This work provides biographies of more than 500 men and women who have served as admiral, vice admiral, or rear admiral. While officers from the U.S., British, French and Japanese navies make up the bulk of the work, officers from 22 countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, and Spain, are also included. The main criterion for inclusion is that each person must have actively served in the rank of at least rear admiral, but not necessarily in enemy action. This effectively rules out people who were granted the rank on retirement, as a courtesy title or posthumously. The book also includes lists of admirals organized by nationality and by year of birth.
Despite the bewildering number of tomes devoted to the Napoleonic wars, much basic data as been hitherto unavailable to anyone other than the most ardent scholars. McGuigan and Burnham have collected a tremendous treasure trove of information in a readily accessible form. Other books may tell you how many regiments were sent on the expedition to Hanover in 1805, but The British Army against Napoleon will tell you where every single regiment in the British army was stationed, who were their honorary colonels, and give you a list of all the barracks in Britain with the number of men they were designed to hold. Where else will you find not just the pay of different ranked officers but the amount of income tax they paid, as well as all the other deductions and stoppages that reduced their actual receipts to a fraction of their nominal (and generally quite low) pay? Or pension charts for widows? There are tables that list all the recipients of the honours and awards issued, casualties in action and disease, seniority of officers of the numerous expeditions and campaigns (a matter not just of curiosity but of major significance, for the date of rank of an officer determined who commanded the force and all of its sub-units.) The material in these tables has been collected from countless primary sources and official publications such as the Army List, London Gazette, Wellington s Dispatches, regimental histories, artillery manuals, and handbooks.