THE SEA WARRIORS

A historical study of the fighting officers and sailors who served in Great Britain’s powerful navy during the golden age of Admiral Horatio Nelson.

Woodman, best known as an author of historical maritime novels (The Guineaman, 2000, etc.), seems a promising choice to produce a naval history of the Napoleonic Wars. Indeed, he demonstrates an impressive grasp of the era. This extraordinary knowledge of the English captains, ships, crews, tactics, and opponents produces a narrative full of authentic details that should help readers encounter this long-extinct age. The author constructs this quirky history of equal parts military biography, nautical adventure, and naval history. He focuses his writing on the age’s most colorful characters, offering readers observations on the tactical audacity and individual courage of captains like Horatio Nelson and Nisbet Willoughby against their French and American opponents. Between the resulting episodes of broadside cannon fire, exploding fire ships, and sea chases, Woodman pauses to describe the domestic life on the ships, teaching readers about such disparate subjects as the ravishes of scurvy and the monotony of sail trimming. He also finds the space to comment on social injustices, shedding light on the impressment of American merchant seamen, and the beatings and executions of sailors that damaged British recruiting and inspired the era’s infamous mutinies. Too often, Woodman loses his narrative thread in this blizzard of data, making the history seem like a series of richly detailed but loosely stitched together research projects instead of a coherent history.

For fans of Patrick O’Brian or C.S. Forester who crave true stories of high adventure in Nelson’s navy—although many of those fans would be better served by numerous, more scholarly histories of the epoch that are readily available.