70s-80s novel about a naval fleet in a post-nuclear war world

Question

It was back in the late 70s, maybe more likely 80s I think, that I read this book.

The story began in Germany as I recall on the northern coast, set in the late 1900s or early 2000s. It was after a nuclear war. The main character was a sailor on a destroyer. The boilers were fired with wood because oil was not available. The ship sailed to the Atlantic to join a fleet consisting of old WW2 and Cold War ships. One was a carrier operating a motley collection of piston planes. Another was an Iowa-class battleship taken out of mothballs or memorial display.

The fleet sailed for reasons I cannot remember to Asia where it engaged another fleet, maybe off Thailand. During the battle, the battleship fired a nuclear shell into the midst of the melee, sinking vessels on both sides (very unrealistic in that those shells were dismantled in the early 60s). The main character is washed up on shore and the story ends.

Answer 1

This sounds very much like "The Heirs of Babylon" by Glen Cook, an extremely bleak novel from 1972.

Set in 2193, it deals with a post-nuclear war world. The protagonist, Kurt, lives in a quasi-medieval society in Germany. Every generation a call goes out for "The Meeting", where the surviving city states pool their resources to cobble together a fleet to fight the final battle against the enemy. Kurt's city prepares the Jäger, a refitted WW2 American battleship. Coal is by now so scarce that the ship's boilers are adpted to be wood-burning.

The fleet gathers at Gibraltar, and then makes its way to the Pacific, where as the OP recalls, an atomic shell ("The ultimate horror, the bleak black wicked thing of such hated history") is fired. A nice review is available here.