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Home / Authors / Richard Woodman

Author

Richard Woodman

37 fiction · 29 non-fiction

Richard Woodman (1944–2024) was a British master mariner, naval historian and novelist whose long career at sea gave his fiction unusual technical authority. He entered the Merchant Navy at sixteen, trained aboard cargo liners and later served with the Ocean Weather Service and Trinity House, eventually commanding the lighthouse tender Patricia. After retiring from seafaring in 1997, he wrote full-time, producing maritime novels as well as substantial histories of the Royal Navy, the Merchant Navy and the East India Company.

Woodman is best known for the fourteen Nathaniel Drinkwater novels, beginning with An Eye of the Fleet. The series follows Drinkwater’s career in the Royal Navy from the American Revolutionary War through the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, placing him amid naval battles, espionage, convoy duty and political intrigue. Books including A King’s Cutter, A Brig of War, The Bomb Vessel, 1805 and The Flying Squadron draw closely on real campaigns and demonstrate Woodman’s detailed knowledge of navigation, seamanship and combat under sail. He also wrote historical maritime novels outside the series, including Voyage East, and several works inspired by the history of the British merchant service.

Periods and events

Royal Navy in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars Battle of Trafalgar Battle of the Atlantic Napoleonic Era War of 1812 Commonwealth and Protectorate Gunboat War War of the Sixth Coalition War of the First Coalition Cold War and Post-war Era Interwar Period World War II Post-war Britain World War I

Historical fiction

Historical fiction series by Richard Woodman (7 series)

Nathaniel Drinkwater in Order

by Richard Woodman 14 books 4.4

The Nathaniel Drinkwater series follows a Royal Navy officer from his first service during the American Revolutionary War to a final mission in early Victorian Britain. Drinkwater rises from vulnerable midshipman to experienced captain while operating across the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Baltic, Arctic, Pacific and China seas. The fourteen…

Sword of State in Order

by Richard Woodman 3 books 4.2

The Sword of State trilogy fictionalises the career of George Monck, the soldier and naval commander whose shifting service helped carry England from civil war through the Commonwealth to the Restoration. The novels follow Monck from imprisonment and divided loyalty to campaigns in Ireland and Scotland, war with…

Tales of the Sea in Order

by Richard Woodman 6 books 4.1

Tales of the Sea brings together novellas and short fiction drawn from twentieth-century merchant shipping. The stories range from Arctic exploration and wartime Atlantic convoys to the China coast, Hong Kong, North Atlantic weather ships and the decline of Britain’s traditional merchant fleet. Rather than following one continuous…

James Dunbar in Order

by Richard Woodman 2 books 4.1

The James Dunbar novels follow an idealistic Edwardian merchant seaman whose voyages force him to test romantic ideas about art, love and the sea against exploitation, violence and physical hardship. Dunbar begins as an inexperienced young man seeking adventure and gradually develops an artistic identity shaped by the…

Historical fiction

Standalone historical fiction by Richard Woodman (3 books)

Ordered by star rating.

Non-fiction

Non-fiction by Richard Woodman (29 books)

Reference works, biographies and other non-fiction are kept separate from the historical fiction above.

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