H. M. S. Surprise (Vol. Book 3) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels) Review

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(More customer reviews)In praising Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books I am on well-trodden ground. In a sense, it is superfluous to do so: so many people, of such varied and excellent taste, have praised these books to the skies that further lauds from the modest likes of me are hardly necessary. Still, I'm glad to add my words. These stories concern Jack Aubrey, a ship captain in the English Navy at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, and his great friend Stephen Maturin, an Irish-Catalan doctor and spy who in the first book joins Jack's crew as ship doctor.
As H. M. S. Surpries opens, political machinations cost Jack his prize money (earned in the previous book0, and Stephen's cover in Spain is blown. As a result, and also because Stephen is scheming to see his lover Diana again (who has been taken by her keeper Richard Canning to India), Jack takes command of the aged frigate H.M.S. Surprise, and is sent to Cambodia (stopping in India) to deliver the new British envoy to the Sultan of Kampong.
Thus the setup for a long, wonderful, account of the voyage to the Orient and back. The pleasures of this book are remarkably varied: high comedy, such as the famous drunken sloth incident; high adventure, as the men of the Surprise battle not only the South Atlantic at its fiercest, but also the French; and bitter disappointment and even tragedy, in Stephen's seesaw relationship with Diana, as well as Stephen's involvement with a young Indian girl.
The pleasures of this book, however, are not restricted to a fine plot. The ongoing development of the characters of Jack and Stephen, and of their complex and fully described friendship, is a major achievement. In addition, the many minor characters are fascinating: the envoy Mr. Stanhope, Stephen's Indian friend, the various ship's officers and men, other ship captains, and so on. And O'Brian's depiction of the building of an effective crew, the relationship of captain to officers to men, is another fascinating detail, and something he revisits from book to book, as Jack encounters different crews in different circumstances. Finally, O'Brian is a fine writer of prose, with a faintly old-fashioned style, well poised to evoke the atmosphere of the time of which he writes to readers of our time, and consistently quotable, in his dry fashion.
Jack and Stephen are heroic in certain aspects of their characters, but they are both multi-faceted characters, with terrible flaws and endearing crotchets in addition to their accomplishments. And they truly come across to this reader as characters of their time, and not 20th Century people cast back into the past. Even Stephen's very contemporary racial and religious attitudes are well-motivated by his background, and expressed in language which reeks wonderfully of his time: "Stuff. I have the greatest esteem for Jews, if anyone can speak of a heterogeneous great body of men in such a meaningless, illiberal way."
I recommend all these books highly. It was with great difficulty the first time through the series that I restrained myself, upon finishing each book, from immediately starting in on the next one.

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Nelson's Ships: A History of the Vessels in Which He Served, 1771-1805 Review

