Horatio Nelson was 12 years old when he arrived at Chatham to join his first ship the Raisonable (moored next to his last, the Victory). On the same day, Emma Hamilton was taken to the house of her mother's employer to be educated. On a Making Tide takes Nelson and Emma to 1798 and the battle of the Nile, the crushing victory which secured Nelson's fame. Following both Nelson's exceptional career and the spirited progress of Emma, it is a story of talent and character overcoming tradition and expectation; a story of a society on the cusp of the liberal 18th and conservative 19th centuries and the fate of two people caught in the middle of the change. From Arctic ice flow to Neapolitan courtroom, from single ship actions in the dank English channel to fleet actions in the mouth of the Nile, this is the story of a great hero, a doomed love affair and a war that stretched across the world.