Admirals in the Age of Nelson (review)

This book is a collection of eleven succinct biographical essays concerning notable British admirals who served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The author employed three criteria in selecting the admirals for inclusion in this book. To qualify, a British admiral had to have held the rank of rear admiral, or higher, during the years 1793 to 1815; he had to have been, during these years, commander-in-chief of a station; and he had to have commanded a squadron, from start to finish, during a major battle or large amphibious operation. By applying these criteria the author selected Admirals Richard Howe, Alexander Hood, Samuel Hood, John Jervis, Adam Duncan, George Keith Elphinston, James Gambier, John Duckworth, John Borlase Warren, James Saumarez, and Edward Pellow to be subjects of biographical essays. Every one of these admirals had fought in the American Revolutionary War and each was an important figure in Britain's naval conflicts with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.

This book, in concept, had the potential to add to our knowledge of the history of the Royal Navy during the great naval wars against France at the end of the eighteenth century. However, in the end, it fails, unfortunately owing to poor or nonexistent research. While the author appears to have made a cursory use of the logs and captains' letters in the Public Record Office as well as some of the volumes published by the Navy Records Society, the essays in this book are for the most part ultimately based on secondary sources. Compounding the problem is the fact that many of the works cited by the author in footnotes, such as the Dictionary of National Biography, are out of date or, as in the case of the work by Bellamy Partridge, Sir Billy Howe (London, 1932), are both dated and of little or no scholarly value. Further the names of a number of authorities on the subject, such as Sir Herbert Richmond and Piers Mackesy, do not appear at all in the bibliography! Nevertheless, these essays are informative in the respect that the reader is struck by the fact that, especially when compared to twentieth century navy officers, each one of these British admirals of the Age of Sail had in the course of his career amassed great amounts of war-fighting experience. Every one of the men subjected to a "portraiture in prose" in this book had fought in at least three major maritime wars and in the case of Richard Howe in four conflicts beginning with the War of the Austrian Succession and ending with the French Revolutionary War. While Admirals in the Age of Nelson will be entertaining, as well as informative, to the general reader, owing to the great number of battles, campaigns, and other activities engaged in by the subjects of the biographical essays contained within its covers, the professional historian will find little that is new or of any utility in the volume.