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In the Hour of Victory: SHORTLISTED FOR THE MARITIME MEDIA AWARDS
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 MARITIME MEDIA AWARDSBetween 1794 and 1815 the Royal Navy repeatedly crushed her enemies at sea in a period of military dominance that equals any in history. When Napoleon eventually died in exile, the Lords of the Admiralty ordered that the original dispatches from seven major fleet battles - The Glorious First of June (1794), St Vincent (1797), Camperdown (1797), The Nile (1798), Copenhagen (1801), Trafalgar (1805) and San Domingo (1806) - should be gathered together and presented to the Nation. These letters, written by Britain's admirals, captains, surgeons and boatswains and sent back home in the midst of conflict, were bound in an immense volume, to be admired as a jewel of British history. Sam Willis, one of Britain's finest naval historians, stumbled upon this collection by chance in the British Library in 2010 and soon found out that only a handful of people knew of its existence. The rediscovery of these first-hand reports, and the vivid commentary they provide, has enabled Willis to reassesses the key engagements in extraordinary and revelatory detail, and to paint an enthralling series of portraits of the Royal Navy's commanders at the time. In a compelling and dramatic narrative, In the Hour of Victory tells the story of these naval triumphs as never before, and allows us to hear once more the officer's voices as they describe the battles that made Britain great.
585 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 1, 2013
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230 people want to read
About the author
Sam Willis
50 books55 followersDr Sam Willis is a maritime historian and archaeologist and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
He is the author of the best-selling Hearts of Oak Trilogy and the Fighting Ships Series. He has consulted on maritime history for many clients including the BBC, Channel 4, NBC America and Christie's.
Sam's work is coloured by his knowledge and experience of seamanship. Sam's unique approach to maritime history and his vivid style of writing has led to him being described as 'A Nautical Tour de Force'.
He is the author of the best-selling Hearts of Oak Trilogy and the Fighting Ships Series. He has consulted on maritime history for many clients including the BBC, Channel 4, NBC America and Christie's.
Sam's work is coloured by his knowledge and experience of seamanship. Sam's unique approach to maritime history and his vivid style of writing has led to him being described as 'A Nautical Tour de Force'.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 19, 2017
In the Age of Sail, communications were primitive and excruciatingly slow. Battles were fought, crucial conflicts were engaged, and news of the event as well as the results would take weeks to become known. Commanders were required to notify the Admiralty of engagements and the results by the most expeditious manner possible. Communications inevitably took the form of letters from the Admiral commanding to the Secretary of the Admiralty for transmittal to the Lords of the Admiralty. These letters (“dispatches”) would detail the battle and its results, casualties, damage reports and observations on the performance of subordinate officers. Each dispatch illuminated the character and priorities of the respective Admiral commanding and opens a window into the nature and character of warships and war at sea in the unique Age of Sail. The original dispatches are preserved, collated and bound into a collection in the British Library where Willis stumbled across them by chance. From this original source, he has selected seven Fleet battles fought in the critical period between 1794 and 1806 when Britain was engaged in wars variously with France, Spain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Russia and others, individually and in shifting alliances. The seven Fleet battles are:
The Glorious First of June
St. Vincent
Camperdown
The Nile
Copenhagen
Trafalgar
San Domingo
Willis discusses each in turn, in context politically, strategically and with a perceptive eye to personalities, relative differences in Naval equipment and capabilities, and the world situation as it affected the adversaries. It is a wonderful work – compelling, engrossing and deeply illustrative of the times, the cultures and the realities of war ships at sea in that time. In his own words, “It was an intense sliver of history, a period of unmatched ferocity at sea, a period that characterized and shaped the history of the and a period populated by men whose achievements and sacrifices deserve the widest possible recognition.”
He reproduces the original dispatches transposed into a readable font, annotates the content and uses them to explain the wider significance of the events and the related details such as tactics, damage reports, casualty figures. He personifies and makes real the people, many of them major historical figures, using their own words. It is a superb and richly rewarding immersion in a unique and hugely important historical era. It is just a wonderful reading experience written in an engaging and appealing style. It is exceptionally rewarding, informative and revealing. You will learn things you did not know!
The Glorious First of June
St. Vincent
Camperdown
The Nile
Copenhagen
Trafalgar
San Domingo
Willis discusses each in turn, in context politically, strategically and with a perceptive eye to personalities, relative differences in Naval equipment and capabilities, and the world situation as it affected the adversaries. It is a wonderful work – compelling, engrossing and deeply illustrative of the times, the cultures and the realities of war ships at sea in that time. In his own words, “It was an intense sliver of history, a period of unmatched ferocity at sea, a period that characterized and shaped the history of the and a period populated by men whose achievements and sacrifices deserve the widest possible recognition.”
