10.29 x 10.41 in.  216 pages.  More than 200 full-color illustrations and photographs

A gripping tale of two rival military titans and the fearsome battle, whose underwater remains convey the scope of the tragedy.

With more than 38,000 troops and some 400 well-stocked ships under his command, Napoleon Bonaparte, the 28-year-old French general, set off on a secret mission to conquer Egypt in hopes of choking off Britain’s trade routes to the East.  Unbeknownst to him however, Bonaparte sailed with Lord Horatio Nelson and his crackerjack fleet of English seamen in hot pursuit.

On August 1, 1798, in Egypt’s Aboukir Bay, the British surprised fourteen of the French ships moored there in support of Napoleon’s land troops, sinking or capturing nearly all and sparking the blaze that triggered the devastating explosion of the flagship of the French fleet, the Orient.  The conquest established Nelson as one of his country’s greatest heroes and Napoleon, who lost 1,700 of his men, was left stranded on the Egyptian desert without naval support.  NAPOLEON’S LOST FLEET recounts in dramatic detail the greed, audacity, bravery, and bloodshed that characterized this legendary clash.

200 years later, in 1998, famed underwater explorer Frank Goddio, the force behind an earlier excavation of Cleopatra’s Royal Quarter in Alexandria, explored the wreckage of the Battle of the Nile.  A dazzling, 28-page, full-color photo essay takes readers beneath Aboukir Bay as Goddio and his team revisit the site and uncover the remarkable 200-year-old treasures—exotic silver and gold coins, artillery, inscribed artifacts, and more—from the remains of the Serieuse, Artemise, and especially the massive Orient.

With the guidance of experts on both Napoleon and Nelson, NAPOLEON’S LOST FLEET offers fascinating social and military history in a narrative that reads like a Patrick O’Brian novel.

About the Authors:

Laura Foreman is the author of Cleopatra’s Palace: In Search of a Legend and an accomplished journalist who has worked for the Associated Press, UPI, The New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer.  She lives in New Orleans.
 
Ellen Blue Phillips is a Washington, D.C.-based editor and author of numerous books and articles.  She is the former executive editor for Time-Life Books.

Franck Goddio is one of the pioneers in the emerging scientific discipline of underwater archeology.  Born in 1947 in Casablanca, Goddio established the European Institute of Underwater Archeology in Paris in 1987.  Since then, he has had tremendous success in underwater archaeological research, with his scientific studies focusing on the seabed remains of historic shipwrecks and the ancient city of Alexandria, Egypt.  His finds include sunken ships such as the San Diego and San Jose Spanish galleons, the Griffin and the Royal Captain; British East India Company ships, and five Chinese junks from the 11th to the 16th centuries.

About the Consultants:

Colin White is deputy director and head of museum services at the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth, England, which stands in the historic dockyard alongside Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory.  Author of the acclaimed book 1797: Nelson’s Year of Destiny and editor of the bestseller The Nelson Companion, he also co-chairs an organization celebrating Nelson’s life and consults on numerous other naval history projects.

William S. Cormack is the author of Revolution and Political Conflict in the French Navy, 1789-1794.  A leading scholar on the life and times of Napoleon, he is an assistant professor of history at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

Discover Books    ISBN 1-56331-831-8

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