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(More customer reviews)I gave this book 5 stars because Amazon doesn't have a 6-star rating. "Nelson's Ships: A History of the Vessels In Which He Served, 1771-1805" is a strong contender for the top spot on my list of favorite nautical history reference books, and on my bookshelves stands a goodly number of competitors. Peter Goodwin, the Keep and Curator of HMS Visitor - surely a dream job for any Age of Fighting Sail enthusiast - has written several other naval history reference books. His "The Construction and Fitting of the English Man of War, 1650-1850" is a minutely detailed study of just how these marvels of contemporary technology were built. His contributions to the "Anatomy of the Ship" series seemingly make note of every timber, trennal, and bolt used to construct the vessels described. With "Nelson's Ships" I expected something of the same, a close study of Nelson's various vessels as physical artifacts, complex objects built of wood and iron and copper, rigged out with rope and sailcloth. But Peter Goodwin's new book is far, far more than that. In examining the vessels in which Nelson served, Goodwin has produced a remarkably comprehensive look at the Royal Navy itself during Nelson's era.
Twenty-five vessels ranging in size from the little armed brig Badger, Nelson's first command, to the huge first-rates HMS Victory and the captured Spanish ship-of-the-line San Josef are each awarded a lengthy chapter in Goodwin's book. Deck and hull plans are usually presented, along with enough illustrations so that the vessel described becomes real in the reader's eye. But, Goodwin's scope extends far beyond the physical fabric of these vessels. A history of each is presented from launch to ultimate fate, not only confined to the period when Nelson was aboard as midshipman, junior officer, captain, or admiral. Every commanding officer throughout a vessel's service is listed, usually together with the refit history of the ship, showing the frequent repairs and rebuilds which were an integral part of any wooden vessel's existence. Goodwin has drawn from the ships' logbooks a wealth of detail about life aboard each ship, experiences during battles and during peacetime. Punishment lists show, for example, that aboard Victory on August 4, 1804, John Brown, John Hind, Simon Moon, William Cobourne, and Edward Flynn received between 13 and 36 lashes for drunkenness, while John Wells got 48 for disobedience of orders and neglect of duty. We learn that on September 14, 1778, HMS Janus expended one puncheon and one hogshead of beer (or 126 gallons). We find that, among other things, HMS Vanguard received aboard on Thursday, August 4, 1808, 51 feet of 3-inch oak plank, 4000 ball cartridges for muskets, 339 fathoms of rope for signal halyards, and 46 thimbles for sewing. On January 1, 1779, Nelson wrote in the log of HMS Badger: "Moderate and clear Weather, received my Commission and superseded Captain Michael John Everitt in Command of Badger, went on board and read Ditto to the Ships Company. People employed occasionally." Through this kaleidoscopic recounting of ordinary (and sometimes extraordinary) experience, the ships and the officers and men aboard them are breathed into life.
Through this rich detail, Goodwin constructs a portrait of the Royal Navy, its ships, its duties, and its officers and men during the era when it rose to dominate the world's oceans. By concentrating upon a representative sample of warships, a true picture of the greater whole is drawn. Goodwin rejects the popular and out-dated view of life in the Royal Navy of the time as being one of horror, misery, and oppression. Instead, he demonstrates that the seamen were well fed (within limits of what could be preserved aboard ship) with between 4000 and 5000 calories a day to support their heavy labors and that they were in general proud professionals.
I consider Peter Goodwin's "Nelson's Ships" to be an ideal complement to Brian Lavery's "Nelson's Navy". While Lavery provides a thorough structural description of the Royal Navy circa 1800, its institutions, missions, and practices, Goodwin's book presents vivid, specific detail to flesh out that structure. And I would add one more book to make an ideal trilogy: James McGuane's "Heart of Oak" with its marvelous photographs of the implements and objects of everyday life at sea. Those three books together form an incomparable portrait of the Royal Navy in the Age of Fighting Sail.

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This exciting new volume presents every ship in which Nelson served, in full detail, for the first time. Following a comprehensive background of each vessel, including the actions in which it participated, each ship's construction details and costs will be explored alongside any modifications that were made. The incidents that occurred while Nelson was on board each ship reveal an abridged version of his career and offer both the enthusiast and general reader an insight into the man himself. Fully researched and developed by one of the most well-known and respected Nelson historians, and heavily illustrated in part by Geoff Hunt, jacket artist for the popular Patrick O'Brien series, this will be an invaluable work for both the academic and enthusiast alike.

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Jack Aubrey Commands: An Historical Companion to the Naval World of Patrick O'Brian Review

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(More customer reviews)Brian Lavery is the author of the thoroughly excellent "Nelson's Navy", praised by Patrick O'Brian as the most nearly royal road to knowledge about the Royal Navy of the 1793-18115 period he knew. Lavery's new book, "Jack Aubrey's Commands: A Historical Companion to the Naval World of Patrick O'Brian", is quite evidently tied to the release of the film "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World", based upon O'Brian's novels -- the book's foreword, after all, was written by Peter Weir. the director of the movie. But the book is at least as much directed towards the readers of O'Brian's novels as to viewers of the film (and more so, I would argue), and it should be equally enticing for those simply interested in that historical era. To be sure, Lavery's "Nelson's Navy" is an excellent reference book that contains far more detailed information than the present work, but "Jack Aubrey's Commands" is written in a more approachable style for the general reader, with a text that is meant to be read as a continuous whole, rather than as a collection of details and essays. Its particular strength lies in the numerous and lengthy quotes taken from contemporary sources, making the narrative more vivid and easy to relate to a living world long vanished. In this regard, "Jack Aubrey's Commands" serves as a companion to Lavery's own "Nelson's Navy" as well as to the novels of Patrick O'Brian.
Someone recently asked me whether it was better to buy "Jack Aubrey's Commands" or Richard O'Neill's recent "Patrick O'Brian's Navy: Jack Aubrey's World". Putting the obvious answer of "Buy both of them!" aside (and assuming that the reader already has Lavery's "Nelson's Navy" or feels that this earlier work is as yet too formidable to approach), then my recommendation would depend on the reader's personal preferences. Both volumes contain a good detail of information about the Royal Navy of Jack Aubrey's era. O'Neill's book is especially strong in the area of excellent period illustrations, Lavery's in the direction of narrative strength. The first is perhaps best for repeated browsing, the latter for a straightforward read.

