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Sons of the Waves: The Common Seaman in the Heroic Age of Sail
A brilliant telling of the history of the common seaman in the age of sail, and his role in Britain’s trade, exploration, and warfare
“No other book resurrects the wooden world of Jack Tar in such captivating and voluminous detail.”—Roger Ekirch, Wall Street Journal
“[A] rollicking narrative . . . Superb”—Ben Wilson, Times
British maritime history in the age of sail is full of the deeds of officers like Nelson but has given little voice to plain, "illiterate" seamen. Now Stephen Taylor draws on published and unpublished memoirs, letters, and naval records, including court-martials and petitions, to present these men in their own words.
In this exhilarating account, ordinary seamen are far from the hapless sufferers of the press gangs. Proud and spirited, learned in their own fashion, with robust opinions and the courage to challenge overweening authority, they stand out from their less adventurous compatriots.
Taylor demonstrates how the sailor was the engine of British prosperity and expansion up to the Industrial Revolution. From exploring the South Seas with Cook to establishing the East India Company as a global corporation, from the sea battles that made Britain a superpower to the crisis of the 1797 mutinies, these "sons of the waves" held the nation’s destiny in their calloused hands.
“No other book resurrects the wooden world of Jack Tar in such captivating and voluminous detail.”—Roger Ekirch, Wall Street Journal
“[A] rollicking narrative . . . Superb”—Ben Wilson, Times
British maritime history in the age of sail is full of the deeds of officers like Nelson but has given little voice to plain, "illiterate" seamen. Now Stephen Taylor draws on published and unpublished memoirs, letters, and naval records, including court-martials and petitions, to present these men in their own words.
In this exhilarating account, ordinary seamen are far from the hapless sufferers of the press gangs. Proud and spirited, learned in their own fashion, with robust opinions and the courage to challenge overweening authority, they stand out from their less adventurous compatriots.
Taylor demonstrates how the sailor was the engine of British prosperity and expansion up to the Industrial Revolution. From exploring the South Seas with Cook to establishing the East India Company as a global corporation, from the sea battles that made Britain a superpower to the crisis of the 1797 mutinies, these "sons of the waves" held the nation’s destiny in their calloused hands.
536 pages, Paperback
First published May 19, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
February 26, 2023
Another audiobook offered as “included” with my monthly membership fee. This one uses the personal accounts of ordinary seamen to tell the story of British seafaring during what the author calls “The Golden Age of Sail”, which he defines as the century from 1740-1840.
As a historian, the author knows he has to be careful of his sources here, these sorts of accounts being prone to personal bias, exaggeration, and differences in interpretation. He has however, cross-checked the memoirs with Admiralty records and thus established that the authors did serve on the ships they said during the dates they gave, with other details also confirmed by historical records.
The author leans heavily on the accounts of three sailors, William Spavens, Jacob Nagle, and John Nicol, along with contributions from a host of others. I had previously read John Nicol’s account, which you can find published in a modern edition as The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner, edited by Tim Flannery. Nicol was a brilliant observer of the places and cultures he visited and I recommend his book to anyone interested in this subject. William Spavens’ account is from an earlier period and is therefore valuable, although Prof. Taylor suggests that it’s a bit dry. Jacob Nagle was an interesting character. He was an American who had served in the Continental Army and then as a sailor in an American privateer, but was captured by the British and spent 2 decades in the Royal Navy before returning to America. I think I’d like to read his account one day. Another memoirist mentioned in the book was Olaudah Equiano. His account is another I have read, although his experiences in the Royal Navy obviously only form a small part of his overall narrative.
Although during this period the Royal Navy was notorious for its ferocious discipline, the author argues that ordinary seamen were not simply hapless victims of brutality from their officers, especially not the more able hands who were greatly valued for their skills. Desertion was easy and frequent, especially to American ships. It is estimated that during the Napoleonic Wars perhaps 20,000 British sailors deserted to American vessels, seeking better pay and treatment. One of the most interesting chapters in the book was on the great mutiny at Spithead in 1797. It might be described as a strike rather than a mutiny.
One thing that was greatly resented was the “press gang”, and one of its cruellest aspects was the practice of the RN intercepting homeward bound merchant ships. Men who had been at sea for perhaps 2 years were taken within sight of the English coast, losing their pay and possessions in the process.
Despite all of the above, the author argues that the astonishing success of the Royal Navy during this period could not have been achieved without seamen who took a pride in their work and in the astonishing skill, courage and agility they displayed. Sailors from this era considered themselves a cut above landsmen.
I was puzzled at some unexpected pronunciations of words in the audio narration, but discussing them in detail would extend this review too much.
Those GR Friends good enough to read my reviews will know I’m partial to first-hand accounts from history. I found this enjoyable, and a book that has given me ideas for further reading.
As a historian, the author knows he has to be careful of his sources here, these sorts of accounts being prone to personal bias, exaggeration, and differences in interpretation. He has however, cross-checked the memoirs with Admiralty records and thus established that the authors did serve on the ships they said during the dates they gave, with other details also confirmed by historical records.
The author leans heavily on the accounts of three sailors, William Spavens, Jacob Nagle, and John Nicol, along with contributions from a host of others. I had previously read John Nicol’s account, which you can find published in a modern edition as The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner, edited by Tim Flannery. Nicol was a brilliant observer of the places and cultures he visited and I recommend his book to anyone interested in this subject. William Spavens’ account is from an earlier period and is therefore valuable, although Prof. Taylor suggests that it’s a bit dry. Jacob Nagle was an interesting character. He was an American who had served in the Continental Army and then as a sailor in an American privateer, but was captured by the British and spent 2 decades in the Royal Navy before returning to America. I think I’d like to read his account one day. Another memoirist mentioned in the book was Olaudah Equiano. His account is another I have read, although his experiences in the Royal Navy obviously only form a small part of his overall narrative.
Although during this period the Royal Navy was notorious for its ferocious discipline, the author argues that ordinary seamen were not simply hapless victims of brutality from their officers, especially not the more able hands who were greatly valued for their skills. Desertion was easy and frequent, especially to American ships. It is estimated that during the Napoleonic Wars perhaps 20,000 British sailors deserted to American vessels, seeking better pay and treatment. One of the most interesting chapters in the book was on the great mutiny at Spithead in 1797. It might be described as a strike rather than a mutiny.
One thing that was greatly resented was the “press gang”, and one of its cruellest aspects was the practice of the RN intercepting homeward bound merchant ships. Men who had been at sea for perhaps 2 years were taken within sight of the English coast, losing their pay and possessions in the process.
Despite all of the above, the author argues that the astonishing success of the Royal Navy during this period could not have been achieved without seamen who took a pride in their work and in the astonishing skill, courage and agility they displayed. Sailors from this era considered themselves a cut above landsmen.
I was puzzled at some unexpected pronunciations of words in the audio narration, but discussing them in detail would extend this review too much.
Those GR Friends good enough to read my reviews will know I’m partial to first-hand accounts from history. I found this enjoyable, and a book that has given me ideas for further reading.
May 13, 2020
ARC provided by netgalley for review.
Generally I enjoy novels set in historic settings, as with many this includes the likes of Patrick O'Brien and more recently Julian Stockwin's novels set aboard naval ships in the age of fighting sail, so when I saw this as a review option I was quick to request it.
Sons of the Waves explores the lives of the common man, the pressed man, and anyone who is not an officer, their stories have been told, yet life for the other more numerous men are much less known. Lower rates of literacy play their part yet as Sons shows these men were often better educated their landlocked contemporaries, undoubtedly better travelled and far more open minded.
Even today most people have heard of "the press gangs", but the rules which were followed - only to take men who were seafarers, age limitations etc are less known. The ease with which it seems that foreigners could come and join up with the Royal Naval service of its day, and switch away again - leading to crews with a real diversity of language and race.
Telling the stories of a few of these men in the 100 year period before steam began to take their skilled roles Sons is an interesting read. I did at times find the writing style could be rather dry, but only in small areas, and as a proof copy some of the page layouts didnt make complete sense - footnotes appearing a page after the point it was indicated - which maybe didn't help this.
Highly recommended to any fan of the Fighting Sail genre of historical novel.
Generally I enjoy novels set in historic settings, as with many this includes the likes of Patrick O'Brien and more recently Julian Stockwin's novels set aboard naval ships in the age of fighting sail, so when I saw this as a review option I was quick to request it.
