The Sea Warriors: The Fighting Captains and Their Ships in the Age of Nelson

by Richard Woodman

A spellbinding true story traces the lives of the greatest sea captains of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries including Lord Cochrane, Charles Brisbane, and Nisbet Willoughby, whose daring exploits such as blockading ports, intercepting the enemy's trade, and protecting merchant ships from attacks, had a profound impact on maritime history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Naval History, Nautical

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Captain Richard Martin Woodman was an English novelist and naval historian who retired in 1997 from a 37-year nautical career, mainly working for Trinity House, to write full-time.

Reviews

[David Eppenstein · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a surprising disappointment. I am fond of books in the Age of Fighting Sail genre and I am particularly fond of Richard Woodman's books. I have read all of Woodman's Drinkwater series in this genre and he has many other naval adventures and even some other historical fictions of merit. I read and enjoyed the short series he wrote about General Monck and the English Restoration. So when I found this book at a local book fair last Summer buying it was a no brainer. Now that I've finished it I can only express how grateful I am to be finished.

In the Forward of the book the author recounts his childhood introduction to the books and authors of sailing fiction from the Napoleonic Era. He acknowledges a debt to the likes of O'Brian, Forester, and others for the adventures found in the pages of their novels. He also points out the wealth of information to be found for these stories in the archives of England. However, he seems to believe that there is an unpaid debt to be satisfied to those real life heroes whose exploits have been used for popular fiction. It is the apparent goal of this book to make known the lives and deeds of those men that have gone unheralded until now. Sounds like a great idea doesn't it? Sadly, this book is an example of something better said than done.

Woodman is by no means a poor writer. The book is definitely well written and this book's appeal to a fan of this genre could be likened to that of a kid locked in a candy store. Well we all know that too much candy and lead to seriously upset stomachs. Apparently too much naval action can lead to serious confusion and even boredom. This book is not a history and takes little note of any overall strategy or tactics if there were any. From the way the various naval engagements are reported these actions were nothing more than a war of attrition and blockade involving England, France, Holland, Spain, Russia, Denmark, and the U.S. The book is chapter after chapter of one naval battle after another. Since the taking of prizes was a significant goal captured ships were frequently brought into the navy the capturing country and frequently under the ship's original name. That meant that in many, actually most, of the actions described you have English ships with French names fighting French ships with English names and if that wasn't enough some of the captured ships were replaced by ships with the same names. Then the author jumps time periods when he shifts from one geographic location to another or when he chooses to discuss the career of a certain specific naval personage of the era. I would never have guessed I could overdose on a book about historic naval combat but I did. It was all just way too much even for a truly dedicated fan of the genre. I can only describe this book as a catalog of naval actions taking place during the late 18th and early 19th centuries and its primary worth is as a research source for other authors looking for material for a future addition to this subject area.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

When writing history, there are two different strategies. You can write at a very high level, talking about overall themes of events, or you can write from the trenches, giving the blow-by-blow. This book, unfortunately, chooses a middle route, giving just enough detail to be really boring.

So I now "know" (although I doubt I'll remember, as they all blend together) about dozens or perhaps even a hundred extremely minor naval battles between ships that are nearly interchangeable and quite a few officers who might as well be interchangeable, too. He relates the details of each battle. But not from a personal viewpoint of a combatant, so it isn't exciting. Nor does he explain why the commanders chose either their tactics or strategy, so you don't really learn much. Nor does he explain in much detail how the overall war creates the circumstance of any given battle, nor how the battle influences the war.

My guess is that the latter is missing because for the most part, these battles don't influence the war. Woodward seems to have made a very deliberate choice to not include anything that is important. Perhaps he feels others have covered the important battles, so he shouldn't have to. But the destruction of Napoleon's fleet in Egypt is only alluded to, the Battle of Copenhagen gets about two lines, and Trafalgar itself receives a paragraph. We get an entire chapter on the mopping up after Trafalgar, though. Nelson basically doesn't appear in this book. Instead, we learn a great deal about the time this one minor French captain beat an Indiaman, and the time this other British guy beat an American ship. None of which is important.

The glossary at the back is pretty great, though.

[Reni · Rating 4 out of 5]

As one can gather from the description this book focuses not on the spectacular fleet battles between 1793 and 1815 (even they of course get mentioned), but of the dashing and even more exciting actions of the cruiser captains of the time, less famous but no less deserving of attention. The book's focus is on British cruisers, but provides a few tales about notable American and French captains as well, happily some of them even outside the context of the war of 1812.

I didn't encounter any new, mind shattering revelations in this book, but if you are interested in a few exciting sea tales, horrible or heroic, this is the book for you.

