The Illustrated Companion to Nelson's Navy

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Companion Book for Nautical Fiction
Review: "The Illustrated Companion to Nelson's Navy" is a wonderful repository of information about ships, life at sea, and naval warfare during the era of Jack Aubrey, Richard Bolitho, and Horation Hornblower (frequent mention of these and other fictional Royal Navy officers is made in the book, placing them in the real life context). The range of material covered is very broad, and it is attractively and concisely presented, often in a graphical or tabular form. The book is illustrated with hundreds of drawings, paintings and diagrams, many of them from contemporary sources. If you want information about ship types, naval weapons, life on board, battles, ship handling, sails and rigging, watches and bells, rates of pay, distribution of prize money, and seemingly almost anything else you can think of, this is a very handy place to find it. I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in learning about the background to the novels of Patrick O'Brian, Alexander Kent, Dudley Pope, and C.S. Forester.

Rating:
Summary: Nice Introduction to Sailing Warships, but confusing.
Review: I needed a primer on warships in the age of sail, and needed it on short notice. This was available, so I bought it. All in all it wasn't too bad. The book covered a wide range of subjects, and I walked away with the feeling that I had acquired a good base of information. In this the book excels.

Still, for me the heavy use of period naval jargon hindered my understanding of the subject matter, and the illustrations weren't the best. As other readers have noted, there were a number of technical inaccuracies, many of which could have been caught through better proof-reading.

Still, all in all I liked the book, and will keep it around for future reference.

--Jeff

Rating:
Summary: This Book STINKS! And Here's Why!
Review: Quite simply, this book gets it's facts wrong so often I've had to annotate every page in 10 to put it right. Real life ship facts and biographies are wrongly quoted but even more glaringly this book fails in its main mission. It sold itself to me on having authoritative pieces written in it that list many ships in fiction books. Ships like the Hotspur or Virago from two noted writers novels. Guess what? The list is in error and has the wrong entries in it. Not only that but ships rates are wrongly classified in this book and the number of guns they carried. Most of the technical stuff is valid but when the author tries to weave the fictional maritime world in he fails miserably.
I do love my copy though, it makes for interesting reading BUT I would only recommend it to a seasoned historian or fan of the era who KNOWS the truth about certain facts and books and can use that to glean the goodness from this (very stylishly presented) mishmash. A glorious mess but still a MESS!

...

Rating:
Summary: Grog
Review: Simply a must-have. If you are a fan of the period, or actively read 18/19th century sailing novels, this book is very helpful.

Rating:
Summary: illustrations are inferior
Review: The illustrations in this illustrated book are without detail and almost useless. If you are using this book for reference purposes forget it. It looks like the author passed the origional images through an imaging software program to distort them enough not to have to pay royalities or something. I'm very disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, well written book, with perhaps a couple of holes
Review: The previous reviewers have said it all, and well. I'll just add my weight and say that the book is packed with just the kind of information that someone new to the subject wants, is an excellent value and a great companion to whatever nautical fiction series you may be reading. It's true that some illustrations will make you scratch your head (What is the purpose of the painting of H.M.S. Victory on pg. 24 that looks like it was done by a second-grader?) but the vast majority are helpful. If the topic becomes a hobby, you will want more technical drawings of the ships and it will be time to pay more for a book with a more specific subject. As an introduction, this book is first-rate.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent value
Review: The previous reviewers have said it all, and well. I'll just add my weight and say that the book is packed with just the kind of information that someone new to the subject wants, is an excellent value and a great companion to whatever nautical fiction series you may be reading. It's true that some illustrations will make you scratch your head (What is the purpose of the painting of H.M.S. Victory on pg. 24 that looks like it was done by a second-grader?) but the vast majority are helpful. If the topic becomes a hobby, you will want more technical drawings of the ships and it will be time to pay more for a book with a more specific subject. As an introduction, this book is first-rate.

Rating:
Summary: Finally, a clear explanation for the fiction series
Review: This book is full of clear illustrations and explanations of the main aspects of naval life and operations. I'm working my way through the O'Brian series and this book is quite helpful when I can't remember a brig from a sloop or whether the topsails are above or below the topgallants. My brother is reading the Hornblower series and he'll get a birthday present of this book. I especially like the references to the multiple fictional series that appear throughout the sidebars and main text.

Don't look for long, drawn-out technical specifications in this book. It covers a wide variety of topics at just enough detail to appreciate the historical accuracy and color of the fiction.`

Rating:
Summary: Good general introduction
Review: When I was much younger and first started reading the Horatio Hornblower books by C.S. Forester, I was blown away by the authenticity, yet puzzled by the jargon - what's a halliard, for example, or a topsail? What does it mean to shorten sail, and what is the lee side of a ship? This book would have helped immensely. It's not overly technical, nor does it swamp you with minutiae, but it gives you a good general overview of the British ships of the Napoleonic era, what the nautical terms are, what life was like on board and a couple of summaries of battles for good measure.

This is an appetizer, but what an appetizer it is. If you're looking for more technical specs of ships of the line look elsewhere, but if you're a newbie to the entire historical nautical fiction scene, I can think of few better places to start.