DrHoward Fuller

A Reader in War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, Dr Howard Fuller completed his BA in History at the Ohio State University, and his MA and then PhD in War Studies at King’s College, London.

Since 2001, Dr. Fuller has lectured in America, Britain, Europe, and the Baltic States on aspects of maritime and naval power from the early 19th to 20th centuries, and has taught additional history courses online for University of Maryland University College.

In 2002-3 he was the Rear Admiral John D. Hayes Fellow in U.S. Naval History through the U.S. Naval Historical Center (now Naval History and Heritage Command) in Washington, D.C.; he has also been a West Point Fellow in Military History, Caird Research Fellow, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Dr. Fuller is a frequent contributor to conferences and journals on both sides of the Atlantic, Editor for the International Journal of Naval History, and a Managing Editor for the British Journal of Military History. 

His first book, Clad in Iron: The American Civil War and the Challenge of British Naval Power (2007, Greenwood Press, reprinted in 2010 by Naval Institute Press), was runner-up for the 2008 John Lyman Book Award in US Naval History; followed by the critically-acclaimed Empire, Technology and Seapower: Royal Navy Crisis in the Age of Palmerston (Routledge, 2013); and most recently, Turret vs. Broadside: An Anatomy of British Naval Prestige, Revolution and Disaster, 1860-1870 (2020), for Helion & Company, as part of its Wolverhampton Military Studies Series.

Dr. Fuller is currently completing an edited collection of critical essays for Naval Institute Press, The Real Pax Britannica: The Royal Navy Deterred and the Decline of Gunboat Diplomacy; followed by The Lion at Bay: Britain's Baltic Campaign of 1919 and the Fate of the Russian Civil War (a research monograph also contracted with Helion & Company as part of its Wolverhampton Military Studies Series); and The Altar of Poseidon: Britain’s Maritime World Order and the Struggle to Contain Russia and America in the Age of Steam (a major international historical study, contracted with Johns Hopkins University Press). 

His chapter on ‘U.S. Geostrategic Deterrence and A2/AD at work in the American Civil War, 1861-1865’, recently featured in the Marine Corps University Press volume On Contested Shores: The Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warfare, Volume Two (2024); and his most recent article, ' "The whole history of this ill-fated vessel": HMS Captain, the American Civil War, and the Mid-Victorian Struggle for Naval Superiority', headlines the latest issue of the International Journal of Naval History, Vol. 18, Issue 1 (March 2025).

Since 2021 Dr. Fuller has also been the founder and project manager of the University's 'Find the Captain' Project (https://findthecaptain.co.uk):

This hopes to locate the wreck of HMS Captain--an experimental turret-armed ironclad considered to be the most powerful seagoing warship in the world in her day.  On 7 September 1870, the vessel capsized off Cape Finisterre, Spain, taking down nearly the entire crew of 500 men as well as the Captain's designer. Her loss was a national catastrophe like none other, and the worst loss suffered by the Royal Navy throughout the nineteenth century.