British Frigate vs French Frigate: 1793-1814

Description

In the Age of Fighting Sail (1650-1820), ambitious officers of the navies of many nations sought command of a frigate. Speedy, nimble and formidably armed, frigates often operated independently, unlike the larger ships of the line. Legendary sailors such as Edward Pellew and Charles-Alexandre Leon Durand, Comte de Linoise, found that commanding such a ship offered numerous opportunities for wealth. In this book, four representative frigate duels are examined: first, a battle fought between two closely matched ships (HMS Nymphe (36) vs La Cleopatre (32); second, a victory won by an inferior British frigate over a superior French frigate (HMS Pallas (32) vs Minerve (40); third, a victory - the only one - by an inferior French frigate over a superior British frigate (HMS Ambuscade (32) vs Baionnaise (24), and fourth, victory of a superior British frigate over an inferior French frigate (HMS Indefatigable (44) of Hornblower fame vs La Virginie (40). Featuring specially commissioned artwork and offering expert analysis, this study provides a vivid account of the bloody combats fought by the most romantic warship of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era - the frigate.

Mark Lardas holds a degree in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, but spent his early career at the Johnson Space Center doing Space Shuttle structural analysis, and space navigation. An amateur historian and a long-time ship modeller, Mark Lardas is currently working in League City, Texas. He has written extensively about modelling as well as naval, maritime, and military history.

"This nice new book by American author Mark Lardas is probably the best single book on explaining what the ships, the tactics, and the men operating these vessels were like and what they experienced." --Cookie Sewell, www.cybermodeler.com (June 2013) "In this book, author Mark Lardas looks at the history of the development of the frigate from both [the British and the French] points of view. This includes the quality and training of the men who sailed these ships. We are then provided with several combats between the two nations as examples to what all that was previously covered did to the way a battle played out. The book then ends with an assessment of what was covered. This is all accompanied by period artwork as well as more modern illustrations, making for another excellent title in this series and one that I can highly recommend for an interesting read." --Scott Van Aken, www.modelingmadness.com (June 2013)