Sailors of Varied Fortune
Sailors of Varied Fortune: The Schombergs afloat and ashore
Paul Martinovich
Amazon UK £41 Amazon US $54.95
Who would have thought that among the contemporaries of Hood and Nelson were four successful Royal Navy captains named Schomberg? This book reveals how these closely-related men navigated the choppy waters of a demanding and competitive service. Over ninety years the four Captains Schomberg (Alexander, Isaac, Alexander Wilmot and Charles Marsh) encountered the challenges of battle, storm and professional missteps, as they built reputations for energy and competence.
As their name suggests, these men did not come from a conventional RN officer background — the Navy or the gentry. The Schombergs were the offspring of an immigrant German-Jewish doctor, a man of considerable repute in early Georgian London. They seem to have inherited his erudition and intelligence, traits evident when they took on important administrative duties, mixed with artists, and wrote several books. Even today, Isaac Schomberg's Naval Chronology is a useful source for naval historians seeking obscure facts about the Royal Navy of 250 years ago.
Sailors of Varied Fortune is based primarily on unpublished official and private documents, supplemented by a range of printed sources, both contemporary and modern. Though the individual Schombergs had different life stories, the careers of the two younger men (Alexander Wilmot and Charles Marsh) show interesting similarities, arising out of the circumstances in which they found themselves during the struggle with France between 1793 and 1815. While naval history is at the heart of the book, each individual is (as far as possible) portrayed in the round, considering his personal life ashore as well as his professional life afloat. The book is lavishly illustrated with over fifty images (mostly in colour), and ten maps — the result is a panorama of war at sea and life on land, seen through the lens of a single talented family.