Sons of the Waves explores the lives of the common man, the pressed man, and anyone who is not an officer, their stories have been told, yet life for the other more numerous men are much less known. Lower rates of literacy play their part yet as Sons shows these men were often better educated their landlocked contemporaries, undoubtedly better travelled and far more open minded.
Even today most people have heard of "the press gangs", but the rules which were followed - only to take men who were seafarers, age limitations etc are less known. The ease with which it seems that foreigners could come and join up with the Royal Naval service of its day, and switch away again - leading to crews with a real diversity of language and race.
Telling the stories of a few of these men in the 100 year period before steam began to take their skilled roles Sons is an interesting read. I did at times find the writing style could be rather dry, but only in small areas, and as a proof copy some of the page layouts didnt make complete sense - footnotes appearing a page after the point it was indicated - which maybe didn't help this.
Highly recommended to any fan of the Fighting Sail genre of historical novel.
September 26, 2020
http://globalmaritimehistory.com/revi...
In the eighteenth century, dozens of popular portrayals—in song, in print, on the stage, and in material culture—presented Jack Tar as a paragon of manliness, bravery, honesty, and simple nobility.1 But the author of 1769’s Universal Dictionary of the Marine, poet and erstwhile warrant officer William Falconer, decried the public’s “mistaken prejudices” and cautioned readers about taking a rosy view of the foremast jack. The lower deck was in fact teeming with “abandoned miscreants, ripe for any mischief or villainy … equally destitute of gratitude, shame, or justice, and only to be deterred from the commission of any crimes by the terror of severe punishment.”2 Stephen Taylor’s unique accomplishment in Sons of the Waves is to offer a depiction of the British common sailor fashioned neither from popular media nor the observations of officers, but almost exclusively from Jack’s own words.
The book opens with a preface that briefly discusses the historiography of the lower deck and particularly emphasizes Taylor’s interest in writing Jack’s history “from below,” challenging the common assertion of an insufficiency of sources to do so. Twenty-six chronologically ordered chapters primarily stitch together the autobiographical narratives of six sailors—Robert Hay, Samuel Leech, Jacob Nagle, John Nicol, and William Richardson—thoroughly supplemented with material drawn from the writings of more than a dozen other men who feature less prominently. Taylor also taps official documents, drawing from ships’ muster rolls and logs to provide context and to validate or correct his subjects’ claims. Many of the liveliest and most colorful passages in the book emerge from his clever use of court-martial testimonies that recorded sailors’ verbatim speech; these episodes strip away the polish typically applied to later writings.
Readers will have encountered some of these autobiographical accounts in works of social history, in which they supplement other sources.3 But Sons of the Waves is distinctive in that Taylor’s focus never wavers from the sailors’ own accounts, not merely as a source of anecdotes or color but as the superstructure of the book. Taylor’s experience as a writer of maritime history is evident in his adroit crafting of the narrative, vivid portrayal of his characters, and clear familiarity with his archival sources. What emerges is a wide-ranging, deeply researched survey of lower deck lives and attitudes carried on the back of an engaging, entertaining, and informative mesh of stories.
As such, the book’s focus is on narrative and not argument. It cannot be truly said to have a thesis, but the preface highlights a cluster of recurring themes. In Taylor’s telling, the common sailor was a skilled, necessary man who formed backbone of Britain’s maritime prosperity. Jack’s awareness of his vital role—and of the fundamental difference between his life and the landsman’s—instilled pride and a sense of self-worth. Accordingly, he jealously guarded both his liberty and his dignity—as manifested in his cunning avoidance of the press and seemingly limitless propensity to desert. Taylor’s Jack Tar is neither the tyrannized victim of an oppressive state nor yet an obstreperous proletarian, but simply a valuable man who knew his own worth and prized his independence: “a proud soul with robust opinions” (p. xvii).
The main drawback of this emphasis is that it verges on the idealism that Falconer worked to combat: Taylor admits that “[t]he man who emerges bears a surprisingly strong resemblance to the Jack of folklore” (p. xvii) and it seems no coincidence that the subtitle references the “Heroic Age of Sail.” The source material might make such an impression inescapable; by definition, these accounts’ thoughtful, literate authors were exceptional. But Taylor’s authorial choices also contribute. Little is said of violence and brutality. Though several sailors described the indelible impression left by floggings, Taylor’s coverage of the subject is brief and fairly bloodless. Occasional inapt phrases suggest a strangely sanguine view of the violence of corporal punishment: one man is “lucky to escape with fifty lashes” (p. 33), another receives a “relatively mild fifty lashes” (p. 144-5), a deserter “escaped with 100 lashes” (p. 107), and “the relatively moderate punishment of 500 lashes” (p. 45) is used to describe an effective death sentence.
Perhaps inadvertently, the book’s strange chronological framing adds to its romantic tint. Though the bulk of his subject matter concerns the period between the Seven Years War and the Great Wars with France (1755-1815), Taylor closes with four post-1815 chapters. The book might more naturally have concluded in 1815 and compressed admittedly valuable pieces of three of these chapters—which wind up main characters’ stories, discuss post-service life, and describe the circumstances of the various accounts’ publications—into an epilogue. The final chapter is a puzzling inclusion that involves none of the previously introduced characters and focuses on the Royal Navy’s patrols against the trans-Atlantic slave trade between 1819 and 1840. Despite Taylor’s acknowledgement that the men who participated did not do so out of anti-slavery principle, he concludes by noting that between 1825 and 1840, nearly one thousand British sailors died to free 65,720 enslaved people (p. 435)—leaving the reader with a final impression of tragic heroism.
This unfortunate conclusion aligns with a pernicious thread of popular historiography that frames the Preventative Squadron as a blood sacrifice that redeemed the national sin of slavery. But this undoubted good deed should not and cannot expiate that sin. For if, as Andrew Lambert’s blurb states, the British sailor was part of “the collective body that sustained national prosperity, security, and power,” no less was he part of the collective body that made Britain the eighteenth century world’s most prolific slave trader and consigned more than three million Africans to death on the Middle Passage or a life of slavery.
Citations
1. Isaac Land, War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor, 1750-1850 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Margarette Lincoln, Representing the Royal Navy: British Sea Power, 1750-1815 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).
2. William Falconer, Universal Dictionary of the Marine (London, 1769), s.v. “Midshipman.”
3. For example, Michael Lewis, A Social History of the Navy, 1793-1815 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1960); N.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1986); N.A.M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815 (London: Penguin, 2006); Brian Lavery, Royal Tars: The Lower Deck of the Royal Navy, 875-1850 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2010).
In the eighteenth century, dozens of popular portrayals—in song, in print, on the stage, and in material culture—presented Jack Tar as a paragon of manliness, bravery, honesty, and simple nobility.1 But the author of 1769’s Universal Dictionary of the Marine, poet and erstwhile warrant officer William Falconer, decried the public’s “mistaken prejudices” and cautioned readers about taking a rosy view of the foremast jack. The lower deck was in fact teeming with “abandoned miscreants, ripe for any mischief or villainy … equally destitute of gratitude, shame, or justice, and only to be deterred from the commission of any crimes by the terror of severe punishment.”2 Stephen Taylor’s unique accomplishment in Sons of the Waves is to offer a depiction of the British common sailor fashioned neither from popular media nor the observations of officers, but almost exclusively from Jack’s own words.
The book opens with a preface that briefly discusses the historiography of the lower deck and particularly emphasizes Taylor’s interest in writing Jack’s history “from below,” challenging the common assertion of an insufficiency of sources to do so. Twenty-six chronologically ordered chapters primarily stitch together the autobiographical narratives of six sailors—Robert Hay, Samuel Leech, Jacob Nagle, John Nicol, and William Richardson—thoroughly supplemented with material drawn from the writings of more than a dozen other men who feature less prominently. Taylor also taps official documents, drawing from ships’ muster rolls and logs to provide context and to validate or correct his subjects’ claims. Many of the liveliest and most colorful passages in the book emerge from his clever use of court-martial testimonies that recorded sailors’ verbatim speech; these episodes strip away the polish typically applied to later writings.
Readers will have encountered some of these autobiographical accounts in works of social history, in which they supplement other sources.3 But Sons of the Waves is distinctive in that Taylor’s focus never wavers from the sailors’ own accounts, not merely as a source of anecdotes or color but as the superstructure of the book. Taylor’s experience as a writer of maritime history is evident in his adroit crafting of the narrative, vivid portrayal of his characters, and clear familiarity with his archival sources. What emerges is a wide-ranging, deeply researched survey of lower deck lives and attitudes carried on the back of an engaging, entertaining, and informative mesh of stories.
