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The Not-So-Famous Lessons of Lord Nelson's Success (November 17, 2006)  
While on the topic of good books: I highly recommend
The Pursuit of Victory: The Life And Achievement of Horatio Nelson,
a recently published biography of England's greatest warfighting admiral, Horatio Nelson.
This biography does a superb job of providing context and background for Nelson's astonishing rise to fame and his equally astonishing victories at sea--and lesser known defeats, which always occurred on territory unfamilar to Nelson, i.e. land. We find that the extreme risks of Britain's war with Napoleonic France created a brief window of opportunity for commoners such as Nelson to rise within the class-conscious and peerage-dominated Admiralty. Merit was so essential to victory that the Admiralty could not afford to advance captains by favoritism alone. Equally interesting is the author's careful descriptions of the importance of mentors in Nelson's career arc--captains and admirals above him in the bureaucratic Royal Navy who guided, aided and promoted him, not so much to benefit themselves but in recognition of his talents. Yet without these mentors--several of whom he maintained as close personal friends until death--his rise from the ranks of hundreds of junior captains to admiral at a young age would not have happened. Not that Nelson enjoyed a perfect career. A gross political miscalculation--falling under the influence of the King's ne'er do well son, who had been given a position as Admiral not on talent but on birthright--caused Nelson's career to falter at a critical juncture. Having fallen out of favor for his destructive sycophancy, Nelson was sent home without a command, where he languished for seven long years as a poor gentleman landowner. A renewal of the war with France gave him one more chance, and with the aid of his mentors, he assumed command of the Mediterranean Fleet (bypassing many jealous senior admirals), enabling him to score his first great strategic victory in the Battle of the Nile. Life at sea was not easy, and Nelson was often ill and exhausted. Having lost an eye and an arm in two land engagements (he was deployed twice to joint Army-Navy commands, both of which ended badly, partly due to Nelson's ignorance of land warfare), he was often in pain. he also had to make judicious political decisions regarding allies, harrass the Admiralty for supplies, maintain discipline on a huge fleet of wooden ships in poor weather, and a host of other challenges which would have ground down by sheer workload alone a lesser commander. I would like to honor my own stock market analysis mentor, H.I., whom I met via this very blog. Without mentors, few of us can achieve our full potential. So if you're in a position to mentor someone, by all means do so. The American Identity Literary Contest is my own poor attempt to encourage and mentor young writers (see the left sidebar for more about the contest.) Even the most talented individuals still need mentors at critical stages of their careers. For more on this subject and a wide array of other topics, please visit my weblog. 
copyright © 2006 Charles Hugh Smith. All rights reserved in all media. I would be honored if you linked this wEssay to your site, or printed a copy for your own use.
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