The Command of the Ocean

A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815

Bibliographic Data

ID9800975
AuthorsRuth Mackay (0000-0002-7540-8508, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume122
Issue499
Pages1421-1423
Publication date2007-12-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe English Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ehr/cem389
OpenAlexW1975443676
LanguageEN
Citations received11

This second volume of Nicholas Rodger's history of the British navy is a remarkable book. In his first volume, entitled The Safeguard of the Sea (rev. ante, cxiv [1999], 131–3), Rodger indicated that this was not a ‘pre-history of Nelson's Navy or Victoria's Empire’. This second volume moves forward expertly through the complex half-century after 1649 to the navy's notable progress prior to 1775; and, after the American set-back, to the period of unchallenged British naval dominance. But Rodger's abiding objective is to show that the navy was an essential part of the history of Britain as a nation geared to the quest for maritime dominance. He emphasises the ‘political, social, economic, diplomatic, administrative, agricultural, medical, [and] religious’ aspects of British history with which naval affairs were interwoven. The approach of the bi-centenary of Trafalgar coincided happily with Rodger's completion of this volume. Nelson's victory emphasised the indisputable success of British warlike endeavour in the technological, navigational, and organisational circumstances indicated by ‘the age of sail’. Rodger draws on a great body of documentary and published work in explaining why the British navy increased, in the main steadily, its maritime dominance up to the day when a frustrated Napoleon, having been to Moscow and back, surrendered personally in 1815 to the captain of a British warship. It was appropriate that the Bellerophon was the ship available. She had fully illustrated the power of British gunnery, unmatchable at close quarters, that characterised the British triumph at Trafalgar

Ancient history · Archaeology · Battle · Dominance (genetics · Economic history · Empire · Navy · Operations research · Political science · Politics · Victory · Engineering · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology

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