The most important port on France’s Biscay coast for centuries was La Rochelle. Heavily fortified, with a deep-water port, it had all the attributes of an excellent naval base. Unfortunately, it was also the centre of Protestant resistance to Paris, and in 1627 was sur...

Nelson will always be associated with HMS Victory. She was his flagship for his final battle at Trafalgar, and it was on her orlop deck that he breathed his last, just as the battle was won. This association with Britain’s great naval hero would go on to help save the ...

The tide, as Geoffrey Chaucer observed, waits for no man. Even out at sea, when all seems calm on the surface, the tide is there, constantly changing, flooding in and then ebbing away. Remorseless and powerful, its effect is most dramatic close to the shore. For sailor...

The Guillaume Tell (80) was one of the magnificent ships built in Toulon by Jacques-Noel Sané during the 1790s. She fought at Nelson’s victory at the battle of the Nile in 1798, but had the good fortune to be stationed towards the end of the French line, and was able t...

George Anson is best known for leading a squadron of Royal Navy ships into the largely unexplored Pacific Ocean in 1740, but his achievements were so much more. He was a talented fleet commander and a brilliant First Lord of the Admiralty during the Seven Years War. Hi...

When mutiny on a ship is mentioned, there is only one that comes to the public’s mind. Helped by countless books, TV documentaries and films, the popular view of naval mutiny is synonymous with the events that overtook the Bounty in the lonely South Pacific. Naval hist...

HMS Bellerophon was affectionately known by the sailors who served on her as the “Billy Ruffian.” She was a 74-gun ship of the line launched in 1786, one of a class of forty third-rates built in the 1770s and 80s to modernise the Royal Navy. These ships would go on to...

Mounted on my wall at home is a sextant. It is not an especially old or valuable one. Made from brass and steel, it was manufactured by Heath and Co of London in the 1950s, and still works well. The advent of modern marine navigation aids have made it largely redundant...

On the 2nd of April 1801, Nelson fought the second of his major fleet actions against the Danish fleet in the shallow waters of The Sound off Copenhagen. It was one of his hardest battles, and saw him come close to defeat.

Tensions had been building with the Baltic powe...

At the 1839 Royal Academy exhibition Joseph Turner revealed his most famous oil painting. It was a wonderful work, heavy with symbolism. It showed a Napoleonic warship being dragged to her doom at the breakers yard. To add to the indignity, the tug towing the old saili...