FRIGATES, SLOOPS AND BRIGS (Pen & Sword Military Classics) [Paperback]

James Henderson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Pen & Sword Military Classics | Publication Date: October 2005

Admiral Nelson's most frequent cry was for more frigates. Though not ships of the line these fast and powerful warships were the 'eyes of the fleet'. They enabled admirals to find where the enemy lay and his likely intentions, as well as patrolling vital trade routes and providing information from far-flung colonies. Together with their smaller cousins, the sloops and brigs of the Royal Navy, they performed a vital function.

Generally commanded by ambitious young men, these were the ships that could capture enemy prizes and earn their officers and men enough prize-money to set them up for life. The fictional characters Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey hardly surpassed some of the extraordinary deeds of derring-do and tragedy described in these pages.

Originally published in two volumes, this book is a bargain for all who want the factual low-down on the Brylcreem Boys of Nelson's navy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 382 pages
• Publisher: Pen and Sword (October 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844153010
• ISBN-13: 978-1844153015
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,484,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Showing its age, June 24, 2002

By 

Mike Daplyn (Totescore, Isle of Skye, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Frigates: An Account of the Lesser Warships of the Wars from 1793 to 1815 (Wordsworth Military Library) (Paperback)

Judging by the enthusiasm of most of the previous reviewers, my somewhat qualified endorsement of this book may strike a sour note. So, to pre-empt some of the possible adverse reaction, this is where I'm coming from: British, and fond of the place with all its faults, son of a long-service Royal Navy officer, and with a life-long interest in naval history. I do not, in short, criticise out of national or personal bias.

Henderson's book is fundamentally a collection of anecdotes, rather uneven in quality, about frigate actions during the Revolutionary, Napoleonic and American (1812) Wars. Some of these, especially Cochrane's wasted effort at the Basque Roads, and Hoste's victory at Lissa (a miniature fleet action) are analysed in considerable detail and provide real insight into what went on. Henderson writes well, and as other reviewers have noted, he was a practical sailing man and does not make mistakes about ship-handling.

On the plus side, he is far more balanced than many writers of his generation (the book was first published in 1970) about the relative merits of the Royal Navy vis-a-vis its opponents. He gives credit to brave and skilled opposition where it is due, and includes a fair selection of British defeats as well as victories. And if he reports more victories than defeats - that's the way it was. Even the rude awakening given by the big American spar-deck frigates in 1812 hardly put a blip in the graph of British naval success in the period he covers.

On the minus side, he idolises his heroes amongst the frigate captains, especially Pellew and Cochrane, and is strongly partisan about everything to do with them. He rails against the ill-favour in which the Admiralty held Cochrane, but fails to note that Cochrane was damned not only by his own headstrong (to put it mildly) conduct, but also by the fact that his political patron Dundas was the most outstandingly corrupt politician of his generation (a hard title to carry off), who was doing all he could to thwart the Admiralty's efforts to put its own house in order.

The action chapters are preceded by and interspersed with with some fairly summary (and in a few instances inaccurate) information on how frigates were crewed, armed and supplied. The problem here is that Henderson doesn't really take proper note of the changes over his period. He notes the phasing out of the small 12-pounder frigates in favour of the 18-pounder classes, but otherwise tends to gloss over the quite considerable changes, including the shaking off of French design influence, to which he attaches far too much weight. Perhaps the book suffered in my mind from being read at the same time as Robert Gardiner's masterful volume on the Napoleonic frigates, which addresses these issues in great detail (and had the benefit of an additional 20 years' accrued research by the naval history community).

What Henderson wrote was a well worthwhile book at the time of its publication. That was more than 30 years ago, and internal evidence (e.g. comparisons with classes of 20th century British warships long-defunct even in 1970) suggests that some sections had been drafted (or at least had gone firm in the author's mind) decades before that. As a collection of blood-stirring tales it is still first class, but naval scholarship has moved on a long way since then. If you want the real story behind the actions Henderson describes, you should invest in Gardiner's book, or Tom Wareham's new book on the frigate captains.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vivid Accounts of Inspiring Bravery Under Sail, August 29, 2000

By 

James J. Bloom (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Frigates: An Account of the Lesser Warships of the Wars from 1793 to 1815 (Wordsworth Military Library) (Paperback)

First of all, Mr. Henderson is an experienced "canvas" sailor. He shows this in every word, and even provides some examples of seamanship from his own background to bolster his tales. Each chapter illustrates some aspect of the character of these independent world cruising hunter-killers. The frigate captains were the functional equivalent of the submarine or surface commerce-raiding helions of the First and Second World Wars. Frigates were not quite powerful enough...in weight of shot per broadside...to join in with the "line of battle ships" in the great fleet-to-fleet contests. Nonetheless their firepower and speed made them superior to most of the vessels they might encounter along the far-flung mercantile trade routes. Because of the poor communications with the commodore to whom they were nominally responsible, let alone the Admiralty, the British frigate captains were pretty much on their own, sailing under general orders they might interpret as circumstances permitted. Just like Francis Drake and the raiders of Elizabeth I's time, these men took their vessels into the midst of formidabbly escorted convoys, fortified and heavily gunned harbors, and even chanced encounters with lone warships carrying almost double their cannon. There are a few negative examples of frigates commanded by spoiled heirs promoted solely due to social connections and those commanded by men who despised their crews, often comprised of desperate gamblers and paroled debtors. However these examples stand out as lonely exceptions. It is hard to realize that many of the shrewd adventurers populating these lively pages are barely into their twenties. One clearly sees the apprenticeship and development of future Nelsons and Cochranes. The chapters are short and to the point. The actions are supported by maps, some at tactical level, as well as contemporary woodcuts and paintings illustrating a number of the actions. To give you an idea of the desperate tactics of these swashbucklers, there are three or four episodes in which the attacking frigate crew finishes their journey as the crew of the conquered vessel, their own ship having been sunk or disabled. The sail and rigging plan of a typical frigate at the front of the book is quite helpful, as is the glossary. There is no bibliography or footnotes, but so authoritatively does the author write, it is as if he had taken part in these sea chases himself.

This is the real-life story of Hornblower, Aubrey and Maturin.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book of Heroes, July 31, 2000

By 

Alistair McGregor (perth, WesternAustralia Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Frigates: An Account of the Lesser Warships of the Wars from 1793 to 1815 (Wordsworth Military Library) (Paperback)

The real heroes of this collection of tales from the Napoleonic wars are the captains and crews of these remarkable vessels. James Henderson manages to place the Horatio Hornblower stories of CS Forester into their real historical context with verve, passion and a terrific eye for historical detail. Any modern captain of industry would be well advised to read this remarkable book to see how an elite group of seaman came into being. A book full of genuine heroes, gallant captains and true escapades told with elegant english understatement and poise.