A full biography assessing Fredrik Hendrik af Chapman's role in the reform of the Swedish navy and in Sweden's defeat of Russia at sea, with a remarkably detailed analysis of his oeuvre as a naval architect. Chapman was the son of an English naval officer who entered Swedish service, and is a figure of paramount importance in the history of shipbuilding and naval architecture. Harris follow's Chapman's learning period in Britain and France, his radical (and not always successful) innovations for the Swedish Inshore Fleet, his struggle against the navy's more conservative shipwrights and naval officers, and the eventual triumph of his great shipbuilding programme of the 1780s - ten ships of the line and ten frigates built in record time using remarkably modern pre-fabrication methods...