The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain 1649-1815

(Paperback)

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The Command of the Ocean describes with unprecedented authority and scholarship the rise of Britain to naval greatness, and the central place of the Navy and naval activity in the life of the nation and government. It describes not just battles, voyages and cruises but how the Navy was manned, how it was supplied with timber, hemp and iron, how its men (and sometimes women) were fed, and above all how it was financed and directed. It was during the century and a half covered by this book that the successful organizing of these last three - victualling, money and management - took the Navy to the heart of the British state. It is the great achievement of the book to show how completely integrated and mutually dependent Britain and the Navy then became.

Reviews

As Mr. Rodger demonstrates on almost every page, if you do not understand the importance of British maritime history, you can never fully understand Britain.
Rodger illuminates the world of Nelson and Hardy and its portrayal by C. F. Forrester in the Hornblower novels and Patrick O Brian in the Aubrey and Maturin cycle . . . to understand the Royal Navy at its peak, Rodger s account is indispensable

Author Bio

N.A.M. Rodger is Professor of Naval History at Exeter University and Anderson Senior Research Fellow, National Maritime Museum. He is the author of The Wooden World and The Admiralty as well as the highly acclaimed first volume of his naval history of Britain, The Safeguard of the Sea (available in Penguin).