Ben Wilson - Empire of the Deep: The Rise and Fall of the British Navy

A Sunday Times Bestseller

One of our finest young historians... With such a variety of peaks and troughs to choose from, this book can only generate discussion: it is, in its essence, a book about rise and fall that explodes the notion of rise and fall. It is a wonderful book because it does not tell the answer from on high but, instead, it asks the question: what do you think?

Daily Telegraph

The fighting, blood-and-guts side of naval life is portrayed by Wilson with great skill... A charming book

Evening Standard

Wilson tackles this formidable canvas with zeal and spirit. He is strong on strategy and analysis, yet also throws himself into the great battle scenes, of which his account of the Battle of the Nile in 1798 is particularly effective

New Statesman

Spanning the period since the Romans left until now, Empire of the Deep: The Rise and Fall of the British Navy is a sprawling, magisterial account of how Britannia came to rule the waves

Metro

Compelling... Wilsons mastering of 1,500 years of naval history is no small achievement

Sunday Times

Wonderfully stirring. The tale Wilson has to tell is so exciting, and the bravura with which he recounts it is so infectious, that his case becomes irresistible

Guardian

Wilson charts and celebrates a 1,000-year love affair between our islands and the seaborne branch of the armed forces... The sea boils and timbers creak as you read this smart, salty, invigorating work

Daily Telegraph History Books of the Year

EMPIRE OF THE DEEP

The Rise and Fall of the British Navy

BEN WILSON

There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory

Francis Drake

For Conrad, who was born, narratively speaking, during the Battle of Barfleur-La Hogue

And in loving memory of
Jamie Brigstocke

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Section one

Section two

Section three

MAPS

The passenger described the captain of the ship: he is a very extraordinary person. I never before came across a man whom I could fancy being a Napoleon or Nelson... His ascendancy over everybody is quite curious: the extent to which every officer and man feels the slightest praise or rebuke would have been before seeing him incomprehensible.

The passenger was Charles Darwin, who was twenty-two years old when the Beagle set sail at the end of 1831; the captain was Robert Fitzroy, then aged twenty-six. Darwin witnessed the Royal Navy at its zenith. Before the Beagle departed he was shown HMS Caledonia, a leviathan 120-gun ship of the line. So large a vessel is an astonishing sight, one wonders by what contrivance everything is governed with such regularity and how amongst such numbers such order prevails. On coming near her the hum is like that of a town heard at some distance in the evening. At another time he remarked of HMS Beagle that below decks, where the men messed and slept, everything was so clean that it put to shame many a gentlemans house.

Regularity, order, cleanliness these were the hallmarks of the Royal Navy. Its ships purred like lubricated machines. Its men were trained and drilled to work in teams, the cogs that turned the complex mechanism of a fighting ship. The discipline, efficiency and health of British sailors, the professionalism of their officers and the smooth operation of the ships in which they served propelled the Navy to dominate the worlds seas.

Sixteen years before, another giant of the nineteenth century had boarded a British warship. On 15 July 1815 Napoleon surrendered for the final time to the captain of HMS Bellerophon. What I admire most in your ship, he told the captain as the ships crew raised the boats, turned the capstan and hoisted the topsail yards, is the extreme silence and orderly conduct of your men; on board a French ship everyone calls and gives orders, and they gabble like so many geese.about their daily shipboard tasks allowed them to fire their broadsides again and again in the heat of bloody, frenzied battles such as Quiberon Bay, the Saintes, the Nile and Trafalgar, with withering regularity. The success of the Royal Navy consisted in stamping order onto chaos.

Captain Fitzroy was born in July 1805, three months before the Battle of Trafalgar. When he became a midshipman at the age of fourteen and acting commander of HMS Beagle at twenty-three he joined a brotherhood of officers acutely aware that they inherited exacting standards of leadership and seamanship. Fitzroy promised to be among the best of his generation. He embodied what were seen as the virtues of a nineteenth-century naval officer. He was the scion of an aristocratic family; his grandfather, the Duke of Grafton, had been prime minister and his uncle, Lord Castlereagh, was foreign secretary from 1812 until 1822.

Fitzroy might have had impeccable connections, but the Navy demanded more than inherited qualities of nobility. Exceptional as he seemed to Darwin, Fitzroys qualities were expected of all captains in the service. Since the seventeenth century the Navy had taken the sons of gentlemen and nobles and introduced them to life at sea from a tender age, sometimes as young as nine, to learn practical seamanship how to splice, tie knots, haul on ropes, fire guns, for instance as well as the technicalities of navigation and battle tactics. They were schooled to the sea as surely as a Grimsby fisherman. From 1677 they even had to take examinations to qualify as commissioned officers a radically meritocratic idea in an age when military leadership was seen as the preserve of the aristocracy. But it created a Navy led by men of status who had spent their lives at sea. Fitzroy was awarded the mathematics prize at the Royal Naval College and scored an unprecedented 100 per cent at his examination to qualify as a lieutenant. He was considered one of the best seamen of his day.

But his courage and leadership would not be tried by battle. Instead they were tested by the elements. Robert Fitzroy took command of the brig Beagle in 1828 when her captain committed suicide off the unforgiving coast of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of South America. Beagle was one of two vessels conducting hydrographical surveys in South America. The expeditions leader, Captain Philip Parker King, in HMS Adventure, had already distinguished himself exploring and surveying the coast of Australia. Tierra del Fuego was a tough proposition. The purpose of such hydrographical surveys was to gather navigational information that would be used to produce detailed nautical charts for the Admiralty. King and Fitzroy led their surveying teams in subzero conditions and stormy seas.

These expeditions pushed the endurance and seamanship of officers and men to the limits. Officers on the frontline of exploration such as Fitzroy were driven by passion for science. It was something shared by officials at the Admiralty as well. In 1831 the Hydrographer of the Navy, Captain Francis Beaufort, suggested that Charles Darwin accompany Fitzroy on the second voyage of the