As such, the book’s focus is on narrative and not argument. It cannot be truly said to have a thesis, but the preface highlights a cluster of recurring themes. In Taylor’s telling, the common sailor was a skilled, necessary man who formed backbone of Britain’s maritime prosperity. Jack’s awareness of his vital role—and of the fundamental difference between his life and the landsman’s—instilled pride and a sense of self-worth. Accordingly, he jealously guarded both his liberty and his dignity—as manifested in his cunning avoidance of the press and seemingly limitless propensity to desert. Taylor’s Jack Tar is neither the tyrannized victim of an oppressive state nor yet an obstreperous proletarian, but simply a valuable man who knew his own worth and prized his independence: “a proud soul with robust opinions” (p. xvii).
The main drawback of this emphasis is that it verges on the idealism that Falconer worked to combat: Taylor admits that “[t]he man who emerges bears a surprisingly strong resemblance to the Jack of folklore” (p. xvii) and it seems no coincidence that the subtitle references the “Heroic Age of Sail.” The source material might make such an impression inescapable; by definition, these accounts’ thoughtful, literate authors were exceptional. But Taylor’s authorial choices also contribute. Little is said of violence and brutality. Though several sailors described the indelible impression left by floggings, Taylor’s coverage of the subject is brief and fairly bloodless. Occasional inapt phrases suggest a strangely sanguine view of the violence of corporal punishment: one man is “lucky to escape with fifty lashes” (p. 33), another receives a “relatively mild fifty lashes” (p. 144-5), a deserter “escaped with 100 lashes” (p. 107), and “the relatively moderate punishment of 500 lashes” (p. 45) is used to describe an effective death sentence.
Perhaps inadvertently, the book’s strange chronological framing adds to its romantic tint. Though the bulk of his subject matter concerns the period between the Seven Years War and the Great Wars with France (1755-1815), Taylor closes with four post-1815 chapters. The book might more naturally have concluded in 1815 and compressed admittedly valuable pieces of three of these chapters—which wind up main characters’ stories, discuss post-service life, and describe the circumstances of the various accounts’ publications—into an epilogue. The final chapter is a puzzling inclusion that involves none of the previously introduced characters and focuses on the Royal Navy’s patrols against the trans-Atlantic slave trade between 1819 and 1840. Despite Taylor’s acknowledgement that the men who participated did not do so out of anti-slavery principle, he concludes by noting that between 1825 and 1840, nearly one thousand British sailors died to free 65,720 enslaved people (p. 435)—leaving the reader with a final impression of tragic heroism.
This unfortunate conclusion aligns with a pernicious thread of popular historiography that frames the Preventative Squadron as a blood sacrifice that redeemed the national sin of slavery. But this undoubted good deed should not and cannot expiate that sin. For if, as Andrew Lambert’s blurb states, the British sailor was part of “the collective body that sustained national prosperity, security, and power,” no less was he part of the collective body that made Britain the eighteenth century world’s most prolific slave trader and consigned more than three million Africans to death on the Middle Passage or a life of slavery.
Citations
1. Isaac Land, War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor, 1750-1850 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Margarette Lincoln, Representing the Royal Navy: British Sea Power, 1750-1815 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).
2. William Falconer, Universal Dictionary of the Marine (London, 1769), s.v. “Midshipman.”
3. For example, Michael Lewis, A Social History of the Navy, 1793-1815 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1960); N.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1986); N.A.M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815 (London: Penguin, 2006); Brian Lavery, Royal Tars: The Lower Deck of the Royal Navy, 875-1850 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2010).
June 13, 2020
"Sons of the Waves" is a history of the common British sailor during 1740-1840. This period witnessed the rise of the sailing ship to prominence up to the beginnings of steamships. The author quoted from the journals, memoirs, and letters of the common sailor and double checked these with the official records of the time, like ship logs and court records. He often picked vivid descriptions of exciting or unique events. He covered both merchant and Navy ships, wars, scientific voyages, shipwrecks, mutinies, trading, and topics like privateering, ship food, gear, and discipline, battle procedures and experiences, ship boys, press gangs, sailor's first visits to China, India, and various islands, disease, living conditions, shore leave, sailor's families, wages and reforms, pensions, and the naval battles against the slave trade. Overall, this book was both informative and interesting to read. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in this topic.
I received an ebook review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.
I received an ebook review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.
May 6, 2023
I loved it!
If you love books by Patrick O'Brian & C. S. Forester you will enjoy this treat.
Better yet, Having a clearer view of the facts do not in any way diminish the stories you've already read. quite the reverse.
This book looks at the lives and lived reality of the foremast jacks in both the Royal British Navy and on trade ships. From their diverse international background, to the food they eat and the songs they sung. This book also looks at how the life changed over time.
An absolute treasure trove for the reader with a hunger for both adventure and knowledge.
If you love books by Patrick O'Brian & C. S. Forester you will enjoy this treat.
Better yet, Having a clearer view of the facts do not in any way diminish the stories you've already read. quite the reverse.
This book looks at the lives and lived reality of the foremast jacks in both the Royal British Navy and on trade ships. From their diverse international background, to the food they eat and the songs they sung. This book also looks at how the life changed over time.
An absolute treasure trove for the reader with a hunger for both adventure and knowledge.
July 1, 2021
A wonderfully engaging history of a subject that is often fantasized and stretched. Taylor blends the journals of a couple sailors to an incredibly coherent narrative. Not shying away from the graphic and unpleasant details and seemingly unhindered by patriotism and reliant upon firsthand experience. You will never see the age of sail the same way after this.
June 6, 2025
Among the first books I read, when around five years of age, were some written by my great uncle, Charles Frye Haywood, after whom I am named. He was a lawyer in Lynn, Massachusetts, but his life’s interest was men and events related to Colonial times, especially sailing vessels. This is no surprise, perhaps, given that one of our ancestors, also Charles Haywood, was a minuteman in Concord in 1785. My great uncle wrote two fictional works set in colonial America, No Ship May Sail and Eastward the Sea, along with a nonfiction work, Minutemen and Mariners. Books read as a small child sink deep into one’s psyche, and so, in a sense, I inherited his interest. This book, Sons of the Waves, I therefore found fascinating.
It is not a technical book. In fact, I would have liked quite a bit more technical detail about the construction and operation of sailing ships of the time. But as the subtitle says, this is a book about the life and times of common seamen, not about sailing ships as such. Taylor’s basic mechanism is to interweave the relatively few journals kept by such men during this period, retelling their stories, and combining them with a broader exposition of the relevant historical events of the period. His focus is exclusively on British and American sailors, primarily the former, although the boundary in much of this time between Britons and Americans was very porous indeed.
The “heroic age of sail,” as Taylor defines it, was 1740 to 1840. The common seaman was a workman, with specific skills and gradations of skill. Many of his jobs were dangerous, and the more dangerous, the more skill required. The most prestigious job for a common sailor was, therefore, topman—one of the men who furled and unfurled the sails from the tops of the masts, even in raging storms. But a sailor at this time was, crucially, a fighter. His fighting was somewhat different from a soldier’s, in that he was rarely idle—sailing work was his daily activity, while fighting was relatively rare. When it did occur, it was ferociously intense and very brief, but it was still one of his primary duties. On a warship, fighting was more likely and firepower a greater part of a ship’s purpose. However, merchantmen also carried cannon and fought when necessary, as well as sometimes opportunistically.
This period is known to many today from the novels of Patrick O’Brian, and from the 2003 movie Master & Commander, a film version of the first of his twenty novels. That movie, a celebration of masculine achievement with no attempt to include any historically-false instances of the gross vice of so-called inclusion, could not be made today. Maybe such movies will again be made in the future, if we are lucky. I have not read any of the novels, but they are supposedly accurate depictions, and I really should get around to reading them. At a minimum, I will put them in my new home library, now holding 10,000 books and capable of holding 25,000. No ebooks for me; I tried that, and there is more downside than upside.
Sailors were a tight-knit and proud brotherhood, men of low social standing and often known to civilians primarily from their uproarious behavior when they returned to shore, loaded with money and pent-up energy. But over the century Taylor narrates, at least in Britain, they also became idealized national heroes, reaching their peak of popularity during and after the Napoleonic Wars, when Britain’s control of the oceans was seen as essential to national survival. The figure of “Jack Tar” thus became a British archetype, back when there was a Britain to have archetypes. Sons of the Waves narrates the development of Jack Tar, once known throughout the world. To achieve this, Taylor carefully describes numerous specific voyages, nearly all through the eyes of one of the men serving below decks on the voyage.
