PositiveThe Spectator (UK)Taylor uses memoirs, diaries and letters to let seamen and officers speak, as far as possible, for themselves. Usually plain, though sometimes literary and poetic, their words conjure visions for us. Some are glimpses of all-too-frequent horror ... Such episodes — and Taylor’s book is full of them — are gripping to read and fascinating in their particulars. More importantly, however, they are convincing evidence that the power and wealth of 18th- and 19th-century Britain depended not only on its system of rule, its natural resources and its technology, but also, perhaps mainly, on the character, skills and virtues of its people —Jack Tar foremost among them.
Andrew Lambert
MixedThe SpectatorThe problem is this: rather than limiting himself to identifying and understanding the attributes that five sea-oriented states may have had in common, and to tracing the lines of cultural inheritance that connected these states to each other, Lambert enlists his seapowers in an ancient and apparently unending war between sea and land, freedom and slavery ... many of Lambert’s assertions draw on the language and conceptual framework of the Cold War ... Throughout the book, Lambert praises seapowers repeatedly for their wisdom in seeking to fight only limited wars. Had he applied this rule to his own work, he could have created a fascinating cultural history of a concept — and avoided burying it in the rubble of a much vaster, and much less convincing, argument.
