Long before Patrick O'Brian's and C. S. Forester's novels of the great age of combat sail a
vast popular poetry abounded in Britain about the war at sea against the French Revolution and
Napoleonic Empire. This book tells the story of how that poetry with its sailors and admirals
as folk heroes became a driving force for morale national identity and patriotism that would
flourish until 1918. Focusing on the sea poetry of Britain during that twenty-two year war
1793-1815 the book shows how heretofore overlooked invasion poems sea battle ballads victory
odes seascapes and sailors' elegies are crucial to a full understanding of literary naval
and social history during the era of Nelson and Romanticism. The author opens a straight
channel to link literary and military readerships and lays an important plank in the bridge of
war literature arching from Homer to Hemingway.
