Customer Reviews

Hornblower's Navy : Life at Sea in the Age of Nelson

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I bought this book hoping for more than I found. There is information on the hierarchy inside a ship, as well as (very) brief historical accounts of the mutinies at Spithead and the Nore, and a little background information. Although interesting at times, e.g. when pointing out that the Glorious First of June was actually a strategic defeat for the Royal Navy, it is much too brief on its accounts of famous battles such as Trafalgar and the Nile. Some information on the ships is provided, but not enough for a non-sailer to get his bearings in a Hornblower book. The author keeps going out of his way to mention the defeat of the Royal Navy at the Battle of Lake Eerie (which is at best tangential to the subject matter), and to namedrop Hornblower whenever he can. The book contains some nice illustrations, mainly paintings, and some interesting information, but it reads like nothing more than a coffee table book, superficial in its infomation, merely hinting at things I was hoping to learn through it. There are also a number of typographical errors that ought to have been corrected but weren't, giving the entire book the air of something dashed off in a hurry and with little care. I was hoping for much, much more than I received.

To sum up - disappointing. This is little more than a glorified coffee table book, and I would actually have preferred more pictures and less text. I read it in an a couple of hours, and was little the wiser, though with my appetite for more information whetted. Compared to some of the excellent French books on the subject, the content was negligable. "Hornblower" is thrown in every so often, but not in a consistent way, and eventually comes across as an irritating gimmick rather than a theme or thread. An intelligent reader could probably infer much of the information from a careful reading of the Hornblower series. Not recommended.

I've been a fan of Hornblower and Aubrey and their ilk for many, many years -- but I'm not a sailor, so I sometimes have had to do some research to understand just what I'm reading. Pope is a well-known naval historian and he does an excellent job in this heavily illustrated volume, explaining the role of the highly successful Royal Navy in the late 18th century, describing the jobs and relative stations of officers, ratings and warrant officers (and also of the various rates of warships), and describing the sailor-man's life and his daily routine. He makes it clear that, however horrendous life at sea might have been compared to our own time, the Brits were far better at it and generally much more humane than the French and their allies.