IN 1801 The Naval Chronicle contained a letter of advice written in mid-century by an admiral to his son, a junior officer, ‘on the duty of captains’, pointing out that if he looked for higher preferment in the navy, he should also look beyond captain ‘and never lose sight of the worthy and brave examples of such Officers as have commanded in chief, and gallantly distinguished themselves in the service of the king and country’. There were books at hand that told of these exploits such as the Secretary to the Admiralty Board, Josiah Burchett's A Complete History of the Most Remarkable Transactions at Sea (London, 1720), or Thomas Lediard's The Naval History of England in all its branches from the Norman Conquest to the conclusion of 1734 (London, 1735), and these were supplemented in 1748 by Dr John Campbell's Lives of the Admirals, and other eminent British seaman in four volumes, subsequently updated and a fifth volume added in 1786. This was followed by John Charnock's Biographia Navalis; or, Impartial memoirs of the lives and characters of officers of the navy of Great Britain, from the year 1660 to the present year in seven volumes between 1794 and 1796. We know that even great admirals read these. Sir Peter Warren bought a copy of Lediard and may well have had a copy of Burchett, and Sir Edward Hawke noted his need to read Lediard before his Rochefort expedition.