Upon Napoleon's 1821 death, Britain's Lords of the Admiralty ordered that dispatches from seven major fleet battles—including the Glorious First of June (1794), the Nile (1798), Trafalgar (1805), and San Domingo (1806)—should be gathered together and presented to the nation. Written by admirals, captains, surgeons, and boatswains, these remarkable documents were eventually all but forgotten, until the author of The Struggle for Sea Power rediscovered them in 2010. Sam Willis here shapes that material into character portraits of the commanders on both sides, and reinterprets these key engagements in detail. Along with 40 color and black and white illustrations, this book includes extensive quotations from the historical sources, plus telltale statistics from the battles.