Commanding Old Ironsides: The Life of Captain Silas Talbot

Silas Talbot’s life illuminates his time—not with greater brightness than the lives of his more famous contemporaries, but with perhaps broader range and greater insight into the experiences and circumstances of a plain citizen of the new republic—a citizen whose bravery and energy helped to create it.

Silas Talbot was a farmer’s son who went to sea, learned the building trades, saved and invested his money wisely, married well several times, fought as a Rhode Island soldier in the Revolutio...