Commander The Life And Exploits Of Britain S Greatest Frigate Captain

Author : Stephen Taylor
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2012-10-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780393089677

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Commander: The Life and Exploits of Britain's Greatest Frigate Captain by Stephen Taylor Pdf

"Nobody describes a naval battle better than Taylor…a flawless demonstration of the biographer’s craft." —Jan Morris, The Guardian Edward Pellew, captain of the legendary Indefatigable, was quite simply the greatest British frigate captain in the age of sail. Left fatherless at age eight, with a penniless mother and five siblings, Pellew fought his way from the very bottom of the navy to fleet command. Victories and eye-catching feats won him a public following. Yet he had a gift for antagonizing his better-born peers, and he made powerful enemies. Redemption came with his last command, when he set off to do battle with the Barbary States and free thousands of European slaves. Opinion held this to be an impossible mission, and Pellew himself, leading from the front in the style of his contemporary Nelson, did not expect to survive. Pellew’s humanity, fondness for subordinates, and blind love for his family, and the warmth and intimacy of his letters, make him a hugely engaging figure. Stephen Taylor gives him at last the biography he deserves.

Author : Anthony Sullivan
Publisher : Casemate Publishers
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2017-06-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781526706539

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Man of War by Anthony Sullivan Pdf

The career of Guernsey-born Admiral James Saumarez reads like an early history of the Royal Navy. His first battle was against the American revolutionaries in 1775, but thereafter his main opponents were the French and the Spanish, and the first fighting ship he commanded, the eight-gun galley Spitfire, was involved in forty-seven engagements before being run aground.Rising through the ranks, Saumarez fought on land and at sea, and was involved in actions in the English Channel, being given command of a squadron of ships based at Guernsey. He served on HMS Victory, took part in the Battle of Cape St Vincent, the Blockade of Cadiz, and was with Nelson at the Battle of the Nile.Promoted to Rear Admiral, he led his ships at the battles of Algeciras and the Gut of Gibraltar. Saumarez was then dispatched into the Baltic, where he helped thwart Napoleons attempt at conquering Russia.So prominent was Saumarez during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, he was featured in the Hornblower novels and other fictional books, including Master and Commander. Tony Sullivan, however, tells the true story of one of the most remarkable individuals of the great days of sail, in the first biography of Saumarez for more than 170 years.

Author : Martin Robson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2014-03-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9780857735089

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A History of the Royal Navy by Martin Robson Pdf

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were the first truly global conflicts. The Royal Navy was a key player in the wider wars and, for Britain, the key factor in her eventual emergence as the only naval power capable of sustained global hegemony. The most iconic battles of any era were fought at sea during these years - from the Battle of the Nile in 1798 to Nelson's momentous victory at Trafalgar in October 1805. In this period, the Navy had reached a peak of efficiency and was unrivalled in manpower and technological strength. The eradication of scurvy in the 1790s had a significant impact on the health of sailors and, along with regular supplies of food and water, gave the British an advantage over their rivals in battle. As well as naval battles, the Navy also undertook amphibious operations, capturing many of France's Caribbean colonies and Dutch colonies in the East Indies and Ceylon; this Imperial dimension was integral to British strength and counteracting French success on continental Europe. This book looks at the history of the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793-1815, from a broad perspective, examining the strategy, operations and tactics of British seapower. While it delves into the details of Royal Navy operations such as battle, blockade, commerce protection and exploration, it also covers a myriad of other aspects often overlooked in narrative histories such as the importance of naval logistics, transport, relations with the army and manning. An assessment of key naval figures and combined eyewitness accounts situate the reader firmly in Nelson's navy. Through an exploration of the relationship between the Navy, trade and empire, Martin Robson highlights the contribution Royal Navy made to Britain's rise to global hegemony through the nineteenth century Pax Britannica.

