Drake, Nelson and Napoleon

Drake, Nelson and Napoleon were described in this book. Which has evolved from another which I had for years been urged towrite by personal friends. I had chatted occasionally about my own voyages, related incidents concerning them and the countries andplaces I had visited, the ships I had sailed in, the men I had sailed with, and the sailors of that period. It is one thing to tell sea-tales in a cosy room and to enjoy living again for a brief time in the days that are gone; but it is another matter when one is asked toput the stories into book form. Needless to say for a long time I shrank from undertaking the task, but was ultimately prevailed upon to do so. The book was commenced and was well advanced, and, as I could not depict the sailors of my own period without dealing--as I thought at the time--briefly with the race of men called buccaneers who were really the creators of the British mercantile marine and Navy, who lived centuries before my generation, I was obliged to deal with some of them, such as Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, Daimper, Alexander Selkirk of Robinson Crusoe fame, and others who combined piracy with commerce and sailorism. After I had written all I thought necessary about the three former, I instinctively slipped on to Nelson as the greatest sea personality of the beginning of the last century. I found the subject so engrossing that I could not centre my thoughts on any other, so determined to continue my narrative, which is not, and never was intended to be a life of Nelson. Perhaps it may be properly termed fragmentary thoughts and jottings concerning the life of an extraordinary human force, written at intervals when I had leisure from an otherwise busy life.