Trafalgar The Biography of a Battle by Roy Adkins

I held off reading this until we had finished the game.  It also continues my Peninsula themed reading at the moment.

I enjoyed this book.  The background to the battle and particularly the conditions at sea were most interesting.  It was fascinating to find that being a seaman, as horrid as it was, was in some cases a better life than being a farm labourer.  Officers were very much in a class of their own, both in dress, life on board and what was expected of them (for example not laying down when under fire unlike the rest of the crew were ordered to do).  Once combat was engaged command would be extremely difficult, even assuming you still had a mast to run up some flags and the smoke cleared so your order could be seen by its intended target.

A large number of first-hand accounts were quoted in the book giving it an authentic voice.  Maybe this accounted for a bit of the pro-British bias I detected.  This battle is credited with cementing the British Empire, disrupting trade with which was very much one of Napoleon's strategic objectives.  After the battle there was a subsequent shift to harassing trade, possibly akin to piracy, by the French and what the British had done so successfully to hasten the end of the Spanish and Portuguese empires (my opinion).

The impact of the death of Nelson on the British public is covered in detail (maybe a bit too much).  It was interesting to read about how the other participants fared.  For instance, the Spanish officers were all promoted, and the sailors given triple pay for the battle.  The French admiral on the other hand met with a suspicious death...

One thing I really did like was how I could relate to this book having recently refought the battle