The traditional history of the Royal Navy is a history of heroes. Long before the emergence of professional naval history, the purpose of the past was, explicitly, to instruct the present in preferred modes on conduct. From Jesuit education to classical education, the story of great deeds provided the content, narrative structure and purpose of history. With the emergence of modern history schools in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the central role of hero retained its hold on naval and military history. For most of the time since, the idea of leadership has been associated with the heroic central character, whose personality and capability is the determining factor in a critical situation. This is not surprising given the dominating purpose of this history in the education of the officer corps.

Even today, the heroic leader remains a powerful element within historical studies. While behaviour to be emulated is more contested today, the hero, or central character, remains a focus around which the world of the past can be understood and brought to a human scale. Whether in literature, biography or history (actual or counter-factual), personality, good or evil, engages the reader more easily than long past impersonal ‘systems’. The power of Horatio Nelson, two hundred years after his death, to generate books, documentaries, dramas, societies and, ultimately, international commemoration, is testimony to the influence of heroes in the modern world.