Life in Nelson's Navy

(book)

By Jon Williams

Dudley Pope, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1981. 279 pages. $14.95.

Mr. Pope is perhaps best-known as the creator of Lord Ramage, a fictional hero of the Age of Nelson. He is also a naval historian of the era, with books on the Graf Spee, the Byng court-martial, the Hermione mutiny, the battle of Copenhagen, and a biography of Henry Morgan. His books are brisk, well-written, evocative of the era, and often opinionated. They are free of the usual cant and jargon associated with academic turf defense, and also loaded with useful data, and for that we can all be grateful.

Life in Nelson's Navy is good Pope, and comprehensive Pope at that. The author begins with a brief social history of England at the opening of the Napoleonic Wars, putting the Royal Navy into its context, and then begins, topic by topic, to assemble his portrait of England's wooden walls and the men who sailed them.

Pope devotes some time to the organization and personnel of the Admiralty, then devotes a chapter to explaining just how wooden ships were built. Pope's chapters are loaded with data of the sort guaranteed to establish his authority in the field. (30,000 treenails were used to build the Bellerophron, and 30 tons of copper bolts. Repairs to the Astrea frigate in 1784 cost 3,414 pounds. Et cetera.) In spite of the thousands of details thrown at the reader, the book remains entirely readable.

The duties of the ship's officers are then examined, from captain to purser, giving details as to uniforms, pensions, and salaries. Focus then shifts to the ranks, with information as to the life of the ordinary sailors, including such hazards as the press gang, the cat of nine tails, and the Articles of War. The daily routine of the ship is examined, and then Mr. Pope continues his examination of the era with reference to the ship's armament, the signal books, prize money, courts-martial and discipline, and "the real enemy" - disease.

Mr. Pope occasionally gives vent to intemperate opinions, usually sardonic comparisons of the brutality of the Napoleonic period as contrasted with our own allegedly more civilized and enlightened era. ("... wounded seamen in the war against Napoleon were abandoned with their disabilities... after the end of [World War II] every man receiving a British pension for disabilities of 45 percent or less... had the pension stopped.")

The wealth of detail is extraordinary, and the book is remarkable for packing so much information in so few pages. That such a huge scope was chosen for the book inevitably meant that a few things were going to be left out: the evolution of naval tactics, for example, is given short shrift, and Mr. Pope is of the old school as regards the primacy of the Fighting Instructions in 18th-Century naval warfare. Because the book restricts itself to the Napoleonic period it leaves out the earlier periods in which the institutions and customs under discussion actually evolved. Still, within its self-chosen limits, this book remains a joy and revelation for anyone interested in the era.

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