Sir Sidney Smith

1764–1840

Sir Sidney Smith was a Royal Navy officer, adventurer and diplomat who fought Revolutionary and Napoleonic France in several theatres. Captured during an operation near Le Havre, he escaped imprisonment in Paris and later helped defend Acre against Napoleon in 1799, a success that ended the French advance in Syria. Smith also served in the Mediterranean and supported anti-slavery causes, but his independent manner frequently caused conflict with superiors.

Smith appears occasionally in Napoleonic naval and espionage fiction, where his escape, intelligence work and defence of Acre seem almost invented. He influenced the type of audacious officer found in C. S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian, even when their protagonists are fictional. No single major series is a straightforward biography, so literary versions often combine several of his exploits.

In Julian Stockwin’s Tenacious, the war then shifts to Acre, where Sir Sidney Smith and a small naval force help resist Napoleon’s army.

Series

Series featuring Sir Sidney Smith (1 series)

Thomas Kydd in Order

by Julian Stockwin 27 books 4.2

The Thomas Kydd series follows a Guildford wig-maker pressed into the Royal Navy in 1793 and traces his rise from inexperienced landsman to admiral. Across twenty-seven novels, Kydd learns the work of the lower deck, crosses to the quarterdeck and commands increasingly important ships during the French Revolutionary…

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