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No fiction writer of modern times has captured the worldof wooden walls, broadsides, and the press gang as successfully asPatrick O'Brian. The twenty books in the O'Brian canon featuring thelives and adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and his confidant, navalsurgeon Stephen Maturin, have been lauded across the world for theirblend of classic storytelling, historical accuracy, and inspiredcharacterizations. In this new work respected naval historian BrianLavery explores the historical framework of the O'Brian novels byexamining the facts behind the grand narrative and putting the keyepisodes in context while detailing naval life in the era of Nelsonand Napoleon. With well over a hundred illustrations, the bookpresents contemporary plans, drawings, engravings, maps, andphotographs of museum artifacts that have inspired age-of-sailnovelists and moviemakers. Introducing the book is a foreword by PeterWeir, director of the upcoming film of O'Brian's novel Master andCommander. Avid age-of-sail fans will not want to miss this colorfullydetailed complement to the O'Brian series.

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Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1947-1995 Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an update of Conway's formerly 2-volumes (Western and Warsaw Pact navies), first published in 1982. This is now 1 volume, large format size of the other Conway's, 1860-1946. It is an impressive book, covering the cold-war era, describing in minor detail, the survivors of WWII, and in more detail, new construction from 1947. It's the only book of its type because it covers all types of vessels and all navies; each entry has a brief description (sometimes insightful) but usually just a recitation of public info (because very few of these vessels saw combat). They are accompanied by a medium-size photograph, and often a line drawing (but the drawings are of medium quality, and plainly "hand drawn"). The book is not a thorough treatment of any particular ship or type of vessel; for that, you will have to use other books such as Norman Friedman's (now dated) series on US Navy battleships, aircraft carriers, submarines, etc. It lacks the descriptive nature of H. Lenton's books on the British WWII navy, or the graphic intensity of the dedicated battleship, cruiser, etc. books. Nevertheless, no other book is as comprehensive as this one, and remains the seminal work on naval vessels in the cold war era; it's richly illustated and has sufficient text.

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Power at Sea, Volume 2: The Breaking Storm, 1919-1945 Review

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(More customer reviews)If you don't know the Battle of the Atlantic from the Battle of Leyte Gulf, you'll want to do a quick review of U.S. naval history during World War II before starting Dr. Rose's second volume in his Power at Sea trilogy. That said, I think that even the casual historian will find this book well worth their while. A revealing look into the rise of the aircraft carrier as the dominate weapon of sea power is only one of the several intriguing topics covered. I was particularly fascinated by the section that described how close the axis nations actually came to winning the war they had so recklessly begun. This book provides an excellent look into the era in which the United States surpassed Great Britain as the greatest sea power in the world.

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Captains Contentious: The Dysfunctional Sons of the Brine (Studies in Maritime History) Review

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(More customer reviews)CAPTAINS CONTENTIOUS: THE DYSFUNCTIONAL SONS OF THE BRINE comes from a maritime historian who offers a survey and analysis of five captains in the Continental Navy, considering how their personality flaws hindered their careers and enhanced their actions in the Revolutionary War. Perfect for college-level American history libraries, this uses primary and secondary sources alike to present biographical sketches that illustrate the nature and impact of their actions on world history and local events alike.

