Description: In this book Capp explores the nature and role of the navy during the English Revolution. After the king's execution in 1649, the navy's leadership was drastically remodelled, with republican and Puritan outsiders being brought into key positions. Capp examines the fleet's part in the political history of the period, both domestic and international, and its intervention in the critical months before the Restoration. He also surveys the navy's social life--the characteristics of the officers and seamen, volunteers and the press gang, as well as the mental world of the seventeenth-century mariner.
Review Quotes: "A brilliant social history of Cromwell's navy....Capp brings to bear the light of a remarkably wide range of manuscript and printed sources. His book forms a much-needed complement to the more numerous studies of Cromwell's army."--Journal of Modern History
"It is unusual to see such a variety of topics...included in a single study, and even more unusual to see all of them handled with such a sure touch. Capp's book is a welcome addition to Stuart historiography and should interest many readers."--Sixteenth Century Journal"Impressive....A lucidly-written, thoroughly-researched book on a subject of genuine importance, a work of lasting scholarly value."--Albion"Remarkable for the scope of its questions and conclusions. The book is a model for the way in which manuscript sources can be combined with a broad range of secondary works to produce a volume that is almost encyclopedic without being ponderous....A major contribution."--CHOICE