Six Frigates

I had promised myself not to get distracted, to focus on the mountain of work in my briefcase.  But I was also tired, and it's the weekend.  Sitting on the plane, just before the dreaded "turn off all electronic devices" order, I impulsively clicked "Buy" on Ian Toll's Six Frigates:  The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy.

I can't recommend it highly enough, it's just masterful.  I'd expected the first few chapters to be a rehash of things I already knew - instead, I was treated to an account of Thomas Jefferson's stint in Paris as a personal shopper to Madison, who was sitting at home working on a draft of a little thing that would later be known as The Constitution of the United States of America.  Madison is asking especially for "whatever may throw light on the general Constitution and [laws] of the several confederacies which have existed," especially books by "historians of the Roman Empire during its decline."  (This was back when our government followed the maxim that Inferior People Should Not Be Employed.)

Even when I know Toll's material pretty well, I must say he presents it in potently concentrated form, evidencing abundant and careful reflection on his part.  On Nelson:

"But Nelson had a darker side.  Behind the gracious and sensitive exterior there was a cold resolve, a ruthlessness, even a kind of savagery.  His personal courage was extreme to the point of recklessness.  He had seen so much action that it is incredible, in retrospect, that he survived as long as he did."

He goes on to quote a document I'd not heard of before, but which is most illuminating.  When he was 39, the government asked Nelson to submit a "memorial", a summary of his service record to date, for the files or something.  It went a little something like this:

Your memorialist has been in four actions with the fleets of the enemy, in three actions with frigates, in six engagements with batteries, in ten actions in boats employed in cutting out of harbors, in destroying vessels, and in the taking of three towns...  He has assisted in the capture of seven sail of the line, six frigates, four corvettes, eleven privateers of different sizes, and taken and destroyed nearly fifty sail of merchantmen.  [He] has been actually engaged against the enemy upward of one hundred and twenty times, has lost his right eye and arm, and been severely wounded and bruised in his body...

This was before his great victories at The Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar.

Anyway, it is a delight, a fine book about Navies with some excellent material on how our country got along in the 30 years after we won the War of Independence and Lived Happily Ever After.