Author: Roy Adkins Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1440627290 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 436
Book Description
An explosive chronicle of history's greatest sea battle, from the co-author of the forthcoming Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege in British History (March 2018) In the tradition of Antony Beevor's Stalingrad, Nelson's Trafalgar presents the definitive blow-by-blow account of the world's most famous naval battle, when the British Royal Navy under Lord Horatio Nelson dealt a decisive blow to the forces of Napoleon. The Battle of Trafalgar comes boldly to life in this definitive work that re-creates those five momentous, earsplitting hours with unrivaled detail and intensity.
Author: Christopher Lee Publisher: Faber & Faber ISBN: 0571321682 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
Horatio Nelson is Britain's greatest naval hero; Trafalgar, in 1805, her greatest naval victory. Nelson and Napoleon, first published in 2005, is the story of how Britannia came to rule the waves for more than a hundred years. Christopher Lee re-examines the myths of Trafalgar, plotting Napoleon's overweening ambition to invade England and Nelson's single-minded dedication to seeking glory. He shows how Villeneuve had worked out Nelson's famous plan of attack, and demonstrates how the battle could easily have turned the other way. Lee also paints a vivid picture of the protagonists: particularly of the creation of a national hero in Nelson and his intense rivalry with Napoleon. 'Christopher Lee's vivid and painstaking account cuts through the folklore, replacing it with wonderful insights into early nineteenth-century Britain and Europe.' Daily Express
Author: James Davey Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300217323 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 457
Book Description
Battles, blockades, convoys, raids: An “impressive” account of how the indefatigable British Royal Navy ensured Napoleon’s ultimate defeat (International Journal of Military History). Horatio Nelson’s celebrated victory over the French at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 presented Britain with an unprecedented command of the seas. Yet the Royal Navy’s role in the struggle against Napoleonic France was far from over. This groundbreaking book asserts that, contrary to the accepted notion that the Battle of Trafalgar essentially completed the Navy’s task, the war at sea actually intensified over the next decade, ceasing only with Napoleon’s final surrender. In this dramatic account of naval contributions between 1803 and 1815, James Davey offers original and exciting insights into the Napoleonic wars and Britain’s maritime history. Encompassing Trafalgar, the Peninsular War, the War of 1812, the final campaign against Napoleon, and many lesser known but likewise crucial moments, the book sheds light on the experiences of individuals high and low, from admiral and captain to sailor and cabin boy. The cast of characters also includes others from across Britain—dockyard workers, politicians, civilians—who made fundamental contributions to the war effort, and in so doing, both saved the nation and shaped Britain’s history.
Author: Roy Adkins Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 9780143037958 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 436
Book Description
An explosive chronicle of history's greatest sea battle, from the co-author of the forthcoming Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege in British History (March 2018) In the tradition of Antony Beevor's Stalingrad, Nelson's Trafalgar presents the definitive blow-by-blow account of the world's most famous naval battle, when the British Royal Navy under Lord Horatio Nelson dealt a decisive blow to the forces of Napoleon. The Battle of Trafalgar comes boldly to life in this definitive work that re-creates those five momentous, earsplitting hours with unrivaled detail and intensity.
Author: Adam Nicolson Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0060753617 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 369
Book Description
In Seize the Fire, Adam Nicolson, author of the widely acclaimed God's Secretaries, takes the great naval battle of Trafalgar, fought between the British and Franco-Spanish fleets in October 1805, and uses it to examine our idea of heroism and the heroic. Is violence a necessary aspect of the hero? And daring? Why did the cult of the hero flower in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in a way it hadn't for two hundred years? Was the figure of Nelson—intemperate, charming, theatrical, anxious, impetuous, considerate, indifferent to death and danger, inspirational to those around him, and, above all, fixed on attack and victory—an aberration in Enlightenment England? Or was the greatest of all English military heroes simply the product of his time, "the conjurer of violence" that England, at some level, deeply needed? It is a story rich with modern resonance. This was a battle fought for the control of a global commercial empire. It was won by the emerging British world power, which was widely condemned on the continent of Europe as "the arrogant usurper of the freedom of the seas." Seize the Fire not only vividly describes the brutal realities of battle but enters the hearts and minds of the men who were there; it is a portrait of a moment, a close and passionately engaged depiction of a frame of mind at a turning point in world history.
Author: Roy Adkins Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0735221634 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 482
Book Description
A rip-roaring account of the dramatic four-year siege of Britain’s Mediterranean garrison by Spain and France—an overlooked key to the British loss in the American Revolution For more than three and a half years, from 1779 to 1783, the tiny territory of Gibraltar was besieged and blockaded, on land and at sea, by the overwhelming forces of Spain and France. It became the longest siege in British history, and the obsession with saving Gibraltar was blamed for the loss of the American colonies in the War of Independence. Located between the Mediterranean and Atlantic, on the very edge of Europe, Gibraltar was a place of varied nationalities, languages, religions, and social classes. During the siege, thousands of soldiers, civilians, and their families withstood terrifying bombardments, starvation, and disease. Very ordinary people lived through extraordinary events, from shipwrecks and naval battles to an attempted invasion of England and a daring sortie out of Gibraltar into Spain. Deadly innovations included red-hot shot, shrapnel shells, and a barrage from immense floating batteries. This is military and social history at its best, a story of soldiers, sailors, and civilians, with royalty and rank and file, workmen and engineers, priests, prisoners of war, spies, and surgeons, all caught up in a struggle for a fortress located on little more than two square miles of awe-inspiring rock. Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege in British History is an epic page-turner, rich in dramatic human detail—a tale of courage, endurance, intrigue, desperation, greed, and humanity. The everyday experiences of all those involved are brought vividly to life with eyewitness accounts and expert research.
