Sea Life in Nelson's Time Review

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(More customer reviews)While there has been much new research and opinions about this subject, no one who is interested in the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars can pass this book by. The author, aside from being a great poet, sailed tall ships as a sailor before the mast. He has even sailed around the Horn. This gives him an insight into the lives of seaman aboard wooden men-of-war that a modern author cannot achieve. Well worth reading.

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Written by British Poet Laureate John Masefield in 1905, this lyrical tribute to sailors in the Age of Sail captures the grim reality of life at sea. In the clear, muscular English that made him famous, Masefield breathes life into the misery and barbarity that served as a foundation for naval glory. He brilliantly tells the story of the ships of Nelson's Navy, and especially of the sailors, describing the duties of each man, the unwholesome food, the cramped and filthy living quarters, the inhuman punishments, and the floating hell of a ship in action. Based on his own youthful apprenticeship aboard windjammers that sailed around the Horn, Masefield was both inspired and repelled by the sailor's lot. This epic eulogy for sailors long gone, considered a classic for decades, will be valued by Nelson enthusiasts everywhere.

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The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815 Review

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(More customer reviews)This volume continues the author's brilliant elucidation of the history of the British navy, so ably begun with The Safeguard of the Sea. The author addresses the navy as a multi-faceted institution, influencing and being influenced by the evolution of politics, taxation, government finance, trade and bureaucracy. Though focused upon the British navy, the book includes a collateral and comparative consideration of naval institutions in France, Spain and Holland.
The author serves up a generally savory mixture of impeccable scholarship and pungent opinion. Nevertheless, American readers may find distasteful his dismissive attitude toward the outcomes of the American Revolution (the "American War") and the War of 1812, and their implications for British naval policy.
Like its predecessor, this volume is chaptered by theme within broad time periods. The thematic structure facilitates the development of theses concerning social organization, finance and the like. The book also includes a Glossory (invaluable)and statistical appendices (valuable, but not priceless).
I await with interest a further volume in this series -- when the author will have to come to terms with the ascendancy of the United States Navy, and modify his thusfar appropriate Euro-centrism. Yankee pride aside, this is an absolutely marvelous book.

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The Pursuit of Victory: The Life And Achievement of Horatio Nelson Review

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(More customer reviews)As others have noted, there are many biographies of Nelson, and almost all of them suffer from the same problem: that a man so brilliant, talented, contradictory, demented, jealous, generous, gracious, foolish, naive and clear-thinking is very hard to understand. The fact that his death at the triumphant British naval victory of Trafalgar in 1805 immediately turned his life into legend, means that from first to last it's been hard to get a handle on Nelson the flawed but unique human being.
I've read many biographies of the man, and I was shocked to find that many second-hand truths fine biographers have relied on in prior biographies are incorrect. Knight's meticulous scholarship, his lifetime of study of the age of fighting sail in Britain and France, means that his careful analysis of sources in this book is stunning and irrefutable. No book I have ever read on Nelson is so thorough in finding every possible source to illuminate the daily life at sea, as well as by land, of this remarkable leader. That he quietly sets the record straight on innumerable myths and errors of past biographies with grace is simply another pleasure of the book. The fact that Knight deals tautly with the fairly disastrous consequences of Nelson's affair with Emma, Lady Hamilton, without letting it swallow his book, is a fine achievement. The heart of Nelson's importance in English history lies in his life at sea, and there Knight's study is especially enlightening.
Although not a book for everyone - you need to want to learn about both Nelson and the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars - I tend to agree with the dust jacket blurb, that this book will be THE definitive factual study of Nelson. But as Knight himself admits - in the end, the whole of the man is greater than the sum of his parts, and probably always will be.

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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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HMS RODNEY: The Famous Ships of the Royal Navy Series (Warships of the Royal Navy) Review

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(More customer reviews)As the illustration on the book's cover reveals, this is a book about the mighty battleship HMS Rodney but, in getting to the subject itself, author Iain Ballantyne provides the reader with 42 fascinating pages of previous Royal Navy vessels of the same name. The first HMS Rodney, for example, was a cutter, the second a 16 gun brig-sloop. With the next being a 74 gun 3rd rate ship of the line and the one after that sporting 92 guns, a picture is painted whereby each successive ship to bear this illustrious name was destined to be larger than its predecessor.
The penultimate Rodney was a Battleship of 10,300 tons launched in 1884 and sold in 1909. Whilst a Battlecruiser of 33,600 tons was ordered in 1916 - as a sister ship to the famous HMS Hood, she was cancelled long before completion. The last HMS Rodney, the subject of this book, was a Battleship of 33,900 tons launched in 1925 and scrapped in 1948 after a career as equally as illustrious as the Admiral after which she was named.
The thing I like most about this book is the attention to detail. HMS Rodney was the last British warship launched with an ornate figurehead - a bust of Admiral Rodney of course. Elsewhere, we learn that, not only was a Royal Marine hanged in 1837 from the yardarm of a previous HMS Rodney, but we also learn much about the implications of his death because he was an Irishman. Whilst that particular incident may be of small consequence to those with an interest in the battleship itself, I mention it in order to underline the fine attention to detail contained within.
This is a book which will reveal something to almost everyone who thought they knew all there was to know about this once great ship. This was one of the capital ships which finally sank the Bismarck, this is the ship which was commanded by Cunningham and later by Tovey - long before they became admirals themselves.
It is a work of supreme research and fascinating insight and I congratulate the author on an excellent achievement.
NM


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The Second World War battleship HMS Rodney achieved lasting fame for her role in destroying the pride of Hitler's navy, the mighty Bismarck, in a thrilling duel. This splendid book traces not only this mighty battleship's career in detail but describes the careers of all the ships carrying the name.



REVIEWS

"...provides the reader an in depth look into the histories of each ship, their transformation over time, and a better understanding of the Royal Navy's contribution in WWII."Nautical Research Journal, 05/2009

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