title: In the Hour of Victory: The Royal Navy at War in the Age of Nelson
author:  Sam Willis 
description: A rising British naval historian has assembled from an underused primary sourcethe after-battle dispatches of the British admiralsa thoroughly absorbing account of the seven great fleet actions of the Napoleonic Wars. The prominence of Nelson is inevitable, as he commanded in three of them and was important in a fourth. But the author also does justice to less iconic figures such as John Jervis (Earl St. Vincent) and the almost forgotten Sir John Duckworth. He even has a good word for the fighting spirit of William Bligh, of Bounty notoriety. Framing the dispatches are excellent narrative passages, well furnished with both statistics and analysis, and brief notes on such subjects as the fate of the wounded (not pleasant reading), navigational instruments, signals, and lightning rods on the mastheads. The book is altogether a feast for the serious student of the Age of Sail and so gracefully written as to be surprisingly accessible to the new reader. --Roland Green
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  [Chapter 1](Elizabethbotle_frontmatter.htm#toc1)
  
  
  
  
  
  London
  
  
  
  
  
  1799
  
  
  “Given the evidence and the documentation offered to this court, I have no
  other choice, Captain Danvers, than to see you relieved of all duties and
  obligations in His Majesty’s Navy.” With those words said, the Lord High
  Admiral brought his gavel down on the court bar. The responding thump, like
  the last clap of a hammer on a coffin nail, was followed by stunned silence.
  
  After all, the packed hearing room at the Admiralty had just witnessed the end
  of one of the navy’s most brilliant careers, some said one that rivaled even
  Nelson’s.
  
  Few doubted they would ever again see such a precipitous and fatal descent in
  their lifetime.
  
  There wasn’t a man in the room, officer or jack tar, who wasn’t saying a
  prayer of thanksgiving that it wasn’t his hide being flayed, his livelihood
  sinking to the bottom of the icy Atlantic.
  
  But then again, most of the men in the room held their posts as men boun