Author : Sam Willis
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 672 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2016-02-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780393248838

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The Struggle for Sea Power: A Naval History of the American Revolution by Sam Willis Pdf

A fascinating naval perspective on one of the greatest of all historical conundrums: How did thirteen isolated colonies, which in 1775 began a war with Britain without a navy or an army, win their independence from the greatest naval and military power on earth? The American Revolution involved a naval war of immense scope and variety, including no fewer than twenty-two navies fighting on five oceans—to say nothing of rivers and lakes. In no other war were so many large-scale fleet battles fought, one of which was the most strategically significant naval battle in all of British, French, and American history. Simultaneous naval campaigns were fought in the English Channel, the North and Mid-Atlantic, the Mediterranean, off South Africa, in the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, the Pacific, the North Sea and, of course, off the eastern seaboard of America. Not until the Second World War would any nation actively fight in so many different theaters. In The Struggle for Sea Power, Sam Willis traces every key military event in the path to American independence from a naval perspective, and he also brings this important viewpoint to bear on economic, political, and social developments that were fundamental to the success of the Revolution. In doing so Willis offers valuable new insights into American, British, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Russian history. This unique account of the American Revolution gives us a new understanding of the influence of sea power upon history, of the American path to independence, and of the rise and fall of the British Empire.

Author : Heather Noel-Smith,Lorna M. Campbell
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2016
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781783270996

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Hornblower's Historical Shipmates by Heather Noel-Smith,Lorna M. Campbell Pdf

A fascinating account of varied careers, providing a rich snapshot of the later eighteenth-century sailing navy in microcosm.

Author : Nick Lipscombe
Publisher : Pen and Sword
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2016-11-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781473850729

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Wellington's Eastern Front by Nick Lipscombe Pdf

At last, in this absorbing and authoritative study, the story of the epic struggle on Spains eastern front during the Peninsular War has been told. Often overlooked as not integral to the Duke of Wellingtons main army and their campaigns in Portugal and western Spain, they were, in point of fact, intrinsically linked. Nick Lipscombe, a leading historian of the Napoleonic Wars and an expert on the fighting in the Iberian peninsula, describes in graphic detail the battles fought by the French army of General Suchet against the Spanish regulars and guerrillas and subsequently the Anglo-Sicilian force sent by the British government to stabilize the region. Despite Suchet's initial successes and repeated setbacks for the allied armies, by late 1813 the east coast of Spain held a key to Wellington's invasion of France and the ultimate defeat of Napoleon's armies in the Peninsula. At a tactical level the allies were undeniably successful and made an important contribution to the eventual French defeat.

Author : Vyvyen Brendon
Publisher : Pen and Sword History
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2020-07-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781526772459

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Children at Sea by Vyvyen Brendon Pdf

Children at sea faced even more drastic separations from loved ones than those sent 'home' from India or those packed off to English boarding schools at the age of seven, the subjects of Vyvyen Brendon’s previous books. Captured slaves, child migrants and transported convicts faced an ocean passage leading nearly always to lifelong exile in distant lands. Boys apprenticed as merchant seamen, or enlisted as powder monkeys, or signed on as midshipmen, usually progressed to a nautical career fraught with danger and broken only by fleeting periods of home leave. “Solitary among numbers”, as Admiral Collingwood described himself, they could be not just physically at risk but psychologically adrift – at sea in more ways than one. Rather than abandoning sea borne children as they approached adulthood, therefore, Vyvyen follows whole lives shaped by the waves. She focusses on eight central characters: a slave captured in Africa, a convict girl transported to Australia, a Barnardo’s lass sent as a migrant to Canada, a foundling brought up in Coram’s Hospital who ran away to sea, and four youths from contrasting backgrounds dispatched to serve as midshipmen. Their social origins as well as their maritime ventures are revealed through a rich variety of original source material discovered in scattered archives. These brine-encrusted lives are resurrected both for their intrinsic interest and because they speak for thousands of children, cast off alone to face storms and calms, excitement and monotony, fellowship and loneliness, kindness and abuse, seasickness and ozone breezes, loss and hope. This book recounts stories never before told, stories that might otherwise have sunk without trace like so much juvenile flotsam. They are sometimes inspiring, sometimes heart-rending and always compelling. Children at Sea embarks on a fresh voyage and explores a world of new experience.