The narrative style of this volume is quite readable, certainly not dry at all, in a popular science style, easy to read not only for sailing enthusiasts. In fact, my only major gripe with this book is that it is missing a scholarly bibliography. The author encloses a list of sources for his work, with a few comments for the interested reader on whether these books make good further reading; but the sources of direct quotes in the volume's text are not identified, which stops me from awarding this book full marks.

However, the book also comes with a very handy index and one of the more useful quick guides to age of sail terms I have encountered so far. If you are looking for an introduction to cruiser action in the Age of Sail The Sea Warriors is a good book to start with.

[Alex Helling · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Seeing that the gun-brig, Cerbere, lay athwart their passage, a spring on her cable and her crew at quarters, Coghlan ran his boat directly at the brig’s stern and jumped aboard. Here he stumbled into a trawl net, and thus entrapped, received a pike-thrust in his thigh. Repulsed by the eighty-odd men in the gun-brig, his fellow boarders were soon forced back into their cutter. A second attempt to board was also defeated, and several British seamen were thrown into the water. Incredibly, Coghlan went at the enemy a third time…” (p148)

Today the Napoleonic wars at sea are really only known for the great battles of Nelson. But at the time it was the daring actions of the frigate captains that caught the public’s imagination. Fleet actions were few and far between, but frigates, sloops and other smaller warships were tackling their opposite numbers, taking enemy convoys, and launching daring attacks on the French coast regularly for the whole length of the war. Their actions brought acclaim while the main battle fleets spent much of their time on blockade Richard Woodman in The Sea Warriors seeks to chronicle the daring do of these men and their ships..

Pros
Lots of action
Readable, makes the tactics of the actions understandable.

Cons
Things run together - needs space to breathe.
Could be more focused on individuals.

This is essentially a narrative of smaller naval actions during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars - very much told from the British side. There is a lot to pack in and it goes quickly. Woodman is better known as a novelist so it is not surprising that The Sea Warriors is quite easy to read. Unusually however I am not convinced that the entirely chronological narrative is the best approach here. The actions described are very disparate, spread out right across the globe. The result is that we get a wide cast list of captains that keep popping in and out of view and it is difficult to keep track of the context each of them is in. I therefore can't help thinking doing chapters on individual captains might not have been a more manageable approach.

If you like lots of sea action then this is the book for you; it is an almost continuous series of actions throughout. There is barely time to pause to set out the situation that started the fight before we are into it. The actions are pretty well described and the reader can usually understand the movements the ships are making, the tactics they are taking and why. It would however benefit from being more personalised with more accounts of individuals in the action rather than just what the ships did. In that sense ‘the sea warriors’ is misnamed; we don't get very much of what these people were like, or in some cases even exactly what they did as individuals rather than representing the ship they captained.

The downside of this is all the actions run together. It does feel a bit like one thing after another. It is a bit breathless without time to learn much of the context of a captain, the situation his ship is in on its station, or what the French are doing before we are into the account of the fight. And when it is over we dash off to the next. It also is problematic in that this is not how it was, patrolling was clearly almost entirely boredom and tedium rather than dramatic chases and action, and to be fair Woodman mentions this, but his account certainly does not give much impression of it.

Not everything that is context is entirely neglected; Woodman does do quite well in describing how the ships work in amongst the action. This is necessary to fully understand the tactics and constraints on warfare that the captains are working under. Though this is very much a secondary part.

One of my bugbears for history books, the sources, is a problem too. There are no footnotes. Though Woodman does provide a bibliography, and William James The Naval History of Great Britain is mentioned in the foreword (pxv) as providing the bare bones of the actions so presumably it is grounded in that multi-volume 19th century work.

The Sea Warriors is one to get if you want the action, rather than a rounded look at sea warfare in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

[Joe B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice naval stories of the British vs. the French.

[Stuart]

A bit tedious at times in recounting battle after battle, but still a good overall history of the Napoleonic wars at sea from the British perspective.

[Ron Denton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting, but also disappointing. I was expecting more of a complete story, with plenty of actual historical events. The events are there, but there is almost no thread connecting them all. The author/compiler does give the reader some chronological and strategic organization, but little else. You can pretty much just open the book anywhere, read a few pages, then put it down again, without any real need to bookmark it. Most of the "encounters" last no more than a page or three from first sighting to striking colors. It is interesting in the sense that we do get to find out the real basis for many of the often bold and brazen actions that are written up in fictional stories and attributed to Bolitho, Lewry, Kydd, etc.
Good book to keep in the "head" as you can start and end a "segment" of the book in a very short time.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book and a long read. Talks about the individual cruiser captains and their actions in the Napoleonic wars. Does get involved in the details which is good. Took me so long to read as I read it in chunks at a time.