Fleet Battle and Blockade: The French Revolutionary War, 1793-1797

After the setbacks of the American Revolutionary War, the Royal Navy had been renewed and revitalized, so in 1793 a well-prepared fleet embarked on the new conflict with France in a state of high confidence. This was rewarded immediately with a series of almost uninterrupted victories. In such an atmosphere there was a considerable appetite for pictures of every incident, large or small: a thriving trade grew up for prints, engravings and - for the more affluent - watercolours and oils by celebrated artists.

Besides these "public" works, many officers and men kept personal journals and sketchbooks illustrated with drawings and watercolours, often depicting the everyday aspects of wartime life at sea that were ignored by the more celebratory artistic media. This volume is the first of five covering the whole of the French Revolutionary, Napoleonic and 1812 Wars based on comtemporary images, a series depicting the reality of warfare under sail.