"Book recommendations please" Topic

I'm still relatively new to Age of Sail, and certainly new to the idea of fleet actions – like many, my focus hitherto has been small ship actions, for which I have the excellent 'Sea Warriors' as my touchstone.

Can anyone recommend a good book covering the larger actions please? I'm looking for a sort of Woodman for ships of the line, if that makes sense? Ideally it should be focussed on the campaigns and battles, with maps of the movements, deployments and orders of battle.

I don't need the political side – I already have some good books on the political and social side of the era.

Most books, naturally, are dominated by Nelson and everything revolves around him, so I'm looking for something that gives equal prominence to the other major commanders, British, Spanish and French.

I'm looking at several books on Amazon, but the descriptions and reviews don't really tell me if they are the books I'm looking for.

Many thanks,

Nick

The Trafalgar Companion by Mark Adkin is a great place to start.

The books by Sam Willis on the naval side of the American War of Independance and the Napoleonic era are also excellent.

+1 Big Red

I quite enjoyed Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail by Bernard Ireland

link

Not sure if this is quite what you want, but have you considered Bryan Tunstall's Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail? And there's always John Clerk of Eldin's contemporary armchair tactics (An Inquiry … ) But for details of actual actions there was a series of profusely illustrated large hardbacks covering the AWI and the French wars – trying to recall the titles as I don't have them to hand!

The Chatham Pictorial History series, such as this (pretty cheap!):

link

Hi Nick,
A couple of suggestions …

1 – Take a subscription to "Naval Review". They maintain a downloadable PDF archive, accessible to members, of every article published over the Review's one hundred year publication history. It is a treasure trove of RN history in general. In terms of the Age of Sail you will find a number of very detailed (and lengthy) monographs on major AoS campaigns and battles. It might still be possible to scan the archive contents as a non-member.

2 – Go to the British Library EThOS on-line archive –
ethos.bl.uk/Home.do
You must register yourself, but the service is totally free.
You will find Sam Willis's doctoral thesis free for D/L. The original doctoral thesis of John Brooks is also there.
A bit of time spent searching the collection under keyword "naval" will turn up a number of documents that will doubtless be of interest. Everything selected is immediately sent as a PDF download to your email … and it is fast.

Re big naval battles, I find the older 19thC histories useful; check archive.org for these books, so you don't need to pay for them -

> "Naval History of Great Britain" by Wm James – Volumes I-IV cover from 1794 through 1814. His coverage of the Glorious 1st of June is pretty good.

> "The Royal Navy" by W L Clowes (7 volumes?)

> "Battles of the British Navy" by Joseph Allen (2 volumes)
Covers from the late Dutch Wars through Navarino.

- – - – -

"The History of Naval Tactics" by RAdm S S Robison USN – A good reference if you can find it for a reasonable price, written by a former Commander in Chief of the U S Fleet.

"Admiral Satan" by Roderick Cavalliero – the only book I know of that focuses upon Suffren's Coromandel Campaign. Excellent reference, but hard to find and not cheap.

"Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail" by Brian Tunstall (did we talk about this once in the recent past?)

"Nelson and the Nile" by Brian Lavery.

"Admiral De Grasse and American Independence", by Charles Lee Lewis

"The Naval Campaigns of Count De Grasse during the American Revolution", Tornquist (translation by Amandus Johnson)

"A Narrative of the Battle of St Vincent" by Col. Drinkwater Bethune

"The Struggle for Sea Power – A Naval History of the American Revolution" by Sam Willis

"British Admirals of the Eighteenth Century" by John Creswell.

"The French Navy and American Independence – A Study of Arms and Diplomacy 1774-1787" by Jonathan R Dull.

- – - – -

And the old popular histories, inexpensive nowadays -
"Battle of Saint Vincent and Camperdown" by Christopher Lloyd.
"The Glorious First of June" by Oliver Warner.
"The Battle of the Nile" by Oliver Warner.

FWIW

B

Sorry for the delay in coming back and expressing thanks.

Colkitto – thanks for the link – ordered!

Blutarski – brilliant suggestions, thank you. I hadn't thought about C19th books on the subject but there are so many gems online (I'm currently reading through 'An Essay on Naval Tactics' by John Clerk which has an absolute wealth of technical detail useful to wargaming and analysis of many engagements.

I do have a copy of 'Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail' by Brian Tunstall but it seems to have been misplaced during a house move.

Cheers to all,

Nick

Thank you so much for the recommendations! I was looking for something like this to read, because I have a creative writing class, and I need to read after writing a paper. So such books are perfect for me. I like such tasks because I still have difficulties with writing, and I use the help of https://essays.edubirdie.com/research-proposal-writing-service pretty often because I don't want to miss the deadline. But with such tasks, it's easier, because if I like what I read, I like the task, then it's not a big problem for me to finish it.