The Scotsman
Nelson created for Britain the high noon period in her naval story, told and retold again and again. Peter Padfield in Nelson's War describes six battles from 'The Glorious First of June' in 1794 to Trafalgar in 1805 and the achievements of admirals like Howe, Jervis, Duncan and Nelson himself. They gave fleet tactics a new and rewarding elasticity.
Mr Padfield analyses each action and its outcome in a fresh and perceptive manner, salting all with glimpses of the social side of sea service. This easily readable work is a good example of the 'British at War' series edited by Ludovic Kennedy.
The Yorkshire Post
'Now, gentlemen, let us do something today which the world may talk of hereafter'. The speaker was...Admiral Collingwood; the day was 21st October, 1805; the occasion was the battle of Trafalgar, the last of the famous British naval victories during the Napoleonic Wars.
The first had come in the mid-Atlantic far to the west of Ushant on the Glorious First of June, 1794. The second was the battle of St Vincent in the West Indies (sic) in 1797. A few months later came the third, off Camperdown (Holland). The fourth, the Battle of the Nile, was fought across Aboukir Bay in 1798, and after a gap of three years came the fifth, the battle of Copenhagen.
These encounters involved some of the most famous names in the annals of the Royal Navy: Collingwood, Duncan, Hood, Howe, Hyde Parker, Jervis, Saumarez, Troubridge. Above all, they involved Horatio Nelson, whose career burgeoned amidst the dangers, stress and accomplishments of these tremendous years, when Britain finally established its 'Empire of the Seas'...
Mr Padfield lays no claims to originality but simply tells the familiar story well, building it round Nelson and thereby giving some unity to these twelve years when Britannia ruled the waves.
(Peter Padfield comments: he may not have claimed originality, but his analysis of the development of tactics over the battles described and his conclusion that 'at Trafalgar, Nelson launched into the antithesis of any system of tactics - the contemptuous assault without order' [ Prologue page 11] is surely original.
He is currently working on a sequel to Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind, in which these great naval battles of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars play a large part; and has seen no reason to revise his description of Nelson's approach at Trafalgar as the antithesis of tactics.)
The Daily Telegraph
...Viewing Trafalgar as the fitting finale to 12 years of hard fighting at sea, [Peter Padfield] selects and fights over again six crucial battles, fought under four great admirals, Howe, Jervis, Duncan and Nelson, and shows them to be a series of battles in one outstanding war, which is quite rightly regarded as Nelson's.