Six Frigates: How Piracy, War and British Supremacy at Sea Gave Birth to the World's Most Powerful Navy - Hardcover

Toll, Ian

4.37

6,889 ratings by Goodreads

9780718146580: Six Frigates: How Piracy, War and British Supremacy at Sea Gave Birth to the World's Most Powerful Navy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0718146581 ISBN 13: 9780718146580

Publisher: Michael Joseph, 2006

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On October 21st, 1805, an English fleet commanded by Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson hunted down and annihilated the combined fleets of France and Spain in an immense sea battle off Cape Trafalgar, near the Spanish coast. The Battle of Trafalgar, as it came to be known, crowned the Royal Navy as undisputed sovereign of the world’s oceans.

Her naval dominance over the century that followed was absolute. After Trafalgar Britain’s fleets held sway over the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Caribbean, the North Sea, the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Her bases were far-flung, strategically located, and unassailable; she sailed out of Chatham, Sheerness, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Kinsale, Gibraltar, Port Mahon. Malta, Halifax, Bermuda, Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, Capetown, Bombay, Calcutta, Trincomalee, Jakarta, Pelu Pelang and New South Wales. The global power of the Royal Navy was unlike anything the world had ever seen before.

And yet, just seven years after Nelson’s final, fatal victory, British ships were at war with a new enemy. Not, this time, a traditional European Great Power, but a challenger from the new world: the United States of America.

Her fledgling navy was small and untested and Royal Navy officers were confident of success, arrogant. Faced with this young pretender, defeat was unthinkable. But their opponents were skilled and committed, the American ships innovatively designed and strong because of their costly, difficult live oak construction. The British would soon discover that they had a fight on their hands. And it would be a bloody one.

Admirably researched, rich in detail and inhabited by a gripping cast of real-life, three-dimensional heroes and villains, Six Frigates traces the genesis of a fleet that would, ultimately, replace Britain’s as the world’s most powerful. And it captures the moment when the Royal Navy first caught a glimpse of the future. Creaking wood, whipping sails, the bark of orders and the bludgeon and thunder of cannon come magnificently alive in its pages. Utterly compelling, this is naval history at its most vivid, readable, convincing and entertaining.

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Review:

Sweeping in scope, full of vivid descriptions... solidly grounded in the diplomatic landscape... a masterly work. --Chris Patsilelis

[A] wonderfully atmospheric account, brilliantly researched, full of stirring action and rich with the scent of the sea. --Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman

[Ian Toll] succeeds splendidly. His factual story is as exciting as any of Patrick O'Brian's fictional seafaring tales.

Gripping... a masterful narrative... Toll captures the ambivalence of the government, and its reluctance to pay for even a tiny navy, very well. --Joe Mysak

Toll has a light touch, much like noted historian David McCullough; well-researched facts are carefully balanced by smooth narrative flow.... The result is a thoroughly readable book that adds depth and significance to an important era of American history. --Bruce Linder

A superb, page-turning history of America's first truly difficult set of political military decisions.... A great, sprawling, and fascinating tale. --Admiral James Stavridis, U.S. Navy

Ian W. Toll writes with such an arresting energy. He evokes the world of Patrick O'Brian, the salt-stained ruthlessness of naval commanders, the carnage of the broadside and the surgeon's saw, but also conjures a lost American landscape. --Tim Gardam

Vibrant and comprehensive, Toll makes an impressive debut. --Gilbert Taylor

Sweeping in scope, full of vivid descriptions... solidly grounded in the diplomatic landscape... a masterly work.--Chris Patsilelis

[A] wonderfully atmospheric account, brilliantly researched, full of stirring action and rich with the scent of the sea.--Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman

About the Author:

Ian W. Toll has been a Wall Street analyst, a Federal Reserve financial analyst, and a political aide and speechwriter. A lifelong sailor, Toll's research into British and American naval history dates back to the early 1990's, when he was first introduced to the historical novels of Patrick O'Brian. Six Frigates is his first book

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