The Naval History of Great Britain: During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: 6 [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

The apparent impetus of this volume was to set the record straight on the events of the naval War of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States. In the compilation of the summaries of the various single-ship battles, the recurring theme for just about all of them was that the British crew fought against ships that were clear overmatches against their own and used the fact that American ships were better-constructed as an insinuation that the Americans couldn't defeat the Royal Navy in equal odds.

The last time I checked, having better ships, equal seamanship, and better-trained and better-motivated crews was hardly a negative to pin on a foe. James consistently suggests that 44 gun frigates like USS Constitution were essentially "74s in disguise" and the captains and crews of those ships wouldn't have stood up to an equal ship in the Royal Navy. He also takes issue with the American 74 gun ships of the line that Congress authorized but never used because the Treaty of Ghent was ratified before they could put the new warships to sea. This in spite of the fact that the American 74 gun ships would never face their own in a line of battle or even in a single ship encounter. He pointed out that an "average" British 74, HMS Albion threw a much lighter broadside than the smallest American 74 (USS Franklin).

He also takes issue with the American practice of arming their ships with more guns than their rates (for instance, the Constitution was believed to have carried 54 guns at the time she faced HMS Guerriere and she was rated a 44 gun frigate). However, he ignores the fact that nearly every country did that with their ships. He also falls into the trap of challenging the American assertion that superior seamanship, gunnery drill, and command had at least as much to do with American naval victories as did the construction of the ships themselves by using HMS Shannon's victory over USS Chesapeake. However, that victory was the exception that proved the rule. The Shannon was commanded by Philip Broke, a man who had his men train on their guns much the way the Americans usually did and his crew was among the best in the Royal Navy. Meanwhile, the Chesapeake was consistently considered a most unfortunate ship and it was the poorest-constructed of any of the original six frigates.

In the end, instead of acknowledging that a Royal Navy that had lost only five single ship actions out of 200 in the ten years that preceded the War of 1812 could lose that many in the space of six months to an opponent that beat them fair and square, William James chooses to recite the party line that it wasn't possible for anyone to beat the Royal Navy mano a mano without cheating. That detracts from the otherwise obvious quality in his approach.