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The Tide of War: A Nathan Peake Novel (The Nathan Peake Novels) Review

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(More customer reviews)Tide of War is the second book in a trilogy dealing with the naval career of Nathan Peake, a British naval officer during the napoleonic wars. Early in this novel, Peake is promoted to Post-Captain, and is ordered to the West Indies where he is to take command of HMS Unicorn, a vessel whose previous Captain has been killed in an apparent mutiny, and his body found washed ashore at the inlet to Lake Pontchartrain with a slit throat.
Although it is the second in a trilogy, this work can be read as a stand-alone novel. I had not read the first novel in the trilogy, but found that I had no trouble following the storyline as the first few chapters do a good job of filling in the background of Peake's career.
Overall, this is an action packed novel of napoleonic era naval fiction in the fine tradition of C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian that should appeal to most fans of the genre. While the character of Nathan Peake is not as well drawn as Horatio Hornblower or Jack Aubrey, the plot of the novel satisfies with rousing battle scenes both at sea and in the swamps and bayous around New Orleans.

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Power at Sea, Volume 1: The Age of Navalism, 1890-1918 Review

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(More customer reviews)As someone who does research in the time period discussed in the book, I pick up anything that's new to see if there's any new research. Unfortunately, there's nothing new in this book, and in all honesty, I can not figure out how this book was published by a university press, considering the poor notation and poor logic behind some of Rose's arguements.
The book sets out to be a popular narrative of the naval affairs from 1890-1918, but is spotty in its coverage. For example, the Spanish-American War gets only a skimming over, as does other significant events in World War I, such as Dogger Bank, Coronel and the Falklands, Gallipoli, and the exploits of SMS Koenigsberg and SMS Emden in the Indian Ocean. Mahan gets a brief mention, but Sir Julian Corbett gets no such love. On the other hand, expect the requisite narrative regarding Jutland, as well as chapters on the Imperial Japanese Navy and the US Navy.
However, this is not the greatest flaw in this work. It ostensibly states how it will cover social aspects of navalism, but the deepest it gets is statements about how harshly officers treated enlisted sailors and the public's reaction to the Anglo-German naval race. Rose has trouble keeping his story straight. He pumps up the role of naval fleets running up to the war, and then laments their uselessness after the war breaks out because they spent the most of their time in port. Perhaps if he had read Corbett, he would have seen their uselessness in port with regards to blockading, but I digress. He also seems to have an affinity for what-if scenarios, as he goes on for at least five pages talking about various ways in which the Germans could have sunk the British reinforcements in August of 1914, and even seriously discusses Jacky Fisher's idea regarding landing troops in Pomerania and marching on Berlin, of course without looking at trivial things like the Swedish-Danish mining of the Kattegat or what the German fleet would do this whole time.
In addition, Rose lambastes the design principles of Dreadnoughts, and in the process states how German guns were better than British guns because they were lighter than their direct British counterparts, then in the next paragraph says how German guns were inferior to British guns because they couldn't make bigger guns than the British. He never gets around to sorting that out, much like he never gets around to explaining how many British Dreadnoughts were sunk by torpedoes after stating how vulnerable they were to them. He also talks about how British ships were so vulnerable to plunging fire because of a lack of deck armour, then fails to point out that British deck armour was equal to their counterparts in other navies.
Speaking of proof, if I hear another "Well, as another scholar has noted..." without a footnote, I may just scream. Rose has a nasty habit of backing up his statements with the credentials of another scholar, without actually citing them. Speaking of citing, the notes in this book is frankly high school level. Rose goes for long sections without footnotes making statements like the ones given above, then goes through a slew of notes over the next several paragraphs covering innocuous statements. As for the bibliography, it is a useful guide to secondary sources, but it is extremely unsettling to see a statement saying how it is highly selective and how they were the works that influenced his line of thinking in writing the book. An actual bibliography covering the works he used in the writing of the book as sources would have been much better.
Rose has two more books covering the rest of the century, but at present I am rather gun-shy about actually reading them if this book is any indication of the quality of the other two. In the end, if you want a good read about the time period, especially in terms of an Anglo-German view, I would definitely go for Robert Massie's classics Dreadnought and Castles of Steel. They read just as easy, have much better notation and research, and provide the in depth coverage of the important events that they deserve.

