{"id":626,"date":"2012-02-27T14:59:18","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T14:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/sealitsearchable\/?p=626"},"modified":"2022-07-02T12:49:31","modified_gmt":"2022-07-02T12:49:31","slug":"nelson-james-l","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/searchablesealit\/n\/nelson-james-l\/","title":{"rendered":"Nelson, James L."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"James<\/a>by John F. Hussey (2000, revised 2014, by Eleanore MacLean)<\/em><\/p>\n

NELSON, JAMES L. (1962- ). Born in Lewiston, Maine, James L. Nelson, a former professional square-rig sailor, traces his love of the sea to his earliest memories when he chose boats and model ships for boyhood toys. In college Nelson joined the sailing club at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), where he earned his B.A. in motion picture and television production in 1986. After two years as an assistant editor for a Hollywood television production company, Nelson succumbed to his nautical wanderlust and spent five years serving aboard sailing ships, including the Golden Hinde<\/em>, the Lady Washington<\/em>, and the Revolutionary War-era replica H.M.S. Rose<\/em>. <\/em>On the H.M.S. Rose<\/em> he began his first book, By Force of Arms <\/em>(1996) while serving as third mate. As of 2014 Nelson resides in Harpswell, Maine and serves as skipper of Sea Scout Ship 243, sailing out of Maine Maritime Museum in Bath. In addition to writing, Nelson gives lectures on maritime history and has appeared on Discovery Channel and History Channel.<\/p>\n

Drawing upon his firsthand knowledge of tall-ship sailing, Nelson has authored several series of historical fiction. His Revolution at Sea Saga, a five-volume series beginning with By Force of Arms<\/i> (1996), follows the American naval struggle during the Revolutionary War through protagonist Isaac Biddlecomb, American smuggler and sea captain. The Guardship <\/i>(2000) begins Nelson\u2019s three-volume Brethren of the Coast Series featuring Thomas Marlowe, an ex-pirate in colonial Virginia. Nelson\u2019s Civil War at Sea Series features protagonist Samuel Bowater, an officer in the Confederate Navy. The first of the two volumes, Glory in the Name<\/i> (2003), received the American Library Association\/William Boyd Award for Best Military Fiction. Nelson\u2019s The Norsemen Saga includes two volumes, Fin Gall: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland<\/i> (2013) and Dubh-Linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland<\/i> (2014), and tells the story of Norwegian Torgrim Night Wolf\u2019s band of Vikings as they raid and plunder the Irish coast. Nelson has also written The Only Life that Mattered: The Short and Merry Lives of Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Calico Jack<\/i> (2004), a standalone historical novel of pirate adventures.<\/p>\n

Nelson\u2019s nonfiction work primarily focuses on the maritime history of the American Revolution. His titles include Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack<\/i> (2004), Benedict Arnold\u2019s Navy: The Ragtag Fleet that Lost the Battle of Lake Champlain but Won the American Revolution<\/i> (2006), George Washington\u2019s Great Gamble: And the Sea Battle that Won the American Revolution <\/i>(2010), and With Fire and Sword: The Battle of Bunker Hill and the Beginning of the Revolution<\/i> (2011). George Washington\u2019s Secret Navy: How the American Revolution Went to Sea<\/i> (2008) won the Naval Order\u2019s Eliot Morison Award for Naval History.<\/p>\n

Self-consciously endeavoring to join the ranks of C. S. Forester and Patrick O\u2019Brian in his historical novels, James Nelson nevertheless forgoes his forerunners\u2019 stylized tones. His dialogue aims for the patterns of contemporary speech, stressing the immediacy, rather than the rarified distance, of his subject matter. Unlike Forester\u2019s Horatio Hornblower and O\u2019Brian\u2019s Jack Aubrey, Nelson\u2019s Isaac Biddlecomb in the Revolution at Sea Series is not bred to the naval service, and the author\u2019s nonperiod diction supports his main character\u2019s newcomer status by allying him, as a fellow neophyte, with the reader.<\/p>\n

Nelson’s author website<\/a><\/p>\n

By Force of Arms<\/em> (1996)<\/p>\n

Archive.org<\/a>
\nGoogle Book Search<\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardship <\/i>(2000)<\/p>\n

Archive.org<\/a>
\nGoogle Book Search<\/a><\/p>\n

Glory in the Name<\/i> (2003)<\/p>\n

Archive.org<\/a>
\nGoogle Book Search<\/a><\/p>\n

The Only Life that Mattered: The Short and Merry Lives of Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Calico Jack<\/i> (2004)<\/p>\n

Google Book Search<\/a><\/p>\n

Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack<\/i> (2004)<\/p>\n

Archive.org<\/a>
\nGoogle Book Search<\/a><\/p>\n

Benedict Arnold\u2019s Navy: The Ragtag Fleet that Lost the Battle of Lake Champlain but Won the American Revolution<\/i> (2006)<\/p>\n

Archive.org<\/a>
\nGoogle Book Search<\/a><\/p>\n

George Washington\u2019s Great Gamble: And the Sea Battle that Won the American Revolution <\/i>(2010)<\/p>\n

Google Book Search<\/a><\/p>\n

With Fire and Sword: The Battle of Bunker Hill and the Beginning of the Revolution<\/i> (2011)<\/p>\n

Archive.org<\/a>
\nGoogle Book Search<\/a><\/p>\n

George Washington\u2019s Secret Navy: How the American Revolution Went to Sea<\/i> (2008)<\/p>\n

Archive.org<\/a>
\nGoogle Book Search<\/a><\/p>\n

keywords: male, white, movie, film<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by John F. Hussey (2000, revised 2014, by Eleanore MacLean) NELSON, JAMES L. (1962- ). Born in Lewiston, Maine, James L. Nelson, a former professional square-rig sailor, traces his love of the sea to his earliest memories when he chose Continue reading &<\/span> text links<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":498,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[25927],"tags":[53756,53769,53761,53778,53779,53777,53764,53772,53796,53801],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-n","tag-20th-century","tag-atlantic-ocean","tag-fiction","tag-maritime-history","tag-merchant-marine","tag-navy-coast-guard","tag-nonfiction","tag-pacific-ocean","tag-piracy","tag-war"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/searchablesealit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/searchablesealit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/searchablesealit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/searchablesealit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/searchablesealit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/searchablesealit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6517,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/searchablesealit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions\/6517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/searchablesealit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/searchablesealit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/searchablesealit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}