Black Charlie : a life of Admiral Sir Charles Napier KCB 1787-1860

"Black Charlie (Admiral Sir Charles Napier) went to sea in 1800, aged twelve, despite parental opposition. He fought in the Mediterranean, the Channel, the Atlantic, up the Potomac, in the Levant, in the Baltic, on shore at Busaco and by the Dog River in Syria. 'What are your credentials?' asked Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt, when Charlie anchored off Alexandria in his 3-decker with treaty terms. 'My credentials are the double-shotted guns of the Powerful and the honour of an Englishman,' Charlie told him, and won through. But what would they say at home? 'I shall either be hung or made a bishop,' he told his wife. Charlie argued incessantly with the Admiralty, in favour of ironclads and steam, against flogging and the press gang. In the Crimean War they sent him to the Baltic with strict orders not to assault the stone fortresses of Sveaborg and Kronstadt, and then sacked him when he came home without doing so. In the Commons he defended himself successfully, and until his death in 1860 he continued as he had always been - an eccentric, lively, untidy, happy man. His only regret was that Garibaldi would not allow him, aged seventy-two, to take on the naval part in the liberation of Italy."--Provided by the publisher.