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German Warships of World War I: The Royal Navy's Official Guide to the Capital Ships, Cruisers, Destroyers, Submarines and Small Craft, 1914-1918 Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a fascinating book, because it is essentially what the subtitle says - the British Royal Navy's recognition and intelligence guide to the Imperial German High Seas Fleet. Friedman write the introduction to this reprint of that work, and ties in the history of such guides through WWII and to intelligence today, which is a fascinating little essay of its own.
The main points of this book are the details - including some operational details - of the German warships. Some ships already lost at the time of this volume (1917) have negligible coverage, so if you want to know about SCHARNHORST and GNEISENAU do not look here. But the details on the extant ships of 1917 are surprisingly detailed, SEYDLITZ especially - it appears that the claim that the British had acquired her blueprints is true, based on the extremely thorough and accurate coverage of that vessel. There are also details such as the forward guns of German dreadnoughts not generally being fired at night (to avoid blinding the bridge crews in the days before flashless powder); how firing orders were transmitted to destroyer gun crews, and much more. Thus this is a most useful book for the serious student of the WWI German Navy even if the data is seen through a British filter.

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The Time of Terror: A Novel (The Nathan Peake Novels) Review

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(More customer reviews)Blood, gore, and a little more blood for good measure - that's how I once heard the Terror of the French Revolution described. This book is no disappointment for one looking for an interesting nautical adventure intermixed with the horrors of the French Revolution.
Nathaniel Peake (or should I say Turner, which is the alias he uses during most of the story) is an intriguing sea captain who opts to accept a special assignment that lands him right in the midst of Revolutionary France.
Hunter takes liberties with some of the characters, but that's what good historical fiction is all about - take someone real and make them even more sinister or more lovable. I enjoyed how he played up Robspierre, and his treatment of Thomas Paine was utterly fascinating.
The love story was a bit too much for me - I think the book probably would have been better had Hunter focused on the swashbuckling adventures and hijinks of Peake instead. Having said that, the little bit of romance that was present made for an underlying current that added a bit, and probably set the tone for another book in the series.
Can't say that I loved it, but it's worth reading. The fact that the author is British, as is the hero, makes the book intriguing and fun.

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Feeding Nelson's Navy: The True Story of Food at Sea in the Georgian Era Review

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(More customer reviews)Cervantes in "Don Quixote" lampoons the writers of chivalric romances for failing to address the mundane realities of life, chief among them being how their heroic knights errant managed to feed themselves. To a lesser degree, perhaps, the modern authors of nautical fiction likewise do not much address the question of how their seaborne heroes (and their crews) were fed, day in and day out. Undoubtedly this is partly because it is far more interesting to write about boarding an enemy frigate than boiling salt beef, but I suspect that it also has to do with the absence of readily available, reliable information about the subject. Now, Janet Macdonald has addressed this want of discussion with "Feeding Nelson's Navy: The True Story of Food at Sea in the Georgian Era". Coming from a background of writing about cookery, she has tackled the complex and surprisingly mysterious question of how in the world the Royal Navy fed itself during the classic Age of Fighting Sail. Although it might be thought that a matter of such obvious vital importance to maintaining a fighting fleet of tens of thousands of mariners would have been recorded officially in detail, in point of fact Macdonald has had to sift through obscure primary documents such as ships' logs, personal memoirs, and period letters to adequately explore how it was all done: from procuring the foodstuffs (and drink) in the first place, to storing them, getting them to the ships in port and at sea, storing the victuals aboard, preparing meals, and serving them to officer and crews. And even with such diligent research, she must resort to informed speculation to address some questions, such as just how a ship's cook kept separate the rations for the various messes and served them out in an efficient manner. The breadth of coverage is impressive: the Navy's Victualling Board administration, officially mandated rations and substitutes, typical recipes, shipboard organization, disease and vermin, the "hardware" of food preparation and consumption (stoves and dining implements), and surrounding social customs. For anyone interested in the real world of the Royal Navy behind the fiction Horatio Hornblowers and Jack Aubreys, "Feeding Nelson's Navy" is a revelation, dispelling old myths and offering new facts such as the caloric and vitamin content of the men's meals. Macdonald throughout her book illustrates the practicalities of the subject by citing numerous real-life incidents drawn from period documents.

