Nelson & His World

Hi

I've been writing articles for wikipedia for a while now and last night I had a thought. I began writing when I realised that they didn't have an article on John Perkins and kept writing and editing every time I found a mistake.

I thought that in order to help expand the section on the Royal navy and its battles, ships and officers if anyone on this forum has the desire to write an article, I would happily put it on wikipedia and make the appropriate edits to put in the wikilinks and external sources etc.

If you want to see an example of pages I've done, have a look at my user page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Corneredmouse
Or one of the articles I've done:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jervi ... St_Vincent

All the best,
Ian

Many thanks for the info, Ian, and the link to the Jervis piece. I had never seen the portrait of the young Jervis before. You can see the determination in his youthful expression that was to characterise him in later life.

Jervis was a remarkable man. I'm really glad I researched him and wrote the article. I feel sometimes disappointed that there are so many books on Nelson and Cochrane and yet so few on any of the other magnificent men and women who pepper the history of our nation.

I think I sense a shift in mood recently with regard to imperial history. Time gives perspective and writers like Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts are looking at British imperial history in a less jaundiced way. Maybe this will also restore maritime history to greater popularity. Adam Nicholson has already led the way with his wonderful book, 'Men of Honour' which is a rivetting picture of the men of Nelson's navy and the codes and customs that shaped, and laid the foundations of their achievements.

One of the problems, though, about writing biographies of seamen whose achievements were so outstanding is that, while we might have detailed accounts of actions or exploits they were involved in, there is, often, not sufficient material to sustain a full-length narrative. Biographers go some way to solving this difficulty by publishing collective biographies with shorter accounts of their lives such as 'Nelson & his Captains', 'Three Dorset Captains', and 'Deeds of Naval Daring' - the latter two are a bit dated now.

There's nothing like a TV series for sparking off an interest, though. A series on 'Heroes of the Napoleonic Wars' could be a winner.