In 1818, the revolutionary government of Chile was poised to attack Peru, the last bastion of Spanish power on the continent. The new ruler, the half-Irish Bernardo O'Higgins, threw his energies into creating a navy. Short of local naval manpower, the Chileans looked to Britain and the United States for the sailors needed to man and command their squadrons, many of them unemployed veterans of the Royal Navy. And, to be the new navy's commander-in-chief, they recruited one of the most fearless and controversial officers of the age: Thomas, Lord Cochrane. The story of the naval war in the...
In 1818, the revolutionary government of Chile was poised to attack Peru, the last bastion of Spanish power on the continent. The new ruler, the half-...
Thomas Trotter, after studying medicine at Edinburgh, began his naval career as a surgeon's mate in 1779 and saw continuous service up to the peace of 1802, rising as a result of great abilities and the right patronage to become Physician to the Channel Fleet, and being present at the great battles of Dogger Bank in 1781 and the Glorious First of June in 1794. As Physician to the Channel Fleet, he was a major player in the conquest of scurvy and the control of typhus and smallpox in the navy. After the peace he settled in Newcastle where he produced pioneering work on alcoholism and neurosis,...
Thomas Trotter, after studying medicine at Edinburgh, began his naval career as a surgeon's mate in 1779 and saw continuous service up to the peace of...
Brian Vale is a naval historian with degrees from Keele and King's College London. A life-long member of the Society for Nautical Research and the Navy Records Society, he has long specialised in Anglo-South American maritime history. His books include Independence or Death British sailors and Brazilian Independence, A Frigate of King George, The Audacious Admiral Cochrane and Cochrane in the Pacific: Fortune and Freedom in Spanish America.
Brian Vale is a naval historian with degrees from Keele and King's College London. A life-long member of the Society for Nautical ...