Nelson the Commander
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972. Book Club Edition. Hardcover. xi, [1], 322, [2] pages. Endpaper maps. Illustrations. Occasional Footnotes. Tables. Notes on the Plates. Bibliography. Index. Captain Geoffrey Martin Bennett, DSC FRHS (7 June 1909 – 5 September 1983), was a British Royal Navy officer and author. Bennett always wrote, and was awarded the Royal United Services Institution gold medal for an essay three times. At the end of World War II he published his first novel Phantom Fleet, a naval yarn, under the pseudonym "Sea Lion": as a serving officer he could not use his own name. Over the next two decades he produced about twenty such novels for both adults and children. After retiring he took to naval history. He published studies of the main battles of both world wars and Nelson; a biography of Admiral Lord Charles Beresford; and Cowan's War, an account of the British campaign in the Baltic (1918–19) under Admiral Sir Walter Cowan, which successfully thwarted Soviet Russia from seizing control of the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Nearly two centuries after his death, does Nelson deserve his reputation as one of the world's great commanders? Nelson's triumphs have so caught the public imagination that his failures are barely remembered. His only victorious battles at sea was Trafalgar, while his infatuation with Emma Hamilton, his role in the judicial murder of the Neapolitan Commodore, Carraciolo, and his flagrant disobedience of orders brought him disgrace and dishonor. Yet this was a man who, in an age when the Royal Navy thrived on rum, sodomy and the lash, turned his captains into a 'Band of Brothers' and whose death brought tears to the eyes of the toughest sailors. Did England's naval hero have the star quality which marks the world's truly great captains? In answering this question, Geoffrey Bennett, a distinguished historian who himself served in the Royal Navy for thirty-five years, provides a full and meticulously researched account of Nelson's life and career which will enthrall students of history and the general reader alike. Condition: Good / Good.
Keywords: Horatio Nelson, Napoleonic Wars, Naval, Great Britain, Royal Navy, Carraciolo, Emma Hamilton, Trafalgar, Alexander Ball, Edward Berry, Brueys, Cuthbert Collingwood, Samuel Hood, John St. Vincent, HMS Victory, Pierre Villeneuve
[Book #78098]
Price: $22.50