No man of action in British history has seized and held public affection more firmly than Horatio Nelson. His name remains a by-word for heroism for awesome courage and devotion to duty in the face of awful physical frailty.
In this tribute for the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar, in which Nelson secured British supremacy of the seas at the cost of his own life, one naval veteran salutes another.
Derek Gardner charts Nelson's career, step by step and ship by ship, in words and pictures. The saga ranges from the moment he enlisted as a midshipman on his uncle's ship at the age of twelve to his death at the decisive naval battle against Napoleon thirty-five years later.
Born in 1914, and now the grand old man of British maritime painting, Derek Gardner saw distinguished service at sea during World War Two - in the Atlantic, Arctic, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. He was both honoured and injured at the 1942 storming of Algiers aboard the gallant Broke, which sank after the action.
A resulting loss of hearing spurred him into developing his faculties - and almost a sixth sense - as a painter. His passion became his profession.
Still at the peak of his artistic powers, and working all day and every day in his Dorset studio, Derek Gardner does more than follow in the wake of Nelson in this volume. He also provides an oil and watercolour overview of two centuries of sea-faring history.
He is himself saluted by the current commander-in-chief of the Royal Navy, Admiral Sir Jonathan Band KCB and by art historian and biographer Ian Collins.