To some extent, this is a revisionist work, meant to confound what Taylor calls the “miserabilist school” of historiography. Certainly, a sailor’s life was hard and dangerous. He had little volition in his daily life; a ship was an autocracy under the unquestionable command of the captain and his officers. And he even often was denied a choice of when and with whom to sail, of which more later. But most sailors liked the life of the sea. Many had “a condition identified by Norse seafarers as aefintyr—a spirit of adventure brought on by restless curiosity.” And as British and American vessels in this period increasingly sailed all over the world, not just across the Atlantic but to India, China, and the South Seas, this spirit was often satisfied. There are always men who prefer something different from others, most of all in the sailor’s case a life of the unexpected. For these men, sailing held its attractions, not least the possibility of sharing in the rewards of prize money.
The book is full of interesting facts. Grog, for example, the name given to the mixture of rum and water rationed to sailors, comes from the nickname of an admiral, Edward Vernon—“Old Grogam,” from his cloak, made of grogam, a distinctive ribbed fabric. Vernon, worried about alcoholism in sailors (which was common), ordered the dilution of the sailor’s daily straight rum ration, to a 4:1 ratio of water to rum. This both prevented hoarding, by making it harder to keep fresh for long, and slowed down intake when imbibing. Another notable fact is that sailors were rarely religious men. Captains typically held stripped-down religious services, at a minimum for the dead, but the sailors themselves were mostly indifferent to the specifics of Christianity. Taylor ascribes this to a type of pantheism, or perhaps primitivism, the results of being surrounded by awesome forces which took on the immediate aspect of the divine. Maybe, but it has always intrigued me that British soldiers in World War I were similarly largely indifferent to religion, giving the lie to the old aphorism about atheists in foxholes. You would think that a man under artillery bombardment would instinctively feel the need to get right with God, but apparently this was not the case. Why, I am not sure. Perhaps in this latter case it was tied to theodicy, a problem for many people.
When a sailor’s career was over, usually by the time he was in his forties and had lost the physical stamina of a young man, often incurring injuries along the way, he frequently struggled in his later life. About 100,000 British sailors died during the Napoleonic Wars, the vast majority from disease, so he was lucky to get home at all. Even if he had a wife or family at home, and that wife had not died in his absence, his physical strength was not what it had been, and he had gained few skills useful on land. And often when peace broke out, the Navy simply dismissed tens of thousands of sailors, who often struggled to find any work at sea at all.
The government did offer a pension to those who had served on warships, but actually obtaining a pension depended in many cases on being able to get a testimonial of good character from the captain of a ship on which one had served, whom it might not be possible to locate or who might have died himself. Thus, many sailors (and their families, before and after they sailed) ended up relying on local poor relief, a far from ideal position. In the nineteenth century, as the legend of Jack Tar grew and the public felt a newfound sense of obligation, the British government addressed this problem more directly. Among other things, it built or expanded homes for elderly retired sailors, including Greenwich Hospital. Nonetheless, sailing was always an occupation best suited to young men who had little concern for the future. As John Nichol, one of the sailors whose journal Taylor uses, said toward the end of his life, “I have been a wanderer and the child of chance all my days, and now only look for the time when I shall enter my last ship and be anchored with a green turf upon my breast, and I care not how soon the command is given.”
Aside from factoids such as these, several themes run throughout the book. One is the British practice of impressment—forcible conscription of sailors by Royal Navy warships, either at sea or on land. The practice was entirely legal and a royal prerogative (and also not limited to sailors; it was very occasionally used for soldiers and even for craftsmen needed by the Crown). Impressment was supposed to be limited to men with sailing experience, and generally was, but in wartime even men who had never been to sea were sometimes impressed.
The Navy, as well as merchantmen, often faced a chronic shortage of seamen. Sailors would frequently quit berths, whether warship or merchantman, if offered a better deal on another ship, or simply if unhappy on a particular ship. Exacerbating problems for the Crown, merchant ship wages increased dramatically during wartime, meaning desertion also increased at the worst possible time for military readiness. Very often, especially in periods when the Navy needed sailors, any merchantman returning to port would be boarded and many of the sailors simply transferred to warships, never being allowed to land and not even being allowed to collect their pay. In theory the warship would in return dump its least desirable crew members on the merchantman, but during wartime the Navy was desperate for men, often having ships that lacked crews, so this rule was regularly ignored. Impressment officers also haunted ports and grabbed sailors off the street or in pubs—those just returned, those arriving to ship out, or those simply unwise enough to hang around sailors’ haunts.
The exact number of men impressed is unclear, in part because many men facing impressment instead “volunteered” so that they would be paid the bonus due to volunteers. Yet Taylor makes clear that although sailors grumbled about impressment, and sailors’ families were often very unhappy about impressment (occasionally leading to riots ashore), most of them simply treated it as a fact of life, another challenge that could strike unexpectedly and merely had to be dealt with as best one could, not much different than storms or French warships. The personality of most sailors was accepting of random chance, after all. On ship, at least he was fed regularly and might even become rich, and a job was a job. Prize money sometimes, though rarely, exceeded $100,000 in modern currency, and many sailors thought the chance worth the hardship.
It was Americans who most objected to impressment, because the British habitually boarded American ships and seized sailors on board. Sometimes the men they seized were British, for many Britons, both deserters and not, sailed on American ships, before and after the War of Independence. Often, however, British captains effectively viewed all Americans as British subjects, and cared little about American protests. Impressment was one of the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence, and also part of what led to the War of 1812. No Ship May Sail revolves around the Embargo declared by Thomas Jefferson in 1807, in part meant to prevent American seamen from being impressed. (Eastward the Sea revolves around the Barbary pirates, North African Muslims, scourge of American sailors, whose depredations resulted in the United States Navy being created in 1794.)
Discipline was strict on all ships, and is another pervading theme of the book. Punishments, carefully recorded by captains, whose log books are used as a primary source by Taylor, were mostly for drunkenness. Neglect, insolence, and disobedience made up the vast remainder. Surprisingly, fighting among the sailors was uncommon. And, despite Winston Churchill’s famous quip about the Navy being nothing more than “rum, sodomy, and the lash,” homosexual behavior was almost completely unknown on sailing ships. All common sailors regarded homosexual acts as disgusting and beneath contempt; they instead saved up their heterosexual energy for returning to port (whereupon endless boatloads of prostitutes shuttled out to the ships to service the men while they waited for their final pay). Once a decade or so in the entire Royal Navy, men were hanged for homosexual acts (or other equally disgusting sexual perversions, one involving a goat), and over the century there were several instances of officers being either hanged or cashiered for sexual abuse of boys, who sometimes served on ships as young as twelve years of age. But the myth of normalized homosexuality on board is just that.
Another theme is the wide variation among ship captains and their relationship to the men. A bad captain, meaning one who lacked the respect of the crew, invariably resorted to frequent use of flogging, thereby increasing the dissatisfaction of the men. (The lash was not as common as Churchill said, but it was far more common than homosexuality.) It was not a question, as Taylor makes clear, of whether the men liked a captain. The very question would have been thought bizarre. They either respected him, or they did not. Such respect flowed from the character of the captain, most of all his leadership ability, and that was always inborn, or not. The most admired captains cared for their men while they also demanded their best work product, and naturally a successful captain, meaning one whose men were victorious and well-paid, whether of a warship or a merchantman, was likely to be the most respected. Martinets were common, though, even if despite what films often show, sadists were rare. Over time, the Navy became better at selecting captains, so the general quality of ship administration improved significantly over the period Taylor discusses.
Mutinies were infrequent, but not exactly rare. Almost invariably these resulted in the ringleaders being hanged; mutiny was very rarely successful, and when it was, as famously on the Bounty, the mutineers had to disappear forever, because the Navy worked hard to track them down. In 1797, however, there was an anomalous multi-ship mutiny at Spithead, near Portsmouth, the Navy’s center of operations. The details of its origin are obscure, in part because, in an exception to the general rule, most of the ringleaders were never identified, but it appears that sympathy for the ideals of revolutionary France played a part in the sailors’ demands. In this, as in all mutinies, the majority of sailors on any given ship played no part and had no interest; it was always a vociferous hotheaded minority which browbeat or threatened the other sailors into not opposing the mutiny. That said, the demands were legitimate—a raise in pay (which had not changed since the reign of Charles II, despite inflation); better food; more shore leave; less corruption by the paymasters.
