The sea warriors Fighting captains and frigate warfare in the age of Nelson

Woodman, the creator of the very popular British Nathaniel Drinkwater series (similar to the Horatio Hornblower historical stories,) turns his talents from historical fiction to a detailed history of Britain's famous frigate captains during the French Revolution and the age of Napoleon. The text also includes British and American frigate battles during the War of 1812. Woodman relies heavily on technical details involved with ship-to-ship engagements. To aid the reader he includes a glossary of terms, but this will be difficult reading for the novice. There are five useful maps as well as a historical chronology. Throughout the work there are biographies of the frigate captains. This book would be useful as collateral reading for upper-division history majors and graduate students interested in British naval history in the age of sail, 1793-1815. B. H. Groene formerly, Southeastern Louisiana University

From the first British involvement in the French Revolution in 1793 to the end of the War of 1812, England's wooden walls fought off French, Danish, Dutch, Spanish, Turkish and American ships to maintain control of the seas and Britain's essential maritime trade. Rather than concentrate on all the big battles of the period, veteran British writer Richard Woodman, with both history and fictional sea tales to his credit, resuscitates now-forgotten ship captains and their quotidian gun duels with enemy ships in The Sea Warriors: The Fighting Captains and Their Ships in the Age of Nelson. Men like Edward Pellew, Thomas Cochrane and Josiah Willoughby contended with defective ships, bad crews, lack of good hygiene and food, and lack of support from their Royal Navy superiors. Press gangs and oftentimes harsh corporal punishment upped the stakes, and mutinies were fairly common. From Woodman's vivid account, it's not hard to see why. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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.