The Two Admirals: A Tale (Writings James Fenimore Cooper). This item is unavailable.The Two Admirals: A Tale (Writings James Fenimore Cooper)

Author of the first scholarly history of the United States Navy, James Fenimore Cooper had long hoped to commemorate the American Navy by representing its fleet in action. Since no such fleet existed in 1841, he reverted to the Jacobite War of 1745 when the great British and French fleets contested in the English Channel and the colonial and British fleets were one.

Ever the experimenter in fiction, Cooper achieved a metaphysical dimension by assigning personal attributes to the ships in combat, and he also implicitly recalled his long friendship with Commodore William Branford Shubrick (much later, Rear Admiral Shubrick) in the story of the friendship between his two admirals—Oates and Bluewater—of the British Navy. The result is an intriguingly realistic romance.

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was a famed nineteenth century American author known for his work in fiction particularly sea stories and historical novels and politics. He enrolled in Yale University, never earned a degree but later joined the United States Navy. Some of his most famous works include Last of the Mohicans, A Letter to my Countymen, and Ned Myers' or A Life before the Mast.