This is a very well done history of the US Navy's first 20 or so years, through the end of the War of 1812. Toll's ability to use context to define the Age of Sail nautical terminology is a wonder to behold. ( )

The US Ambassador to the Central Africa Republic excitedly posted on the Fender Discussion Page, www.fenderforum.com , about this book, which had been given to him by a retired Royal Navy officer. Thanks, DiploStrat, for turning me on to this one.

There are lessons that we should learn from this narrative, as there are in every era of history. For one thing, Britain was a superpower – Britania Rules the waves and all that – and was quite arrogant in regard to it’s treatment of the ships and sailors of other nations, particularly the United States, “pressing” sailors into the Royal Navy, i.e. kidnapping them, whenever it suited. What’s the use of being a superpower if you can’t throw your weight around, right? Well It turns out that a smallish country at the edge of the known universe can become a royal PIA to a superpower without having to come anywhere near matching that superpower’s military might. The US managed to annoy Britain to exhaustion, for a second time, in the war of 1812.


Then there is the opposition of the Republicans (Democrats) in the US to wasting money on such a superfluous thing as a navy. American commercial shipping was growing by leaps and bounds and had no protection against pirates, privateers or arrogant naval officers. Congress finally agreed to build six frigates in 1794 after the Tripoli reneged on the protection agreement that the US had bought from them, pillaged an American ship and held it’s crew for ransom. Colonel Khaddaffi’s predecessor in Tripoli didn’t get his comeuppance until 1805, though, what with cost overruns, schedule delays, change orders, budget cuts and a small undeclared war with France.

Considerable attention is given, in the book, to the Presidential election of 1800, which made Harry and Louise and even the Willie Horton ads look pretty tame. It was the first time we actually had to chose between candidates in 1800 and there were no rules yet. It showed.

“Six Frigates” ranges over a lot of topics, Nelson’s victories at the Nile and Trafalger, Napoleon Bonepart and his wars in Europe, the Louisiana Purchase, Theodore Roosevelt’s study habits, (Teddy wrote a book on the war of 1812, standing up, while attending law school) and Winston Churchill, who said “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” It is well written, as readable as a novel and (don’t tell) educational. It isn’t just ships and cannons and whatnot, although buckles are swashed aplenty.

I'll Never Forget The Day I Read A Book!

A wildly uneven work that often seems like a Frankenstein monster assembled from the parts of other, better books. One can fairly easily identify scenes from McCullough's John Adams, Dumas Malone's Jefferson, Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, Morris's The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Roosevelt's own The Naval War of 1812. Toll does well when he describes incidents of naval combat, particularly his recounting of the campaign against Tripoli and frigate duels of The War of 1812. Also good is his explanation of the code of dueling prevalent in the U.S. Navy's early officer corps. Other parts of the book are mystifying. While "Six Frigates" ostensibly examines the "epic history of the founding of the U.S. Navy", Toll, oddly, devotes only a paragraph each to the Battle of Lake Erie and the Battle of Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain and a footnote to the capture of U.S.S. Essex, while devoting three pages to the Battle of New Orleans, a land battle where the U.S. Navy failed to make an appearance. Also strange is Toll's decision to spend four pages of his epilogue attempting to link Roosevelt's studies of the War of 1812 with his decision while President to back the building of the Great White Fleet, rather than focusing on the fates of the "Six Frigates" and the men who fought in them. Skip this one and go right to Roosevelt's The Naval War of 1812. It's better written and more insightful. ( )

Take the seven weeks your basic U.S. History class spends on the period from the ratification of the Constitution through the War of 1812. Mash it up with any of Patrick O'Brian's novels. Append a little bit about how this particular cocktail affected Teddy Roosevelt (and subsequently the U.S. as global political and military power).

What you wind up with is Ian Toll's Six Frigates, a wonderfully detailed examination of the evolution of the young United States.

Really, imagine the U.S. History class you took in high school as it would have been taught by a naval historian. That's what Toll has created here. Also imagine that he brought in Patrick O'Brian to teach the parts about the conflicts with the Barbary States and individual engagements with the Royal Navy. Toll's accounts, both of political machinations and sea battles, are vividly rendered with exhaustive use of first-hand accounts and details. A long book, Six Frigates reads quickly in large part because of the rich evocations of pre-Industrial sailing, war and politics.

The one thing that holds this book back is the generally undefined use of nautical and ship's terms (larboard, mizzenmast, royal yards, top sails, etc.) Toll points out in a brief foreword that the book might have been half-again as long had he paused to define all these terms, and he is likely correct. But a short glossary or a diagram of Constitution with her various sail apparatus would have made many of the details in the book more meaningful. ( )

A fascinating history of the US Navy's earliest days. I truly enjoyed all of the historical detail surrounding the construction of the US Navy's first frigates and their subsequent battles. The book does much to establish the early US Navy as a successful organization that managed to produce important victories (if only for moral support) against the much larger British Navy. Equally interesting is all the biographical information of the sea captains who piloted these great ships - what a different era. ( )