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The prevailing image of food at sea in the age of sail features rotting meat and weevily biscuits, but this highly original book proves beyond doubt that this was never the norm. Building on much recent research Janet Macdonald shows how the sailor's official diet was better than he was likely to enjoy ashore, and of ample calorific value for his highly active shipboard life. When trouble flared and food was a major grievance in the great mutinies of 1797 the usual reason was the abuse of the system. This system was an amazing achievement. At the height of the Napoleonic Wars the Royal Navy's administrators fed a fleet of more than 100,000 men, in ships that often spent months on end at sea. Despite the difficulty of preserving food before the advent of refrigeration and meat-canning, the British fleet had largely eradicated scurvy and other dietary disorders by 1800. This was the responsibility of the Victualling Board, a much-maligned but generally efficient bureaucracy that organized the preparing and packing of meat, the brewing of beer, the baking of ship's biscuit, and all the logistics of the Navy and on an industrial scale unparalleled elsewhere. Once aboard ship food and drink was subject to stringent controls to ensure fairness, and this book takes a fresh look at the tarnished reputations of Purser and Cook, before turning to the ways both officers and men were able to supplement their official rations, including the keeping of livestock on board. A chapter compares provisions in the other major navies of the time, and the book concludes with recipes for some of the exotic sounding dishes, like lobscouse, prepared by naval cooks. While Feeding Nelson's Navy contains much of value to the historian, it is written with a popular touch that will enthral anyone with an interest in life at sea in the age of sail.

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The Age of the Ship of the Line: The British and French Navies, 1650-1815 (Studies in War, Society, and the Militar) Review

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(More customer reviews)For almost 200 hundred years the British and French navies dominated the world. As two of the world's leading industrial economies of the day, their wealth permitted them to produce fine ships with the dual purpose of protecting their own shores and seeking out new lands as part of their respective imperialist dreams and this book is the story of those navies.
Author Jonathan R. Dull is the retired senior editor of the series "The Papers of Benjamin Franklin" whose previous works include the award-winning "The French Navy and American Independence; A Study in Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787" and "The French Navy and the Seven Years War." It was because those previous works both involved the French Navy (whereas this particular book includes the French and British navies) I was concerned that Mr Dull may have come to this work with a bias towards the French (be that bias for or against!) but was delighted to learn this was not so.
With the emphasis always remaining on the effect of global events on the navies in question, the chapters commence with the origins of the "Ship of the Line" (so called because these fleets sailed in single file or, in a straight line - one behind the other). We then learn about Louis XIV and his wars, the age of peace, the outcome of the seven years war, the war of American Independence, French Revolution, Napoleonic wars and finally, supremacy in the age of sail.
Then, as now, warships were vastly expensive and, in this first-ever joint history of both navies, we find a completely impartial view of the various shipbuilding programmes, campaigns, strategies, battles and even the diplomacy of the day. The author also draws the interesting conclusion that the greatest tragedy for both nations was the Franco-British wars which stood to destroy both their common security and the economic prosperity both had enjoyed during their brief period as Allies!
There are two maps (Europe and the Caribbean) and seven battle diagrams. I have to add that I found the latter to be so simple as to be quite excellent with my favourite - the Battle of Aboukir Bay (sometimes called the Battle of the Nile), reproduced exactly as I have described that scene so many times.
Whilst the lack of pictures (there are none at all) does not detract from the overall impact of this important work, some images of either important ships or portraits of the leading protagonists would have improved the book.
Altogether, however, a first rate work.
NM


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For nearly two hundred years huge wooden warships called "ships of the line" dominated war at sea and were thus instrumental in the European struggle for power and the spread of imperialism. Foremost among the great naval powers were Great Britain and France, whose advanced economies could support large numbers of these expensive ships. This book, the first joint history of these great navies, offers a uniquely impartial and comprehensive picture of the two forces—their shipbuilding programs, naval campaigns, and battles, and their wartime strategies and diplomacy.

