On a Making Tide (Nelson)

by David Donachie (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.40

  Horatio Nelson is our most famous military hero. His statue dominates the capital, he has adorned our currency, his last words have passed into folklore, and HMS Victory, his flagship at Trafalgar, is the centrepiece of our naval heritage. Ask anyone 'Who was Nelson?' and they will be able to tell you. On a Making Tide and Breaking the Line (Volume 2) will tell the story of our greatest military genius and his long-running love affair with Emma Hamilton; a love that transgressed class, position and social convention and which threatened them both with ruin. Starting with Nelson's arrival at Chatham aged 12 to join his first ship the Raisonable (moored next to his last, the Victory) and with Emma rejecting life as a domestic servant to live in a bawdy house, this book will take Nelson and Emma to 1798 and the battle of the Nile, the crushing victory which secured Nelson's fame. Following both Nelson's exceptional career and the spirited progress of Emma, it is a story of talent and character overcoming tradition and expectation; It is a story of a society on the cusp of the liberal 18th and conservative 19th centuries and the fate of two people caught in the middle of the change. From arctic ice flow to Neapolitan courtroom, from single ship actions in the dank English channel to fleet actions in the mouth of the Nile, this is the story of a great hero, a doomed love affair and a war that stretched across the world.