He mainly wrote about early modern warship technology and used his linguistic skills to write books and essays based on the literature from several countries.

During World War I, he returned to serve as a lieutenant and lieutenant-commander, spending a portion of his service time in motor launches at Gibraltar.

[1] Anderson's interest in sailing ships and their rigging led him to become one of the founder members of the Society for Nautical Research in 1910.

In 1912, when the Society's journal, the Mariner's Mirror, ran into initial problems of finding material suitable to publish in a timely manner, Anderson was one of six men on the editorial committee who assumed the joint editorship from its first editor.

With Perrin's sudden death in 1931–32, Anderson took over the editorship briefly until the new Admiralty Librarian David Bonner-Smith took up the editorial reins.

At this point, Anderson made it known that he was willing to bequeath his collection of ship models, naval signal books, manuscripts, and Willem van de Velde drawings, along with an endowment of £50,000.

[citation needed] Anderson edited several volumes for the Southampton Records Society in the 1920s and served as Joint Hon.

[citation needed] Anderson died at the age of 93 on 2 October 1976, while living at 9 Grove Place, Lymington, Hampshire.

Anderson's memorial, Naish wrote, "is in the galleries and library of the Museum, well stocked with the books and ship models he loved so well and had in many cases donated.

[14][15] In addition to the following books, Anderson contributed several articles to the English Historical Review and some thirty to the Mariner's Mirror,[16] as well as an edited selection in the Navy Record's Society's Naval Miscellany, vol.