Customer Reviews

The Eyes of the Fleet: A Popular History of Frigates and Frigate Captains 1793-1815

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For avid readers of Patrick O'Brian's "Aubrey - Maturin" series, this book provides intruiging insights into the real-life frigate captains whose exploits are the source material for O'Brian, and the other imitators: Kent, Pope, Parkinson, Forester, et al. While the material is fascinating, the writing style takes a bit of work: Mr. Price is a master of the convoluted, parenthesized, run-on sentence. But once you get a handle on his writing style, the tales of the almost larger-than-life frigate captains like the rash but incomparable Cochrane, and the incredible Hoste, will put Jack Aubrey in a different light. His adventures and achievements -which sometimes seem so heroic as to be farfetched - are simply re-told tales from the adventures of these real-life fighting captains. In summary: terrific background for understanding the naval aspects of England's Napoleonic Wars, and the American action in the War of 1812

The very least I would expect from the author of this, his twentieth book (the previous 19 being all fiction) is an understanding of grammar and punctuation - something which is sadly lacking in this work.

As a general rule, we do not start sentences with "And" or "But" and, although occasionally acceptable, there are too many instances here. Just as a capital letter commences any new sentence, so a capital letter is the first to appear after a colon - but not in this work. Furthermore, I found too many instances of digression when try to make a simple point.

All of which is off-putting for the serious reader.

In short, this book is hard to review because it is most difficult to read and if it can't be read - then there really is no point in it being reviewed in the first place.

Poor showing - especially after all that research.

NM

After reading a few of the books by any of the great Naval fiction/historical authors, this is the book that explains some of the terms you may not quite understand. After reading this book, keep it on hand while you read all the others. That way you can refer to chapters herein that can lend a bearing. Good Stuff !!!

Not a book about the major battles of the Napoleonic era, although there is some minor coverage of them in the author's effort to present reference for his real topic. The author makes a grand effort to characterize frigate captains of the Napoleonic era by presenting pseudo biographies of a half dozen men from the era. All of the names come from the roles of the British navy - Pigot, Cochrane, Hoste, Pellew, Hornblower (fictional). To these main few he adds generous material on other captains from the British navy as well as that of the Americans and French.

The author alternates painting detailed pictures of the selected captains' careers, as well as using broad strokes to describe the events and attitudes for the period of the 1790's - 1815. While the focus of the book is the selected captains, the author does an admirable job of describing related topics like ship development, the British method of naval advancement/promotion, political climate and crew treatment.

I was pleasantly surprised by the entertaining content and writing style. The only negative comment I have is that the book could have used a generous sprinkling of maps to help the reader better envision the situations described.

For additional reading on frigate captains try The Sea Warriors: The Fighting Captains and Their Ships in the Age of Nelson by Richard Woodman.