Author : Stephen Taylor
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2012-10-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9780571295678

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The Caliban Shore by Stephen Taylor Pdf

The 'Grosvenor' was one of the finest East Indiamen of her day, a grand three-masted square-rigger of 741 tons bristling with 26 cannon. When she ran aground on the treacherous coast of south-east Africa, an astonishing number of her crew and passengers, including women and children, reached the shore safely. But the castaways were hundreds of miles from the nearest European outpost - and utterly ignorant of their surroundings and the people among whom they found themselves. Stephen Taylor pieces together this extraordinary saga with tremendous narrative flair. Drawing upon much new research, he sifts the myths that became attached to the 'Grosvenor' from a reality that is no less gripping. Taking the reader to the heart of what is now the Wild Coast of Pondoland, The Caliban Shore reveals the misunderstandings that led to tragedy, tells the story of those who escaped and unravels the mystery of those who stayed.

Author : David Cordingly
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2013-08-14
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781408822579

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Cochrane the Dauntless by David Cordingly Pdf

Patrick O'Brian, C.S. Forester and Captain Marryat all based their literary heroes on Thomas Cochrane, but Cochrane's exploits were far more daring and exciting than those of his fictional counterparts. He was a man of action, whose bold and impulsive nature meant he was often his own worst enemy. Writing with gripping narrative skill and drawing on his own travels and original research, Cordingly tells the rip-roaring story of a flawed Romantic hero who helped define his age.

Author : Stuart McCulloch
Publisher : Troubador Publishing Ltd
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2015-03-28
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781784621377

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A Scion of Heroes by Stuart McCulloch Pdf

This fast-moving narrative, taking place in the Regency era, brings to life contemporary issues of empire and international conflict and explores some of the major social issues of the time, such as colonialism and slavery. It vividly recreates the intimate life of a man on the edge of upper-class society, who became embroiled in the tumult of duels and adulterous liaisons. Drawing heavily on meticulously researched, fully notated and fully referenced primary material, the book ranges from the American Revolutionary War to the life of a naval officer in the fight against the tyranny of Napoleon, sharing the triumphs and hardships of life ashore and on board a man o’ war. James Murray’s mother, the extraordinary Eliza Smith, flies in the face of the conventional well-bred Regency lady as she claims mother status for six children from at least four different fathers and becomes a wealthy woman through her involvement in slave-based plantation agriculture. James’ father, the illegitimate offspring of the illustrious Elibank Murrays, was a British Army Officer who left a unique diary of his involvement in the American Revolutionary War. The story moves from early colonial settlement in Florida, Quebec and the Bahamas and ends in the Highlands, where James’ new wife becomes involved in a adulterous liaison. James, who was then challenged to two duels, succumbed to ill health and moved back to his childhood home in New Abbey in southwest Scotland. A Scion of Heroes is an easy-to-read but fully referenced and researched adult biography that will be of interest not only to biography aficionados but also to local history enthusiasts and students of social and military history of the Georgian period of British history.

Author : Richard Blake
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : History
ISBN : 9781843838852

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Religion in the British Navy, 1815-1879 by Richard Blake Pdf

Shows how the rise of evangelical religion in the navy helped create a new kind of sailor, technologically trained and steeped in a higher set of values.

Author : Patrick O'Brian
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780007255832

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Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian Pdf

Set sail for the read of your life! Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Now these evocative stories are being re-issued in paperback by Harper Perennial with stunning new jackets.

Author : A. Roger Ekirch
Publisher : Pantheon
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780307379900

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American Sanctuary by A. Roger Ekirch Pdf

"The book is a triptych, beginning with the mutiny on the Hermione and the ensuing manhunt for members of her crew. The second section recounts the arrival of a handful of mutineers, including Jonathan Robbins, in the United States before examining in depth the political crisis that engulfed John Adams and the Federalist Party. The final three chapters focus on the election of 1800 and the protracted consequences of Robbins's martyrdom during the years of Republican ascendancy"--Page xiii.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Naval history
ISBN : UGA:32108054233856

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Naval History by Anonim Pdf

Author : United States Naval Institute
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Naval art and science
ISBN : UGA:32108053215557

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Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute by United States Naval Institute Pdf