He reproduces the original dispatches transposed into a readable font, annotates the content and uses them to explain the wider significance of the events and the related details such as tactics, damage reports, casualty figures. He personifies and makes real the people, many of them major historical figures, using their own words. It is a superb and richly rewarding immersion in a unique and hugely important historical era. It is just a wonderful reading experience written in an engaging and appealing style. It is exceptionally rewarding, informative and revealing. You will learn things you did not know!
October 11, 2014
This is an astonishingly immediate compilation of dispatches from the naval commanders of the days of fighting sail. We all know the great novel series set during this time; here are the reports as written by the men who fought the historical actions, in the immediate aftermath of battle. I can almost smell the still-smouldering tar and canvas: my ears ring with the sound of hammers as urgent repairs are carried out. As always with battle accounts, the question arises: how did they do it? But they did.
May 23, 2014
When Willis discovered these dramatic documents on the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars, he decided to present them to the world with a truly dramatic flair. The result is engaging and fascinating! A really wonderful exposition of some important additions to British naval history!
August 12, 2021
Mr Willis’ works are always exceptional and this one is no different. However, instead of focussing on a specific moment in history, the author investigates how history was (quite literally) written. The British victories at sea paved the way for the creation of a mythology at home and away of naval invincibility; these news were brought and published by certain lucky officers, and the words that heralded the scale of the achieved success had been put down (generally) by the most senior man in the British fleet left standing, allowing them to decide how that victory should be presented.
This book covers victories that the Royal Navy itself thought worthy of remembering by compiling the dispatches in the 1820’s. Thus, the choice of which battles to include was made by the near-contemporaries of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars themselves. Included are the Glorious First of June, Camperdown, St Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar, and San Domingo. While the author doesn’t go into the battles in great detail to tell the reader how it went down, the main objectives of both sides are described along with the general strokes of what happened in what order (as much as we can determine). This makes it far more readable a description of naval combat for the average reader than most such stories.
There is, however, a fair bit of repetition. Mr Willis raises again and again the thought that these are point-of-view descriptions, made by flawed people in a state of shock (often enough). Yet, the analysis that the author takes from this is generally strong, including comments on the handwriting (and whether the admiral wrote their own letters or not). I felt that some of the explanations regarding the captains who did not perform well could have been expanded though I understand this was not the purpose of this book: yet, it felt as if the reader was given only a part of what is known when they read that someone was not employed again or a court-martial was convened, as often enough the result of that court-martial was not described. What would have been really interesting, in addition, are some of the defenses that the men who failed the rest of the fleet in these engagements would have made of their own behaviour.
Overall, however, this is a superb book! The author brings home a string of victories that was never as complete as the public could have wished for. Similarly, the author reveals the futility of defeating the navy of a land-power who could still move its troops around at will.
This review was originally posted on my blog.
This book covers victories that the Royal Navy itself thought worthy of remembering by compiling the dispatches in the 1820’s. Thus, the choice of which battles to include was made by the near-contemporaries of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars themselves. Included are the Glorious First of June, Camperdown, St Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar, and San Domingo. While the author doesn’t go into the battles in great detail to tell the reader how it went down, the main objectives of both sides are described along with the general strokes of what happened in what order (as much as we can determine). This makes it far more readable a description of naval combat for the average reader than most such stories.
There is, however, a fair bit of repetition. Mr Willis raises again and again the thought that these are point-of-view descriptions, made by flawed people in a state of shock (often enough). Yet, the analysis that the author takes from this is generally strong, including comments on the handwriting (and whether the admiral wrote their own letters or not). I felt that some of the explanations regarding the captains who did not perform well could have been expanded though I understand this was not the purpose of this book: yet, it felt as if the reader was given only a part of what is known when they read that someone was not employed again or a court-martial was convened, as often enough the result of that court-martial was not described. What would have been really interesting, in addition, are some of the defenses that the men who failed the rest of the fleet in these engagements would have made of their own behaviour.
Overall, however, this is a superb book! The author brings home a string of victories that was never as complete as the public could have wished for. Similarly, the author reveals the futility of defeating the navy of a land-power who could still move its troops around at will.
This review was originally posted on my blog.
August 14, 2024
If you are a fan of The British Empire, The British Navy, Admiral Nelson, or ANYTHING British, you may not like this book. When he intimated that Admiral Nelson was a racist for, in effect, calling the Spaniards' girlie-men I knew that was all for me!
I'd bought the Atlantic Books hardcover edition because it is so beautifully bound and has a three-foot-long multi-fold dust jacket worthy of framing... proving the old adage You Can't Judge a Book by its Cover.
I keep forgetting how much I really dislike this book... this is my third try to read it in the last five or six years and I resent the hour or so it takes each time to realize just how much I hate this book. But it will be my last attempt. I came close to throwing it into the fire, but I couldn't bring myself to do that with a beautiful book like this. But I have a neighbor I really dislike and so I'm going to anonymously leave it in his mail box..
