Hornblower’s Navy: Life at Sea
in the Age of Nelson
By Cheryl Bolen
Hornblower’s Navy: Life at Sea in the Age of Nelson
Steve Pope
Welcome Rain, New York, 1998
$22.95, 111 pages
For its information, brevity, and wonderful illustrations,
Hornblower’s Navy is highly recommended. It may offer just 111
pages, but these are oversized pages, as large as those in a college
yearbook, and hardly a single page is free from pictures, many of them
in full color.
By naming the book after C.S. Forester’s fictional character, Pope
was avoided too close an association with any real naval hero of the
era, such as Lord Nelson, and was free to give a broader view of the
navy from every perspective.
Because of its easy-to-read style and abundance of illustrations,
this book reminds one of a children’s primer, albeit a very slick
primer.
The five chapters are on the Royal Navy, fighting ships and
weapons, men of the Navy, life and death on the ocean, and the Navy at
war.
The various types of ships and officers are explained and
illustrated, and a glossary of naval terms is included.
This article was first published in The Quizzing Glass in
March 2008.
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