The greatest victories from the British Navy's golden age, told through
never-before-seen letters from the officers themselves.
When Napoleon eventually died in exile, the Lords of the Admiralty
ordered that the original dispatches from seven major fleet battles--The
Glorious First of June (1794), St Vincent (1797), Camperdown (1797), The
Nile (1798), Copenhagen (1801), Trafalgar (1805), and San Domingo
(1806)--should be gathered together and presented to the nation. These
letters, written by Britain's admirals, captains, surgeons, and
boatswains and sent back home in the midst of conflict, were bound in an
immense volume, to be admired as a jewel of British history.
Sam Willis, one of Britain's finest naval historians, stumbled on this
collection by chance in the British Library in 2010 and soon found that
only a handful of people knew of its existence. Willis here shapes that
material into wonderful character portraits of the commanders on both
sides, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. He also provides
concise and illuminating explanations of the convoluted political
circumstances surrounding each battle as he expertly reinterprets these
key engagements in extraordinary and revelatory detail.
A beautifully dramatic narrative, In the Hour of Victory tells the
story of these naval triumphs as never before and allows us to hear once
more the officer's voices as they describe the battles that made Britain
great.
