As the anniversary of Trafalgar approached, commemorative books appeared in a stream (or should one say current?) among the products of which is this anthology, by a group of well‐qualified authors, some being professional historians, some naval officers, and some both. The chapters comprise a general discussion of the strategic background to the battle; a trenchant account of the political conflict between Britain and France; a sketch of Nelson's character, not excluding its worst aspects; an analysis of the principles of leadership; a view of the battle form the Franco‐Spanish perspective; a technical exposition of the naval tactics of the period; a description of HMS Victory and the other British ships that took part; a narrative, shorter than might have been expected, of the battle; and an essay on the legacy of Nelson. Multiple authors sometimes produce conflicting opinions. The French contributor considers that Admiral Villeneuve committed suicide, two British ones that he was murdered by a vengeful Napoleon.
In any such book some of the contents are bound to repeat information available elsewhere, but some are less obvious. For example, the intensity of the battle emerges from the fact that a single broadside from the Victory, not the largest of the 60 ships involved, would have delivered three‐quarters as much shot as all the artillery Wellington had at Waterloo; and the practical difficulties facing the numerically superior Franco‐Spanish fleet are elucidated by the statistic that on some French ships, up to 40 per cent of the crew were actually soldiers. Not the least interesting chapter is the final one by Andrew Lambert, in which he opines that the Royal Navy in the century after Trafalgar placed too much stress on Nelson's courage and devotion to duty, at the expense of strategic and tactical skill, a fault which he believes emerged during the First World War but was corrected by the Second. None of the contributors comment on the opinion of some modern scholars that the battle was not as decisive as it appears to us, because the French within a few years had replaced ships they lost at Trafalgar.
The firm of Osprey is well known for highly illustrated books (usually much smaller than this one) on detailed aspects of warfare, and on that basis have provided a large number of illustrations, mostly contemporary and mostly in colour. I did feel that the judgment of the picture editors might occasionally have been questioned. Was it worthwhile to include a full‐page coloured portrait of Robespierre, who died in 1794, when the progress of the Battle of Trafalgar itself and the courses of the opposing fleets in the months before it, are depicted in second‐hand maps some of which are reproduced in too small a format to be readable? A series of endnotes, and a short bibliography, will allow readers to find more detailed accounts. This book is a worthy contribution to the voluminous literature of Nelson and Trafalgar. Now the anniversary has passed, historians of all periods will have to discover new subjects to interest their publishers.
