Navies of the
Napoleonic Era

(book)

by Jim Womer

BY Otta von Pivka, Hippocrene Books, Inc., New York. $24.95 (272 Pages).

This is yet another Napoleonic work by the prolific German, Otto von Pivka. This tome attempts to detail the navies of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars between 1792-1815.

After devoting short section to describing the ships and men of the period, including an intriguing account of the building of a British ship of the line, the book progresses into a lengthy but cursory overview of the naval engagements for the period 1792-1815. Then follows a section on each of the National Navies which focuses on the uniforms of their sailors and sometimes their marines. The work concludes with two appendices detailing ships lost by the various powers between 1792-1815, which is perhaps the most useful part of the entire work. To his credit, the author has made an effort to tie naval operations into political developments and the military side of events.

While it seems to me that von Pivka has done his usual thorough job in presenting a mass of data and information on the period, my ultimate reaction as a wargamer to this work is quite mixed. While the larger fleet actions are at least mapped and usually accompanied bY an order of battle, most of the smaller actions are not and this severely limits the usefulness of these actions as potential wargames scenarios.

A more fundamental weakness involves the use of sources, and here the author appears to be relying heavily on English and German material. As a result, the finished work is very uneven in coverage. The Russians, Danes, Dutch and Austrian fleets are well covered and several detailed orders of battle provided. Similiarly, the British fleet is very will covered during the period of the Revolutionary Wars, but that coverage slips markedly after Trafalgar.

Apparently as a result of correspondence with national maritime museums, good sections are produced on the Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish and Neapolitan names, although these sections are much less exact than the first group.

The first problem is that coverage of the French and Spanish fleets, respectively the second and third largest in the world, is only fair Although a French order of battle for 1793 is given, there is nothing comparable for the Spanish navy at any period and typically, no order of battle for Cape St. Vincent (1797). For the French, coverage during the Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) was solid if brief and lacked any real insight into the problems of French naval strategy.

After Trafalgar (1809) and some minor commerce raiding operations (it should be noted that the American naval side of the War of 1812 is well covered) This leaves the reader with the mistaken impression that after 1805 the French fleet did not amount to much. Unfortunately for the British, and not withstanding the writings of some popular Anglophile naval historians, this was not the case.

Under Napoleon's incessant prodding, the French undertook a massive effort to rebuild their shattered fleets between 1806-1812; while this effort was ultimately curtailed by the disastrous Russian campaign and the resultant manpower drain of 1813, if is not so much as even mentioned in the work. This French naval activity did occur and is discussed in overview in Richard Glover's Britain At Bay. Not unlike the mystery of the Spanish Napoleonic Navy, it appears that the story of the rebirth of the French fleet after Trafalger must await retelling by another author.

If your interest runs to painting sailors, then this work is definitely for you. Otherwise, unless you must have a overview survey book on Napoleonic naval warfare, you could easily avoid purchasing it. Regretfully, very little new and useful information is presented here, much that is already available in your local library.

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