The Admiralty was in a quandary. This was the height of the Napoleonic Wars and while the sailors promised to sail to fight if the French sailed from their ports on the opposite side of the Channel, the mutiny was nonetheless an existential threat to military capacity. There were eighty British ships with 30,000 men at Spithead, all of whom might potentially join the mutiny, although only fourteen ships were active in it. Therefore, Parliament quickly passed bills to raise pay and address other concerns, and removed some captains and officers odious to the men. This ended the mutiny, and pardons were issued for all the sailors. But then, led by other men drunk on power and ideology, a second mutiny immediately began at another major naval anchorage, near London, where the demands expanded to ludicrous ones such as the dissolution of Parliament and peace with France, and the mutineers blockaded London. Losing patience, the Navy threatened any man who continued to mutiny with execution, whereupon support for the mutiny collapsed, resulting in thirty executions.
For Taylor, the years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars are almost an afterthought, as the age of sail gave way to the age of steam, and Jack Tar became less an actual person one might see on shore and more a mythic creature. The Royal Navy remained important for more than a hundred years, slowly evanescing to the toothless creature it is today—maybe in part because the grog ration was ended in 1970, but probably because all of “Great” Britain is a shadow of its former self, soon to sink entirely beneath the waves of alien migrants and a feminized populace. That’s too bad, but at least we can read this book and learn about Britain at the apogee of its now-vanished power and glory.
It is not a technical book. In fact, I would have liked quite a bit more technical detail about the construction and operation of sailing ships of the time. But as the subtitle says, this is a book about the life and times of common seamen, not about sailing ships as such. Taylor’s basic mechanism is to interweave the relatively few journals kept by such men during this period, retelling their stories, and combining them with a broader exposition of the relevant historical events of the period. His focus is exclusively on British and American sailors, primarily the former, although the boundary in much of this time between Britons and Americans was very porous indeed.
The “heroic age of sail,” as Taylor defines it, was 1740 to 1840. The common seaman was a workman, with specific skills and gradations of skill. Many of his jobs were dangerous, and the more dangerous, the more skill required. The most prestigious job for a common sailor was, therefore, topman—one of the men who furled and unfurled the sails from the tops of the masts, even in raging storms. But a sailor at this time was, crucially, a fighter. His fighting was somewhat different from a soldier’s, in that he was rarely idle—sailing work was his daily activity, while fighting was relatively rare. When it did occur, it was ferociously intense and very brief, but it was still one of his primary duties. On a warship, fighting was more likely and firepower a greater part of a ship’s purpose. However, merchantmen also carried cannon and fought when necessary, as well as sometimes opportunistically.
This period is known to many today from the novels of Patrick O’Brian, and from the 2003 movie Master & Commander, a film version of the first of his twenty novels. That movie, a celebration of masculine achievement with no attempt to include any historically-false instances of the gross vice of so-called inclusion, could not be made today. Maybe such movies will again be made in the future, if we are lucky. I have not read any of the novels, but they are supposedly accurate depictions, and I really should get around to reading them. At a minimum, I will put them in my new home library, now holding 10,000 books and capable of holding 25,000. No ebooks for me; I tried that, and there is more downside than upside.
Sailors were a tight-knit and proud brotherhood, men of low social standing and often known to civilians primarily from their uproarious behavior when they returned to shore, loaded with money and pent-up energy. But over the century Taylor narrates, at least in Britain, they also became idealized national heroes, reaching their peak of popularity during and after the Napoleonic Wars, when Britain’s control of the oceans was seen as essential to national survival. The figure of “Jack Tar” thus became a British archetype, back when there was a Britain to have archetypes. Sons of the Waves narrates the development of Jack Tar, once known throughout the world. To achieve this, Taylor carefully describes numerous specific voyages, nearly all through the eyes of one of the men serving below decks on the voyage.
To some extent, this is a revisionist work, meant to confound what Taylor calls the “miserabilist school” of historiography. Certainly, a sailor’s life was hard and dangerous. He had little volition in his daily life; a ship was an autocracy under the unquestionable command of the captain and his officers. And he even often was denied a choice of when and with whom to sail, of which more later. But most sailors liked the life of the sea. Many had “a condition identified by Norse seafarers as aefintyr—a spirit of adventure brought on by restless curiosity.” And as British and American vessels in this period increasingly sailed all over the world, not just across the Atlantic but to India, China, and the South Seas, this spirit was often satisfied. There are always men who prefer something different from others, most of all in the sailor’s case a life of the unexpected. For these men, sailing held its attractions, not least the possibility of sharing in the rewards of prize money.
The book is full of interesting facts. Grog, for example, the name given to the mixture of rum and water rationed to sailors, comes from the nickname of an admiral, Edward Vernon—“Old Grogam,” from his cloak, made of grogam, a distinctive ribbed fabric. Vernon, worried about alcoholism in sailors (which was common), ordered the dilution of the sailor’s daily straight rum ration, to a 4:1 ratio of water to rum. This both prevented hoarding, by making it harder to keep fresh for long, and slowed down intake when imbibing. Another notable fact is that sailors were rarely religious men. Captains typically held stripped-down religious services, at a minimum for the dead, but the sailors themselves were mostly indifferent to the specifics of Christianity. Taylor ascribes this to a type of pantheism, or perhaps primitivism, the results of being surrounded by awesome forces which took on the immediate aspect of the divine. Maybe, but it has always intrigued me that British soldiers in World War I were similarly largely indifferent to religion, giving the lie to the old aphorism about atheists in foxholes. You would think that a man under artillery bombardment would instinctively feel the need to get right with God, but apparently this was not the case. Why, I am not sure. Perhaps in this latter case it was tied to theodicy, a problem for many people.
When a sailor’s career was over, usually by the time he was in his forties and had lost the physical stamina of a young man, often incurring injuries along the way, he frequently struggled in his later life. About 100,000 British sailors died during the Napoleonic Wars, the vast majority from disease, so he was lucky to get home at all. Even if he had a wife or family at home, and that wife had not died in his absence, his physical strength was not what it had been, and he had gained few skills useful on land. And often when peace broke out, the Navy simply dismissed tens of thousands of sailors, who often struggled to find any work at sea at all.
The government did offer a pension to those who had served on warships, but actually obtaining a pension depended in many cases on being able to get a testimonial of good character from the captain of a ship on which one had served, whom it might not be possible to locate or who might have died himself. Thus, many sailors (and their families, before and after they sailed) ended up relying on local poor relief, a far from ideal position. In the nineteenth century, as the legend of Jack Tar grew and the public felt a newfound sense of obligation, the British government addressed this problem more directly. Among other things, it built or expanded homes for elderly retired sailors, including Greenwich Hospital. Nonetheless, sailing was always an occupation best suited to young men who had little concern for the future. As John Nichol, one of the sailors whose journal Taylor uses, said toward the end of his life, “I have been a wanderer and the child of chance all my days, and now only look for the time when I shall enter my last ship and be anchored with a green turf upon my breast, and I care not how soon the command is given.”
Aside from factoids such as these, several themes run throughout the book. One is the British practice of impressment—forcible conscription of sailors by Royal Navy warships, either at sea or on land. The practice was entirely legal and a royal prerogative (and also not limited to sailors; it was very occasionally used for soldiers and even for craftsmen needed by the Crown). Impressment was supposed to be limited to men with sailing experience, and generally was, but in wartime even men who had never been to sea were sometimes impressed.
The Navy, as well as merchantmen, often faced a chronic shortage of seamen. Sailors would frequently quit berths, whether warship or merchantman, if offered a better deal on another ship, or simply if unhappy on a particular ship. Exacerbating problems for the Crown, merchant ship wages increased dramatically during wartime, meaning desertion also increased at the worst possible time for military readiness. Very often, especially in periods when the Navy needed sailors, any merchantman returning to port would be boarded and many of the sailors simply transferred to warships, never being allowed to land and not even being allowed to collect their pay. In theory the warship would in return dump its least desirable crew members on the merchantman, but during wartime the Navy was desperate for men, often having ships that lacked crews, so this rule was regularly ignored. Impressment officers also haunted ports and grabbed sailors off the street or in pubs—those just returned, those arriving to ship out, or those simply unwise enough to hang around sailors’ haunts.
