husband who, when I mentioned I'd be in the U.S. Navy, snorted with scorn, in a supposedly humorous way. Of course, the English Navy is entirely career sailors, whereas the Navy I was in was largely people doing their hitch of military service. The Brits are snappy and professional, and I admired their establishment at what was then the British Crown Colony at Hong Kong. But having worked aboard a minesweeper in operations with aircraft carriers, hospital ships, destroyers, oilers, et. al., the U.S. Navy of my era was formidable. We have fewer ships now, but much high tech; we probably need quite a few more.