Before William Stanley Lambert became a cadet in 1883, he had already sailed 44,890 miles round the world in a childhood voyage that took him two years to complete. He returned to England determined to pursue a career in the Royal Navy.His letters home from the service, assiduously compiled by A. B. Demaus, record the experience of a capable, ambitious cadet during a time of rapid technological change and relative peace. The Navy s task of protecting the empire s vast assets had not been interrupted by a major war since Nelson s day. Lambert s sea service, virtually all of which was overseas, involved time in two corvettes, an ironclad central battery ship, two cruisers, and a battleship. In his later career, he became the commanding officer of one of the earliest destroyers. He vividly describes the shipboard life and runs ashore in an account laced with a splendidly dry sense of humor a familiar feature of naval officers of his rank until at least the 1940s.The march of technology and political change since Lambert s time have made this period of Victorian naval history remote, but Letters from HMS Britannia makes the concerns of the imperial subject relevant once more.