Change to Reading List: The Wooden World

N. A. M. Rodger. The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. 445 pages. Index.

Read March 5-April 24, 2010.

Have you ever wondered where authors like Patrick O'Brian get all those details about life on board sailing ships? Well, N. A. M. Rodger provides an example of the kind of research that can be a great assistance to the author of such tales. The Wooden World is a fabulous book covering the lives and careers of sailors and officers, the organization of the navy, and that great concept: discipline, for which the word hardly existed in the 18th century. Yes, the 18th century naval vessel was a much more cooperative enterprise than you'll have gathered from Nordhoff and Hall or many other novelists.

Another Book Completed

Today I finished reading N. A. M. Rodger's fine history, or, as he calls it, anatomy of the Georgian Navy, The Wooden World. One reason the Georgian Navy is of interest, is that this is the navy which fought the Seven Years War (or, as we call it in America, the French and Indian War). This is a thoroughly researched book - one of the appendices covers the number of men being treated for venereal diseases, and well-written. One couldn't call The Wooden World light reading, but it does move along.

Rodger's big point is that the Navy, like the rest of British society at that time, was governed by a combination of personal followings and mutual advantages. A British naval officer of the time didn't so much order his men about, as persuade them that an action was for the good of the ship. And the men, knowing full well that they had valuable and irreplaceable skills, stood up for themselves in a variety of ways.

One of the manifestations of this communitarian, rather than command, relationship, was the tendency for men to follow a good officer from ship to ship. In some cases, an entire ship's complement was transferred into a larger ship with the captain. There were even cases in which men deserted from one ship in order to serve with a familiar captain on another.

Such incidents raises another significant point. While there were 200 capital crimes on land at that period, there were only nine at sea, and most of them used infrequently, and pushed all the way to execution even more rarely. A deserter was likely to be executed only if that crime were aggravated by murder, say, or robbery, while away from his post.

Another strength of the book is Rodger's attention to the recruitment of officers and men and their motivations. Why did men choose such dangerous work, far from home and subject to violent death? Among other things, it was relatively well-paid (at the period in question), and it was far from home - which, when "home" was a pig farm in darkest Lancashire, was a positive advantage.

Good book, good read, and a means of gaining a deeper understanding of a period which has influenced history down to our own day.