The Trafalgar Companion: A Guide To History's Most Famous Sea Battle And The Life Of Admiral Lord Nelson

by Mark Adkin

The Battle of Trafalgar was fought on October 21, 1805, off Cape Trafalgar on the Spanish coast, between the combined fleets of Spain and France and the Royal Navy. The last great sea action of the period, it established British naval supremacy and ended the threat of French invasion. The Trafalgar Companion not only chronicles the campaign and the battle itself in unprecedented detail, but it also charts Admiral Lord Nelson’s life and career as well as his death at the height of the battle. Providing a wealth of background details on contemporary naval life, seamanship, gunnery, tactics, and much else, the narrative is supplemented by informative sidebars, 200 color illustrations, and stage-by-stage battle diagrams.

Genres: History, Military History, Naval History, Nonfiction, Reference, Nautical

560 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2005

About the author

Mark Adkin became a professional soldier in 1956. After leaving the British Army he was one of the last British District officers (in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands) and as the Caribbean Operations Staff Officer he participated in the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. He has written several books on military subjects, including Urgent Fury, Goose Green, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads and The Charge.

Reviews

[John Racioppi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A reference, biography, scholarly, beautifully illustrated, and micro history all rolled into one! Well-researched with engaging storytelling, complexity and an encyclopedic historical analysis told from all viewpoints. The narratives that double as a biography of Lord Nelson are extremely investing, even adding mini biographies of Emma Hamilton, Fanny Nelson and so on. The artwork and maps made it easier to visualize what it was like in that period, which is something I think more history books should do.

[Bobble Hat · Rating 4 out of 5]

All manner of facts and trivia, not just on Trafalgar itself but the navies, leaders and ships involved. Not really my period so a Napoleonic buff might be less impressed, but a great book to dip in and out of

[John Caviglia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me confess at the outset ... I did not finish, nor indeed sequentially read this book cover to cover. But then, it is an ad hoc encyclopedia, which assembles everything one might conceivably want to know about the battle of Trafalgar, and therefore includes much which is for the specialist and hard-core fan. For example, it has a section on signal flags, and the actual signals sent during the battle, as well as an account, historical and physical (plus pictorial rendering) of absolutely every ship which took part.... And all this is strangely interlarded into a biography of Lord Nelson (which I skimmed), so that first one reads about the hero, then about some aspect of sailing ships of war, then back to the hero, and so on....

What led me to this reference book is the fact that I recently finished reading Arturo Pérez-Reverte's Cabo Trafalgar--a novelistic rendering of that battle from the Spanish perspective, which I very much enjoyed--and I was interested in seeing how faithful Pérez-Reverte was to historical events (given that he does such things as invent a Spanish ship which did not exist). My conclusion is that he did his job brilliantly as a novelist, both in portraying fact and in his inventions as a means of conveying this absolute disaster for the Spanish from their point of view.

That said, I am also a devoted fan of the works of C. S. Forester and Patrick O'Brien, and I found much of interest here about sailing ships of war that I wish I had known before I read them. Also, as I am about to Embark on Bernard Cornwell, I might mention that Mark Adkin also has written a Sharpe Companion, which I assume to be a similarly encyclopedic tome based on Conrnwell's novels. If it is anything like The Trafalgar Companion, I will definitely be looking into it also.

[Dirk]

Excellent overview on the man, the period and the ships