About the Author

N. A. M. Rodger is Anderson Fellow of the National Maritime Museum. He is the author of the magnificent The Wooden World, a history of the British navy in the 18th century, The Admiralty, chosen by the US Naval Institute as one of the best books of 1980, and the biographer of the Earl of Sandwich. He has contributed papers on naval history to journals in Britain and France, one of which was awarded the Corbett Prize for naval history in 1982.