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Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy Review

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(More customer reviews)The writer of this book is an academic historian of some importance and he appears to be in the midst of writing a three volume history of the British navy. This book is a little more specalised and tells what it was like to serve on a British ship in the 18th Century.
The main theme of the book is to rebut academic theories which suggest that the British Navy of the period was run like a concentration camp. The author in some detail goes through the relations on ships and shows how the navy took a lot of care to preserve one of its key assets the sailors who manned the ships. Food was plentiful and of high quality or the time, British sailors worked out the cause of scurvey before medical science did. Care was taken to ensure that ships were clean and that sailors washed. The most interesting discussion is however on discipline. It would seem clear that in trials carried out to deterime the guilt of individual sailors, senior officers were very careful to establish the truth of charges and they were willing to aquit or to accept the sailors point of view. The book establishes that with a number of mutinies the Admirality removed incompetant officers from command and took no action against the men who mutinied, accpeting that the actions of the sailors was justified.
The author goes a long way to establishing that the reality of sea born life was one more or partnership rather than that of an oppresive regime.
The book however does more than this and describes in detail the tremendous organisational feat that was the Royal navy. It looks at all aspects of the navy from recruiting sailors, to feeding them and the reality of training and manning ships.
One finishes the book and relises what an achievment it was for England to be able to run such an effecient arm as the navy and how the way it was run led to the success it had in battle.

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From the award-winning naval scholar N. A. M. Rodger comes the most revealing account yet of the mighty Georgian navy and British naval society of the eighteenth century.
Meticulouslyresearched, Rodger's portrait draws the readerinto this fascinatingly complex world withvivid, entertaining characters and full detailsof life below the decks. The Wooden Worldprovides the most complete history of a navy atany age, and is sure to be an indispensablevolume for all fans of Patrick O'Brian, English history, and naval history.--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652-1862 (Classics of Naval Literature) Review

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(More customer reviews)I read this study for a military history course at the University of Michigan in 1979. My professor, John Shy, considered it then to be the most outstanding single work on the economics of wooden navies in the sailing era. I bought the book used years ago and am now very glad I did. I note with amazement that Amazon offers a used copy for $242. I would desire that this work be returned to publication, especially in eformat for Kindles and Nooks.

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First published in 1926 as part of the Harvard EconomicStudies series, this work was awarded the David A. Wells Prize and hasbeen considered the standard reference on the subject ever since. Itestablished for the first time the indivisible relationship betweentimber supply and sea power, and how this union influenced navalarchitecture and international law, as well as foreign, colonial,commercial, and forest policies. The result of an exhaustive,international research effort, the book also has been acknowledged bynaval historians to be one of the very early attempts to broaden navalhistory into a serious study of logistics and supply and of technologyand operations.In a delightfully absorbing prose rare for such studies, Robert Albionrelates these pivotal issues throughout the two-hundred-year periodthat saw most of the greatest naval wars of the Age of Sail, from theFirst Dutch War of 1652 to the introduction of the ironclad early inthe American Civil War. The author explores how the timber supplyproblem affected other European maritime powers and their far-flungcolonies, explains how it was driven by the conservatism andcorruption of official bureaus and rapacious landowners conducting thebusiness, and offers a fascinating portrait of the contemporarylogging and timber transport industries.An introductory essay has been written for this new Classics editionby Timothy Bean, a lecturer at the department of war studies at theRoyal Military Academy Sandhurst and a specialist in earlyeighteenth-century naval history. His essay examines Albion's uniquecontributions to the understanding of the relationship between themilitary and commerce and applies Navy timber supply issues totwentieth-century problems with oil supplies.

