On a Making Tide

In March 1771, on a windy, rain-swept afternoon, twelve-year-old Horatio Nelson arrives at the Royal Navy dockyard at Chatham. Small for his age, he has traveled alone by coach from London after parting company with his father, the parson of Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk. The lad has come to join his first ship, the 64-gun Raisonnable, as a midshipman, launching what will become a legendary naval career.

At the same time, young Emma Lyon becomes the subject of a deal: her mother’s “services” as ...