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Historical person

Henry Lambert

died 1813

Henry Lambert was a Royal Navy officer who served through the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and later fought in the War of 1812. The son of naval captain Robert Lambert, he entered the service young and rose through commands in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. As captain of HMS San Fiorenzo he captured the French frigate Psyché in 1805, and he later took part in the British operations against French possessions around Mauritius.

Lambert is best remembered for commanding HMS Java against USS Constitution on 29 December 1812. The American frigate was larger and more heavily armed, but Lambert chose to engage and was mortally wounded during a hard-fought action in which Java was eventually captured and burned. American officers treated the wounded British captain after the battle. Lambert was carried to Salvador in Brazil and died there on 4 January 1813, several days after receiving his wounds.

Patrick O’Brian incorporates Lambert and the Java–Constitution action into The Fortune of War, the sixth Aubrey–Maturin novel. The fictional Jack Aubrey encounters a lightly fictionalised version of the historical engagement, while Lambert’s mortal wounding follows the real battle closely. The episode is a good example of O’Brian placing his invented protagonists alongside documented naval officers and actions from the War of 1812.

Periods

Periods linked to Henry Lambert

War of 18121812–1815 CE

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Henry Lambert (1 series)

Aubrey–Maturin Novels in Order

by Patrick O’Brian 21 books 4.5(73,173)

The Aubrey–Maturin novels follow Royal Navy officer Jack Aubrey and surgeon, naturalist and intelligence agent Stephen Maturin from the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France through the War of 1812 and the first years after Waterloo. Across twenty completed novels, their friendship links shipboard command, espionage, science, domestic…

All books in this series