Published Nov 11th, 2026

‘A stirring, surprising and unexpected chronicle of a facet of the war so many forget.’ Stephen E. Andrews, author of 100 Must-Read Books for Men

Published by Porto Press in November 2026, Forgotten Ships – The Second World War in Trawlers and Tugs, tells the story of a peacetime yacht skipper who became the commander of some of the Royal Navy’s more obscure warships.

Alexander Litster, who had been at sea for over twenty years when the war began, underwent a dramatic and deadly first encounter with the enemy. Sent to Norway in the spring of 1940, his flotilla of trawlers endured a six-day battle with the Luftwaffe in a punishing encounter he was fortunate to survive. There followed a lengthy posting to storm-tossed Iceland from where Litster's ship hunted the enemy above the Arctic Circle and took part in an unlikely operation to disable coalmines in Spitzbergen. After two years in charge of naval trawlers, he transferred to the Rescue Tug Service and undertook rescue and salvage missions in the Caribbean, off Africa and in the Indian Ocean before embarking on one of the longest towing operations of the war.

Balanced against his family’s struggles on the Home Front and a lengthy tussle with naval bureaucracy, Litster’s story is unusual not just because of the ships he served on, but of his varied and far-flung postings. Forgotten Ships is more than simply a wartime biography, however, but reveals the little-told history and role of naval trawlers and tugs whilst reporting on operations which rarely, if ever, receive any coverage. The book also features the author's journey to see the remains of one of his grandfather's ships lost in action. Using private and official sources and photographs – many published here for the first time – this is the war as seen from the decks of these frequently overlooked vessels.