Product Description

This text contains eyewitness accounts of the battles, the hardships, and the excitement of naval service during the French Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812 - a time when combat at sea was won, not by technology but by sheer courage, wit and endurance. Gathered from memoirs, diaries and letters, the book includes accounts of the age's decisive naval engagements, as well as glimpses into Jack Tar's existence aboard a man-o-war; scurvy, whippings, storms, piracy, press gangs, drudgery and cannibalism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120388 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 510 pages

Customer Reviews

Brillant collection of 'I was there' accounts of naval war
Jon E. Lewis is the veritable master of 'eyewitness' history, and his latest is no disappointment, being 22 accounts by seamen -'tars' as well as officers- of naval warfare in the Age of Nelson. It has the 'Lewis touch' -which is what I really like about it - of combining big history with smaller vignettes showing what life was really like in an age gone by. So, there's Nelson on the Nile campaign alongside the 1789 journal of seaman Aaron Thomas in the caribbean, and there's Thomas Cochrane looking for trouble aboard the sloop Speedy and Thomas Graves at Copenhagen. Not to mention cannibalism, pimps, tempests, and Isaac Hull defeating the Guierre. All naval life is here. It really roars off the page, and is even more exciting than Patrick O'Brians novels. A must read.