num_pages: 64
description: Drawing on many contemporary sources and eyewitness accounts, this book examines the lives of the ordinary sailors of the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815), detailing their attitudes, duties, comforts, hardships, vices and virtues. The popular image of the British sailor of this time is of a press-ganged wretch living off weevil-infested food, motivated only by prize money and facing constant hazards aboard a floating hell, where discipline was maintained by the lash. The extent to which this enduring image accords with reality is revealed here.
language: English
title: Nelson’s Sailors
titlecomplete: Nelson’s Sailors (Warrior, 100)
genres: Military History, History, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 16
series: Osprey Warrior
publisher: Osprey Publishing