Nigel Jones
Rum, Sodomy and the Lash
The Line Upon a Wind: An Intimate History of the Last and Greatest War Fought at Sea Under Sail, 1793–1815
By Noel Mostert
Jonathan Cape 773pp £25 order from our bookshop
Cochrane the Dauntless: The Life and Adventures of Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 1775–1860
By David Cordingly
Bloomsbury 420pp £20 order from our bookshop
Storm and Conquest: The Battle for the Indian Ocean, 1809
By Stephen Taylor
Faber & Faber 380pp £20 order from our bookshop
It took an American Admiral, A T Mahan, to point out the truism that control of the seas, and of the trade that sails upon them, is the key to the hegemony of any self-respecting superpower. Mahan, writing in the 1890s, was analysing the outcome of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, a truly global conflict that Noel Mostert, writing more than a century later, rightly calls ‘the first Great War’. Britain not only won the wars, but the wooden walls of its Navy scored such an annihilating victory as to guarantee that Britannia ruled the waves – and hence the world – for another 100 years.
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