The autobiography follows Sir Edward Ashmore from the 1939 Tsingtao confrontation through an unusually varied naval career. Its vivid account preserves what Ashmore saw and believed at the time. Contemporary reports record more ships training their guns on the British vessel than Ashmore personally observed in the scene he later remembered. Memoirs and official records therefore answer different questions and should be read together rather than used uncritically.
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Edward Ashmore’s memoir and checking recollection
Battle and the Breeze offers an extraordinary naval career while also showing why memoirs should be checked against contemporary records.