The exact number of men impressed is unclear, in part because many men facing impressment instead “volunteered” so that they would be paid the bonus due to volunteers. Yet Taylor makes clear that although sailors grumbled about impressment, and sailors’ families were often very unhappy about impressment (occasionally leading to riots ashore), most of them simply treated it as a fact of life, another challenge that could strike unexpectedly and merely had to be dealt with as best one could, not much different than storms or French warships. The personality of most sailors was accepting of random chance, after all. On ship, at least he was fed regularly and might even become rich, and a job was a job. Prize money sometimes, though rarely, exceeded $100,000 in modern currency, and many sailors thought the chance worth the hardship.
It was Americans who most objected to impressment, because the British habitually boarded American ships and seized sailors on board. Sometimes the men they seized were British, for many Britons, both deserters and not, sailed on American ships, before and after the War of Independence. Often, however, British captains effectively viewed all Americans as British subjects, and cared little about American protests. Impressment was one of the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence, and also part of what led to the War of 1812. No Ship May Sail revolves around the Embargo declared by Thomas Jefferson in 1807, in part meant to prevent American seamen from being impressed. (Eastward the Sea revolves around the Barbary pirates, North African Muslims, scourge of American sailors, whose depredations resulted in the United States Navy being created in 1794.)
Discipline was strict on all ships, and is another pervading theme of the book. Punishments, carefully recorded by captains, whose log books are used as a primary source by Taylor, were mostly for drunkenness. Neglect, insolence, and disobedience made up the vast remainder. Surprisingly, fighting among the sailors was uncommon. And, despite Winston Churchill’s famous quip about the Navy being nothing more than “rum, sodomy, and the lash,” homosexual behavior was almost completely unknown on sailing ships. All common sailors regarded homosexual acts as disgusting and beneath contempt; they instead saved up their heterosexual energy for returning to port (whereupon endless boatloads of prostitutes shuttled out to the ships to service the men while they waited for their final pay). Once a decade or so in the entire Royal Navy, men were hanged for homosexual acts (or other equally disgusting sexual perversions, one involving a goat), and over the century there were several instances of officers being either hanged or cashiered for sexual abuse of boys, who sometimes served on ships as young as twelve years of age. But the myth of normalized homosexuality on board is just that.
Another theme is the wide variation among ship captains and their relationship to the men. A bad captain, meaning one who lacked the respect of the crew, invariably resorted to frequent use of flogging, thereby increasing the dissatisfaction of the men. (The lash was not as common as Churchill said, but it was far more common than homosexuality.) It was not a question, as Taylor makes clear, of whether the men liked a captain. The very question would have been thought bizarre. They either respected him, or they did not. Such respect flowed from the character of the captain, most of all his leadership ability, and that was always inborn, or not. The most admired captains cared for their men while they also demanded their best work product, and naturally a successful captain, meaning one whose men were victorious and well-paid, whether of a warship or a merchantman, was likely to be the most respected. Martinets were common, though, even if despite what films often show, sadists were rare. Over time, the Navy became better at selecting captains, so the general quality of ship administration improved significantly over the period Taylor discusses.
Mutinies were infrequent, but not exactly rare. Almost invariably these resulted in the ringleaders being hanged; mutiny was very rarely successful, and when it was, as famously on the Bounty, the mutineers had to disappear forever, because the Navy worked hard to track them down. In 1797, however, there was an anomalous multi-ship mutiny at Spithead, near Portsmouth, the Navy’s center of operations. The details of its origin are obscure, in part because, in an exception to the general rule, most of the ringleaders were never identified, but it appears that sympathy for the ideals of revolutionary France played a part in the sailors’ demands. In this, as in all mutinies, the majority of sailors on any given ship played no part and had no interest; it was always a vociferous hotheaded minority which browbeat or threatened the other sailors into not opposing the mutiny. That said, the demands were legitimate—a raise in pay (which had not changed since the reign of Charles II, despite inflation); better food; more shore leave; less corruption by the paymasters.
The Admiralty was in a quandary. This was the height of the Napoleonic Wars and while the sailors promised to sail to fight if the French sailed from their ports on the opposite side of the Channel, the mutiny was nonetheless an existential threat to military capacity. There were eighty British ships with 30,000 men at Spithead, all of whom might potentially join the mutiny, although only fourteen ships were active in it. Therefore, Parliament quickly passed bills to raise pay and address other concerns, and removed some captains and officers odious to the men. This ended the mutiny, and pardons were issued for all the sailors. But then, led by other men drunk on power and ideology, a second mutiny immediately began at another major naval anchorage, near London, where the demands expanded to ludicrous ones such as the dissolution of Parliament and peace with France, and the mutineers blockaded London. Losing patience, the Navy threatened any man who continued to mutiny with execution, whereupon support for the mutiny collapsed, resulting in thirty executions.
For Taylor, the years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars are almost an afterthought, as the age of sail gave way to the age of steam, and Jack Tar became less an actual person one might see on shore and more a mythic creature. The Royal Navy remained important for more than a hundred years, slowly evanescing to the toothless creature it is today—maybe in part because the grog ration was ended in 1970, but probably because all of “Great” Britain is a shadow of its former self, soon to sink entirely beneath the waves of alien migrants and a feminized populace. That’s too bad, but at least we can read this book and learn about Britain at the apogee of its now-vanished power and glory.
August 29, 2021
A thoroughly enjoyable - if oddly meandering (well, it is naval) - yarn full of derring-do and fascinating details of the age of sail. Evocative and compelling.
February 22, 2021
I bought this book on the strength of a favourable review by NAM Rodger, despite having been slightly underwhelmed by Taylor's previous biography of Sir Edward Pellew. I have a problem with Taylor's prose style, which may not bother other readers. In this book large ships are referred to as 'behemoths', 'cathedrals' and even 'mountains'; in fact the whole book is a sort of compendium of inappropriate metaphors. There are other minor oddities, like what seems to be mis-use of the phrase 'on sufferance' (p 19). I also dislike the casual way in which Taylor refers to his subjects; to call Sir Edward Pellew 'Ned' seems to me much too familiar, though again this might be just my problem. A more general issue is that Taylor seems to have a somewhat vague grasp of the terminology for the parts of sailing vessels and a shaky understanding of naval ranks. In his review Rodger suggests that Taylor has rendered a service by re-telling these tales of seafarers but I am not entirely convinced; I would rather enjoy the authenticity of reading the originals, and nearly all of them are available in print or online. Nevertheless, Taylor does make some interesting and useful observations, about sailors' attitudes to their profession and their ships for instance, so I shall be retaining this volume on my shelves.
January 23, 2021
An excellent insight into the unreported side of maritime history, well researched and excellent at keeping the attention.
The main take away from the book seems to be that at the heart of every issue on a ship is a moody Irishman.
The main take away from the book seems to be that at the heart of every issue on a ship is a moody Irishman.
December 1, 2020
Highly readable account of the British 'Jack Tar', how he lived and what he experienced. Sort of a real-life supplement to Patrick O'Brian. I loved this book.
April 25, 2024
Heave your ship to, boys, deep soundings to take! Sons of the Waves is a celebration not of the gilded brass, not of a handsome oak-forest-falling ships, but of the ordinary — and able — British seaman in the Age of Sail. We visit here the 18th century, when Britain fully established itself as a naval, then world power — sending out ships to conduct science on the high seas, steadily knit the continents together with globalized trade, frustrate the designs of Napoleon, and turn Australia into the world’s largest penal colony. Taylor draws on memoirs, letters, and ship’s logs to deliver a sense of the challenges, deprivations, and pleasures these men experienced, and pays special attention to the conditions which prompted large mutinies like those at Spithead and Nore. Thoroughly readable, it offers a fulsome look at another area of the Age of Sail.
The range of Sons of the Waves is substantial enough to cover most of the 18th and early 19th century, so we encounter Jack Tars amid three wars — or two and a half, depending on closely a reader differentiates the War of 1812 from its mother conflict, the Napoleonic wars. This same range also covers the time when British ships and their mates were complicit in the slave trade to when they became the agents of its eradication. The book begins with the Royal Navy’s rapid expansion in the 18th century as England entered more onto the global stage, covering the conditions of life aboard ship. Some viewed the Navy as worse than prison, for it offered all the limits of prison but with the added risks of sinking and natural catastrophe. Many sailors were forcefully conscripted, or ‘impressed’, by roving gangs who collected men off the street and forced them into service, and they were subject to what one 24th century observer referred to as ‘bad food, brutal discipline, and no women’. Wartime meant the Navy’s needs were especially desperate, and as much as half of the sailing force was conscripted labor — on one boat, Taylor observed, the overwhelming majority of the crew had been impressed, which makes one wondered why they didn’t simply take over the boat. Marines, presumably, but there’s also the matter of men bonding with each other, their ships, and their missions: one ship that had been on the verge of mutiny nevertheless threw itself bodily into Trafalgar. Although Taylor isn’t offering a military history here, Trafalgar was so significant that it receives its own section.
