The Night Hunters - Paperback

The Night Hunters: A true story of a stoker’s war at sea

Robert M Stoddart

When the sun went down, the small boats went out.

In July 1940, twenty-year-old William Stoddart left the tenement streets of Gorgie in Edinburgh and joined the Royal Navy. He became a stoker in Coastal Forces, the small, fast boats that went out at night. Deep in the engine rooms of motor launches and motor gun boats, he kept the engines running while his crews hunted enemy ships across the North Sea and the English Channel.

William served on five boats. He was there on the night commandos were landed on an enemy-held island, and he was out at sea on D-Day. His war took him all the way to Ceylon and Malaya, where he was there when Singapore was taken back in 1945.

His grandson, Robert M Stoddart, has rebuilt William’s war from his service record, Admiralty files, wartime accounts and family memories. The result is a true story full of action, told for young readers.

Inside this paperback:

• A true wartime story for readers aged 8–14
• Original family photographs and illustrations
• QR codes linking to real archive film from the Imperial War Museums
• Fact files, a glossary, a ranks guide, profiles of the boats and officers, and a summary of William’s confirmed missions
• A clear guide to which parts of the story are documented fact and which are reconstructed

Endorsed by the Coastal Forces Heritage Trust, with a foreword by Lieutenant Graham Allison, Royal Navy (Retd).

50% of the author’s profit from every copy goes to the Coastal Forces Heritage Trust, helping keep the stories of these men alive.