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Heart of Oak: A Sailor's Life in Nelson's Navy Review

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(More customer reviews)James McGuane's "Heart of Oak" is a marvelous visual journey into, as the subtitle has it, "A Sailor's Life in Nelson's Navy". The book is filled with photographs of artifacts from British nautical museums (plus a number taken aboard HMS Victory and at other naval-related sites), pictures not of static, dead objects on dusty museum shelves, but photographs artfully dynamic, almost as if the tools portrayed were set down a few minutes ago and a horny-handed seaman might return shortly to resume his work. Many of the most fragile artifacts, such as a leather bucket and handmade trousers of light sailcloth, were recovered from the wreck of HMS Invincible lost in 1758, decades before the era of Horatio Nelson and Jack Aubrey, but nonetheless strongly representative of what would have still been found aboard a Royal Navy ship during the Napoleonic Wars. The range of articles pictured is remarkable: a tar brush, pistols and boarding pikes, sailmakers' fids, a surgeon's bleeding bowl, cable laid rope, a glim (the thick glass lens set into a powder magazine enclosure to admit light but not flame), a seaman's knit woolen cap, a ship's lead, hourglasses (well, 28-minute glasses, to be accurate), a square wooden plate with raised rim (keeps the food in place when the ship rolls), sailors' knives, a cat-o'-nine-tails, a pressgang's cosh, and much, much more. "Heart of Oak" is not a highly structured analysis of the physical accoutrements of nautical life two centuries ago, but it is a bit of a time machine, transporting the modern student of naval history (or a lover of the novels of Patrick O'Brian or C.S. Forester) back into that vanished world.

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Men-of-War: Life in Nelson's Navy Review

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(More customer reviews)This book covers some of the ground of Brian Lavery's 'Nelson's Navy'. Lavery's book is much more comprehensive and much larger. O'Brian's book has some color plates, but it was really written to take advantage of his name. I'd buy Lavery's book first, or "The Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor, or a Key to the Leading of Rigging and to Practical Seamanship" by Darcy Lever (a contemporary book).

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Patrick O'Brian's Navy: The Illustrated Companion to Jack Aubrey's World Review

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(More customer reviews)"Patrick O'Brian's Navy: The Illustrated Companion to Jack Aubrey's World" is one of those books that doesn't really have an author. Richard O'Neill is listed as the Consulting Editor, but the Editor and Indexer is Philip de Ste. Croix, and there are a number of "Contributors" including David Miller, who has his own Jack Aubrey-related book coming out soon ("The World of Jack Aubrey").
This is a handsome coffee table-size volume, about 150 pages long, and heavily illustrated. The illustrations may be its strongest point - hundreds of them, mostly contemporary to Jack Aubrey's era and mostly reproduced in vivid color. I have seen many of them before, but usually in black-and-white, so even just on this score, "Patrick O'Brian's Navy" is an attractive addition to a historical nautical library. And there are some modern illustrations as well, usually in the form of diagrams to show complex information such as sail and rigging designations, crew assignments, and the arrangement of watches. Other data is conveyed in tabular form, like those for uniform details, prize money distribution, and crew organization for various ship classes.
Although the primary focus is upon the Royal Navy, there are also chapters devoted to what might be called the geo-political world of the Napoleonic Era. There is a conscious effort to tie all this to Jack Aubrey and the O'Brian novels, with the text, detailing historical events in which Jack took part (including those before the start of the book series) and occasionally providing sidebars titled "Through Aubrey's Eyes" that relate particular subjects to volume and chapter of the novels. Although the overall level of information presented cannot equal that in Brian Lavery's "Nelson's Navy", this is nonetheless an interesting compendium of facts and anecdotes.
There are also two short addendums: "A Cast of Characters" listing the major people and ships in the O'Brian novels and describing their actions and fates, and a Glossary of nautical terms and slang.

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From the moment that Master and Commander, the first of Patrick O'Brian's sequence of 20 novels about the 19th century British Royal Navy officer Jack Aubrey and his surgeon colleague Stephen Maturin, was published in 1970, critics hailed his work as a masterpiece of historical recreation. Called "the best historical novels ever written" by the New York Times, the books have sold millions of copies. This first full-color illustrated companion to the Aubrey-Maturin series, timed to coincide with the release of the blockbuster Twentieth-Century Fox film adaptation starring Russell Crowe, explains the fascinating physical details of Jack Aubrey's fictional world. An in-depth historical reference, it brings to life the political, cultural, and physical setting of O'Brian's novels. Annotated drawings, paintings, and diagrams reveal the complex parts of a ship and its rigging, weaponry, crew quarters and duties, below-deck conditions, and fighting tactics, while maps illustrate the location featured in each novel.

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