Life at sea, despite its deprivations and the whip, also offered young men adventure and freedom from social mores, especially in far-flung locales like Tahiti. Pleasures to be found there were mixed with the gall of not being paid, the latter especially rough on men who had been taken by press gangs and left their wives and families in the lurch. Until reforms were made, these women were left to support themselves, which tended to get them in trouble given that the easiest options were theft and prostitution. One poor man had completed his voyage and was within a day or two of receiving payment when — thinking the press gangs had met their quota — ventured onto open streets and found himself aboard again. The appallingly low wages and the extreme delays in receiving them fueled discontent that made itsself visible in mutinies. I was inordinately pleased to encounter MY NAME IS CAPTAIN SIR EDWARD PELLEW here, and astonished to learn that he’d risen from the ranks and remained close to them long after he’d been made an officer, working in the masts along with his men. I also enjoyed the occasional American interludes, and was amused to learn that the number of British sailors who deserted to pursue opportunities in America was roughly about the same as the most conservative reckonings of how many Americans were seized on the high seas and inducted into the Royal Navy, a practice that led to war against the States and the mother country yet again.
Sons of the Waves was terrific reading: I’ll definitely take on the Pellew biography now, and I especially appreciate that one of Taylor’s chapters consisted of him analyzing his one of his key sources, extant soldiers memoirs that include some anachronisms given that they were being written decades after the wars at times.
Related:
C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series, set in the Napoleonic wars
To Rule the Waves, Arthur Herman. On how the Royal Navy shaped the modern world.
The range of Sons of the Waves is substantial enough to cover most of the 18th and early 19th century, so we encounter Jack Tars amid three wars — or two and a half, depending on closely a reader differentiates the War of 1812 from its mother conflict, the Napoleonic wars. This same range also covers the time when British ships and their mates were complicit in the slave trade to when they became the agents of its eradication. The book begins with the Royal Navy’s rapid expansion in the 18th century as England entered more onto the global stage, covering the conditions of life aboard ship. Some viewed the Navy as worse than prison, for it offered all the limits of prison but with the added risks of sinking and natural catastrophe. Many sailors were forcefully conscripted, or ‘impressed’, by roving gangs who collected men off the street and forced them into service, and they were subject to what one 24th century observer referred to as ‘bad food, brutal discipline, and no women’. Wartime meant the Navy’s needs were especially desperate, and as much as half of the sailing force was conscripted labor — on one boat, Taylor observed, the overwhelming majority of the crew had been impressed, which makes one wondered why they didn’t simply take over the boat. Marines, presumably, but there’s also the matter of men bonding with each other, their ships, and their missions: one ship that had been on the verge of mutiny nevertheless threw itself bodily into Trafalgar. Although Taylor isn’t offering a military history here, Trafalgar was so significant that it receives its own section.
Life at sea, despite its deprivations and the whip, also offered young men adventure and freedom from social mores, especially in far-flung locales like Tahiti. Pleasures to be found there were mixed with the gall of not being paid, the latter especially rough on men who had been taken by press gangs and left their wives and families in the lurch. Until reforms were made, these women were left to support themselves, which tended to get them in trouble given that the easiest options were theft and prostitution. One poor man had completed his voyage and was within a day or two of receiving payment when — thinking the press gangs had met their quota — ventured onto open streets and found himself aboard again. The appallingly low wages and the extreme delays in receiving them fueled discontent that made itsself visible in mutinies. I was inordinately pleased to encounter MY NAME IS CAPTAIN SIR EDWARD PELLEW here, and astonished to learn that he’d risen from the ranks and remained close to them long after he’d been made an officer, working in the masts along with his men. I also enjoyed the occasional American interludes, and was amused to learn that the number of British sailors who deserted to pursue opportunities in America was roughly about the same as the most conservative reckonings of how many Americans were seized on the high seas and inducted into the Royal Navy, a practice that led to war against the States and the mother country yet again.
Sons of the Waves was terrific reading: I’ll definitely take on the Pellew biography now, and I especially appreciate that one of Taylor’s chapters consisted of him analyzing his one of his key sources, extant soldiers memoirs that include some anachronisms given that they were being written decades after the wars at times.
Related:
C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series, set in the Napoleonic wars
To Rule the Waves, Arthur Herman. On how the Royal Navy shaped the modern world.
March 11, 2022
Sons of the Waves: The Common Seaman in the Heroic Age of Sail. The title pretty much says it all. It's a book about the little guy, the one responsible for getting big names like Cook and Nelson to their fame and destination.
Ranging between the years of 1740 to 1840 we see a variety of personalities throughout the 100 years, some in great detail thanks to the publishing their life story such as William Spavens who wrote "Memoirs of a seafaring life: the narrative of William Spavens, pensioner of the Naval Chest at Chatham" allowing for a rich source of material, others like Owen Roberts who sailed on fourteen slave ships, spent two years in a French prison, been afloat for almost forty years in Man-o-war and Privateers and having lived into his nineties being a half of a page as his source was a pamphlet "Born Under an Unlucky Planet" that was published in The Mariner's Mirror.
In the early chapters of the book the longer narratives of sailors made it easy to follow but with the introduction of more and more smaller stories it became overwhelming to retain this information (even though all the little stories were fascinating).
The book started strong and kept my attention to about the halfway point where it started to feel like a chore (where smaller narratives became more prevalent) but it never reached a point where I simply wanted to ignore the book. It managed to pick up the pace right toward the end but that was not enough for me to give it a higher rating.
Would I recommend this book? If you are looking for an encyclopaedia-like compilation of sailor stories, and are willing to take your time with it in order to retain the information then sure, but it's in no way a mandatory read.
Ranging between the years of 1740 to 1840 we see a variety of personalities throughout the 100 years, some in great detail thanks to the publishing their life story such as William Spavens who wrote "Memoirs of a seafaring life: the narrative of William Spavens, pensioner of the Naval Chest at Chatham" allowing for a rich source of material, others like Owen Roberts who sailed on fourteen slave ships, spent two years in a French prison, been afloat for almost forty years in Man-o-war and Privateers and having lived into his nineties being a half of a page as his source was a pamphlet "Born Under an Unlucky Planet" that was published in The Mariner's Mirror.
In the early chapters of the book the longer narratives of sailors made it easy to follow but with the introduction of more and more smaller stories it became overwhelming to retain this information (even though all the little stories were fascinating).
The book started strong and kept my attention to about the halfway point where it started to feel like a chore (where smaller narratives became more prevalent) but it never reached a point where I simply wanted to ignore the book. It managed to pick up the pace right toward the end but that was not enough for me to give it a higher rating.
Would I recommend this book? If you are looking for an encyclopaedia-like compilation of sailor stories, and are willing to take your time with it in order to retain the information then sure, but it's in no way a mandatory read.
August 12, 2023
If you have ever read any of the master & commander books, you’ll love this book. Sons of the Waves takes a global look at the life of the average British seaman during the heroic age of commerce and exploration. The book is unflinching in its look at both the brutality and the adventure of a life dedicated to the seas.
Stephen Taylor does an excellent job of outlining the transformation of Britain from a barely seafaring nation into the most formidable naval forces on the planet. It had details on the intricacies of impressment and the surprising dichotomy of freedom experienced by sailors in charting their own fates, offset by fear of forced conscription at nearly any time to be shipped off to far flung locales.
I was thoroughly impressed by Taylor’s weaving historical events into the shifts in psyche of the seaman, backed up by letters and rules changes by the naval administration. The book dives into every aspect of life, from sexuality aboard to the long gaps in relationships while sailors are away at sea. How mail and letters were delivered and the intricacies of naval provisions, are touched on as well. Shipboard combat is fleshed out thoroughly, showing both the scale of fights to the frequency and intensity. How wounds impacted the life of the sailor after the guns had silenced.
The book does not shy away from the darkest sides of maritime history either, devoting space to chronicling the experience of both slaves and slavers crossing the Atlantic. In addition it covers ships boys, and the rampant issues of abuse and horrifying predation that occurred on the high seas.