I figured the guy who wrote this book must be a Frenchman for sure... they've hated the British and it's Navy for hundreds of years, first for defeating them in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and then for saving them twice in the 20th... But no, he's English. He's got to be one of those ultra rich socialist bleeding-heart liberals who hate the White Man for exporting civilization and religion to the rest of the world where the poor heathens would have lived out their live sin idyllic bliss.
We have some of them here too. Not in Texas of course, but there's plenty of them up in Noo York City.
I'd bought the Atlantic Books hardcover edition because it is so beautifully bound and has a three-foot-long multi-fold dust jacket worthy of framing... proving the old adage You Can't Judge a Book by its Cover.
I keep forgetting how much I really dislike this book... this is my third try to read it in the last five or six years and I resent the hour or so it takes each time to realize just how much I hate this book. But it will be my last attempt. I came close to throwing it into the fire, but I couldn't bring myself to do that with a beautiful book like this. But I have a neighbor I really dislike and so I'm going to anonymously leave it in his mail box..
I figured the guy who wrote this book must be a Frenchman for sure... they've hated the British and it's Navy for hundreds of years, first for defeating them in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and then for saving them twice in the 20th... But no, he's English. He's got to be one of those ultra rich socialist bleeding-heart liberals who hate the White Man for exporting civilization and religion to the rest of the world where the poor heathens would have lived out their live sin idyllic bliss.
We have some of them here too. Not in Texas of course, but there's plenty of them up in Noo York City.
September 5, 2017
The dispatches themselves are fascinating, and the analysis around what they say (and don't say) quite interesting as well. The problem with this book is that it cannot decide if it is a micro- or macro-level history of these battles and the course of the sea fights in the Napoleonic Wars (term used loosely to include the French Revolutionary conflicts as well). In the end, Willis' treatment of neither perspective proves satisfying. The primary documents themselves (the dispatches, the casualty lists and damage reports, and other first-person accounts Willis provides to counterbalance inaccuracies in some of the dispatches) are much more enjoyable than the analysis.
Finally, one emerges from the book with a question that Willis tries to answer, but to which he never really gives a more than superficial treatment: If the fleet battles themselves weren't the strategically decisive events that we remember them to be - the French grain convoy sought by Howe at the Glorious First of June arrived safely in France; the Danish fleet at Copenhagen was not the linchpin of the "Neutral League," and Tsar Paul had just died anyway, ensuring the end of Franco-Russian collaboration; by Trafalgar, Napoleon had already turned his attention to Russia and away from trying to invade Britain - why do we focus on them so much?
Finally, one emerges from the book with a question that Willis tries to answer, but to which he never really gives a more than superficial treatment: If the fleet battles themselves weren't the strategically decisive events that we remember them to be - the French grain convoy sought by Howe at the Glorious First of June arrived safely in France; the Danish fleet at Copenhagen was not the linchpin of the "Neutral League," and Tsar Paul had just died anyway, ensuring the end of Franco-Russian collaboration; by Trafalgar, Napoleon had already turned his attention to Russia and away from trying to invade Britain - why do we focus on them so much?
May 8, 2024
Sam Willis’s book is not a straight forward history of the Royal Navy during the Napoleanic Wars but is instead a history of 7 significant battles during that time based on the original dispatches send by the British captains, admirals, and officers directly after the battles. Willis includes full reproductions of many of the original dispatches and goes into detail about what they got right and wrong and what they reveal and what they purposefully hide. He provides needed context for each engagement and how they fit into the overall history of the Napoleonic wars. A great read for anyone interested in the Age of Sail, naval history or the Napoleonic time period.
April 11, 2020
Reads like a novel, it gives you textbook Naval history
Readable for experienced amateur naval historians as well as beginners.
Admirals, naval heroes become ordinary men bij reading their unabridged dispatches.
Loved it!
Readable for experienced amateur naval historians as well as beginners.
Admirals, naval heroes become ordinary men bij reading their unabridged dispatches.
Loved it!
July 23, 2021
Great as ever
Sam Willis has written a fascinating account of the major fleet action of the napoleonic wars based on the written reports returned to the admiralty soon after the battle. The readability is as impressive as the scholarship.
Sam Willis has written a fascinating account of the major fleet action of the napoleonic wars based on the written reports returned to the admiralty soon after the battle. The readability is as impressive as the scholarship.
July 13, 2017
The primary sources in this book are excellent!
December 31, 2013
Sam Willis is a very talented writer. I just finished his latest work "In The Hour Of Victory - The Royal Navy at War in the Age of Nelson". It's been a while since I've come across such a fluid and vivid style of storytelling. I found myself slowing things down towards the end of the book - re-reading pages and cross-checking facts with earlier passages in the book - the way you save the best stuff on your plate as 'dessert' for later on... It's a terrific book worth reading if you're at all interested in the age of sail. Well done Sam.
October 28, 2014
This is one of the most well thought out and formatted books on Naval battles and I truly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this period and the British navy.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews