The Eyes of the Fleet

Frigates were the fastest warships in the British fleet in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the key to Britain's long dominance over the world's other navies. These scouting cruisers were, according to Nelson, "the eyes of the Fleet." But they were much more than that: true fighting ships, lightly built and heavily armed, ready for every task short of joining the set-piece battles involving the heavier ships-of-the-line.
From the bloody 1797 mutiny of the HMS Hermione crew, who murdered Captain Hugh Pigot and tossed him overboard after eight months of brutality, to the 1813 battle between the British frigate Shannon and the American Chesapeake in which the Chesapeake's Captain James Lawrence uttered the famous phrase, "Don't give up the ship!" The Eyes of the Fleet gives us the absorbing story of the men who worked the frigates during their heyday, and recounts with thrilling detail some of the most influential and exciting battles in naval history.