Overall an incredible and wide spanning account of many stories and facts, fully of interest to anyone who loves tall ships and wants to know how life worked onboard, and off.
Stephen Taylor does an excellent job of outlining the transformation of Britain from a barely seafaring nation into the most formidable naval forces on the planet. It had details on the intricacies of impressment and the surprising dichotomy of freedom experienced by sailors in charting their own fates, offset by fear of forced conscription at nearly any time to be shipped off to far flung locales.
I was thoroughly impressed by Taylor’s weaving historical events into the shifts in psyche of the seaman, backed up by letters and rules changes by the naval administration. The book dives into every aspect of life, from sexuality aboard to the long gaps in relationships while sailors are away at sea. How mail and letters were delivered and the intricacies of naval provisions, are touched on as well. Shipboard combat is fleshed out thoroughly, showing both the scale of fights to the frequency and intensity. How wounds impacted the life of the sailor after the guns had silenced.
The book does not shy away from the darkest sides of maritime history either, devoting space to chronicling the experience of both slaves and slavers crossing the Atlantic. In addition it covers ships boys, and the rampant issues of abuse and horrifying predation that occurred on the high seas.
Overall an incredible and wide spanning account of many stories and facts, fully of interest to anyone who loves tall ships and wants to know how life worked onboard, and off.
August 24, 2020
Overall: 2.5 stars. A long, plodding history that had a lot of interesting tidbits and stories buried in clunky organization.
The first half of the book was much stronger, with a somewhat narrower focus on fewer “characters,” if you will; while the latter half quickly become clunky. I think the flaw was in the choice to organize this story of the common British sailor strictly chronologically: it likely would have been better served by separation into categories by theme, or geography (wages, sex, disease, the Indian Ocean etc) or by individual (Edward Pellew, William Bligh, etc).
That said, I did enjoy portions of the book and learned some (to me) surprising things about, say, the racial and immigrant background of many of Britain’s sailors: not as many white Britons as you might think! And the author had a nice writing style with hints of humor I appreciated.
Still, the organization made this a bit of a slog; I only recommend it for folks who really like British maritime history.
The first half of the book was much stronger, with a somewhat narrower focus on fewer “characters,” if you will; while the latter half quickly become clunky. I think the flaw was in the choice to organize this story of the common British sailor strictly chronologically: it likely would have been better served by separation into categories by theme, or geography (wages, sex, disease, the Indian Ocean etc) or by individual (Edward Pellew, William Bligh, etc).
That said, I did enjoy portions of the book and learned some (to me) surprising things about, say, the racial and immigrant background of many of Britain’s sailors: not as many white Britons as you might think! And the author had a nice writing style with hints of humor I appreciated.
Still, the organization made this a bit of a slog; I only recommend it for folks who really like British maritime history.
June 22, 2023
I read this a few months after reading Jack Tar, another non-fiction focusing on the lives and voices of common sailors and I really enjoyed both of them! This, unlike Jack Tar, had a more chronological look at the letters and journals and publications of the seamen and I enjoyed being able to place them in the broader context – although I feel I was able to do that more because I knew about the era coming into the book. I did think at times there needed to be a tiny bit more of a focus on the 'big' events but at the same time, I liked the overarching insights into the experiences of regular hands and the sense that life and service went on, regardless of the big name battles and situations. It was bookended well: from the Wager mutiny to the advent of steam a century later, and written in a succinct and entertaining way. There's always something new I learn when reading these type of books, and this time, it was more about the Spithead and Nore mutinies, which are so interesting in gaining a perspective on regular sailors' opinions about the Navy and their officers.
July 26, 2023
Superb stories of the common seaman. I listened to this book, and admit these tales are best heard first before read. The author selected the perfect narrator to tell these grand stories of seamanship, courage, despair, mutiny, paradise islands, sea battles, and much more.
The Jack Tar didn't write his stories down, rather carried them with him wherever his ship journeyed. I was captivated by these stories and the lives of seaman their families, trials and tribulations. Run, sodomy and the lash were part of daily life, and the author censors no detail. In all the audible book I've listened, this book I will surely hear again, the stories are so surreal.
These men and their women were tough as nails, weatherbeaten, at one with the sea, and the soul of a nation. Highly recommended for those readers loving adventure on the high seas.
The Jack Tar didn't write his stories down, rather carried them with him wherever his ship journeyed. I was captivated by these stories and the lives of seaman their families, trials and tribulations. Run, sodomy and the lash were part of daily life, and the author censors no detail. In all the audible book I've listened, this book I will surely hear again, the stories are so surreal.
These men and their women were tough as nails, weatherbeaten, at one with the sea, and the soul of a nation. Highly recommended for those readers loving adventure on the high seas.
September 10, 2020
Books regarding Admirals and Captians from the age of sail are abound; happily, this book goes in the opposite direction. Lord Nelson and Trafalgar have been written about ad nauseum ... but what about the man who was not at Trafalgar; that might have saved Nelson's life had he been there?
Stephen Taylor threads together snippets from the lives of 'common' Sailors to paint a picture of life at sea under sail; primarily focused on the English Navy and merchant fleet. Sometimes it is hard to remember 'who' was the main character in a particular snippet but once you consolidate the myriad voices into one, it becomes a powerful story.
Stephen Taylor threads together snippets from the lives of 'common' Sailors to paint a picture of life at sea under sail; primarily focused on the English Navy and merchant fleet. Sometimes it is hard to remember 'who' was the main character in a particular snippet but once you consolidate the myriad voices into one, it becomes a powerful story.
March 9, 2024
3.5/5 rounded down
Started off great but unfortunately took a turn for the worse in the middle. The last few chapters almost earned it a 4 in my opinion, but not quite.
I definitely recommend this to anyone interested in what life was like for common sailors in the age of sail. The middle gets a bit war heavy, so if you are not very into British naval history (especially wars) then you may find it (as I did) a bit heavy. Otherwise it was well written and researched, as well as thought provoking for the reader.
Started off great but unfortunately took a turn for the worse in the middle. The last few chapters almost earned it a 4 in my opinion, but not quite.
I definitely recommend this to anyone interested in what life was like for common sailors in the age of sail. The middle gets a bit war heavy, so if you are not very into British naval history (especially wars) then you may find it (as I did) a bit heavy. Otherwise it was well written and researched, as well as thought provoking for the reader.
November 22, 2022
Listened to the audiobook. A very engaging account of British sailors during a certain age, illustrated largely through first-hand accounts. Interesting facts (did not know HOW amazing the British navy was in battle at the time) - some sad, some infuriating, and some quite entertaining. In the end, the common British sailor comes out looking quite good (less so the establishment for treating him the way it did). An enlightening and thoroughly enjoyable read.
February 1, 2025
An exceptional book that focuses on the common man in the age of sail contrary to the wealthy, aristocratic characters that star in other books about this time period. There were many bits of information that startled me when reading this book, particularly press gangs and the hatred most sailors had for their officers. A very interesting book to help grasp a more realistic look to the lives of lower class ship hands
February 7, 2021
The life of the common sailor is a useful lens through which to view the golden age of sail, and Taylor’s sources are admirably voluminous. But I wished for a meatier, more rewarding work. There’s no real thesis to this book; it’s just a string of below-decks anecdotes and flip sides to familiar events, many of which he repeats more than once. It’s charming, but ultimately a bit fluffy.
May 28, 2023
Highly-enjoyable, comprehensive social history of the sailors of Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries, mostly in their own words. A little nationalistic for my taste, but it does not shy away from depicting “Jack Tar’s” culpability in the Slave Trade, nor from the harsh naval justice of the period.
June 29, 2020
Interesting social history of ordinary sailors in the British navy (mostly) during its most significant epochs. Nothing complicated, just testimonies from sailors.
August 1, 2022
Excellent storytelling in nonfiction, which is fantastic and engaging. I enjoyed learning about British sailors during the age of sail!
December 26, 2022
Informative and interesting on the lives of sailors in the 18th and early 19th century. It was a tough life.
January 7, 2024
A good story but lots of padding.... repeated the same quotes over and over. There were a lot of sources new to me and I learned a lot, but it could have been streamlined a lot.
July 12, 2025
If you are someone who loves the seas, and tales of men (and women) who used to ply them for a living, or for love, or both - this is the book for you. It focuses on the narrative left behind by these long-dead sailors, whose words open up a world which we can only dream about. Through wars, through peace, and everything in between - the course of the world has been changed by sailing and sailors. I have read this book two times and felt it is worth every penny I spent on it.
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