Author: Laurence Brockliss Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 019151604X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
Despite the significant role played by the health and fitness of the British crews in Nelson's defeat of the Combined Fleet in 1805, little has been written hitherto about the naval surgeon in the era of the long war against France. This book is intended to fill the gap. Sir William Beatty (1773-1842) was surgeon of the Victory at Trafalgar. An Ulsterman from Londonderry, he had joined the navy in 1791. Before being warranted to Nelson's flagship, Beatty had served upon ten other warships, and survived a yellow fever epidemic, court martial, and shipwreck to share in the capture of a Spanish treasure ship. After Trafalgar, he became Physician of the Channel Fleet, based at Plymouth, and eventually Physician to Greenwich Hospital, where he served until his retirement in 1838. As the book makes clear in drawing upon an extensive prosopographical database, Beatty's career until 1805 was representative of the experience of the approximately 2,000 naval surgeons who joined the navy in the course of the war. The first part of the biography provides a detailed and scholarly introduction to the professional education, training, and work of the naval surgeon. But after 1805 Beatty became a member of the service elite, and his career becomes interesting for other reasons. In the final decades of his life, Beatty was far more than a senior naval physician. As a Fellow of the Royal Society, director of the Clerical and Medical Insurance Company, and director of the London to Greenwich Railway, he was a prominent figure in London's business and scientific community, who used his growing wealth to build a large collection of books and manuscripts. His later life is testimony to the much wider contribution that some naval and army medical officers made to the development of the new Britain of the nineteenth century. In Beatty's case, too, the contribution was original. By publishing in 1807 his carefully crafted Authentic Narrative of the Death of Lord Nelson , he was instrumental in forging the myth of the hero's last hours, which has become a part of the national consciousness and has helped to define for generations the concept of Britishness.
Author: Nicholas Best Publisher: Phoenix ISBN: 9780297846222 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
Nicholas Best is a master story teller, the author of several highly successul novels as well as serious history books. He was the FINANCIAL TIMES fiction critic for ten years and reviews regularly for the SUNDAY TIMES and TLS. In his hands the story of Trafalgar comes to life as never before. Beginning with a vivid recreation of Napoleon's army assembling at Boulogne for the invasion of England, he tells how the French fleet joined with their Spanish allies and set out for a decisive battle with the Royal Navy. Following events through the eyes of eyewitnesses on the gundeck as well as the admirals' cabins, he takes us to the Mediterranean and the West Indies and back to the coast of Spain as the rival fleets manoeuvre for advantage. Then follows his gripping minute-by-minute account of the actual battle: a truly murderous affair as the rival fleets trade cannon shots as point blank range. For the fans of MASTER AND COMMANDER, this combines absolute authenticity with real page-turning style.
Author: Roy Adkins Publisher: Hachette UK ISBN: 1405513446 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 332
Book Description
This is the true story of the Battle of Trafalgar, Britain's most significant sea battle, as seen through the smoke-hazed gunports of the fighting ships. In an atmosphere of choking fumes from cannon and musket fire, amid noise so intense it was almost tangible, the crews of the British, French and Spanish ships did their best to carry out their allotted tasks. For over five hours they were in constant danger from a terrifying array of iron and lead missiles fired from enemy guns, as well as the deadly wooden splinters smashed from the ships' hulls by the cannon-balls. While the men manoeuvred the ships and kept the cannons firing, the women helped the surgeons tend the sick or helped the boys - the 'powder monkeys' - in the hazardous job of carrying gunpowder cartridges from the central magazine to the gun decks. Trafalgar set the seal on British naval supremacy, which became the mainspring for the growth of the British Empire, and in the short term not only prevented Napoleon from invading Britain, but also enabled Britain and its Continental allies to mount the campaign that would eventually defeat the French Emperor: without Trafalgar there would be no Waterloo.
Author: Alan Schom Publisher: Scribner ISBN: Category : Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815 Languages : en Pages : 464
Book Description
Presents the battle of Trafalgar in it's historical scope and context. Quotes extensively from journals and sources and brings to life the whole story of the British-French conflict, at sea and on land, at the dawn of the nineteenth century.
Author: Roy Adkins
Author: Christopher Lee
Author: James Davey
Author: Roy Adkins
Author: Adam Nicolson
Author: Roy Adkins
Author: Laurence Brockliss
Author: Nicholas Best
Author: Roy Adkins
Author: Alan Schom