| 'Trafalgar' by Michael C Daconta, Leo J Obrst and Kevin T Smith |
I have just finished reading the Folio Society edition of this book, which is out in paperback later in October. It's fascinating. Pocock has performed a very clever trick - taking eyewitness accounts of the run up to and the battle of Trafalgar and weaving them seamlessly into a narrative account of the famous battle. But it's not just the battle itself. The book also manages to convey the way in which Nelson himself managed to change the culture of the British Navy in the direction of serious professionalism, of an understanding of the role of training in preparing crews for fighting, and in the necessity of officers to take responsibility for the welfare of their crews. Normally books of eyewitness accounts are not only disjointed, but they also portray the events through the eyes of the literate upper classes. Pocock, however, has succeeded in tracking down eyewitness accounts at all levels, resulting in a much more rounded narrative than we usually get. The accounts are drawn from both sides of the battle - the British and the French/Spanish combined fleet. Reading them one can start to appreciate why it was that this battle effectively set the seal on Britain's mastery of the sea for the next 100 years. Nelson himself, as virtually everyone knows, died in the battle. One of the things that comes out of this book is a sense of how necessary it was for that to happen. Nelson's death at the height of his greatest triumph put the seal on the myth which he himself had created, and it was that myth, almost as much as the things Nelson actually did, that instilled in British naval officers the confidence of the rightness of their actions that they carried with them through the next 100 years. Recommended.
'Trafalgar' (Eyewitness History) by Tom Pocock |
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