One Russell Crowe film that you might like is "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World". It's a stunningly fine adaptation of one of O'Brien's books about the days of fighting sail...

It could hardly have been better done, in my opinion, and Russell Crowe plays the part of Captain Jack Aubrey very well. He hits just the right notes.

The character Jack Aubrey was loosely based on a British naval commander named Cochrane, a man who had a simply extraordinary fighting career for the British Navy at that time when they were definitely the foremost naval power in the world, and were locked in a titanic struggle with France (and at times, Spain). Interestingly enough, I don't think Cochrane ever went up against the Americans, who had a small but extremely good navy of their own at that time.

If he had, I'm betting he would have won...but who can say for sure? ;-) The Americans had a handful of the best designed frigates in the world in the early 1800s, and they used them to considerable effect.

That is in fact touched on in the movie, as Aubrey is forced to take on a French-commanded frigate that has been built on contract in American shipyards, a vessel that considerably outclasses his own smaller British-built frigate in every regard.