He expressed an interest in boats from a young age, building a skipjack in ninth grade and a canoe in eleventh.

After living in Marina del Rey, Los Angeles, Nelson found work aboard the Golden Hinde, where he met his future wife Lisa Page.

Nelson currently lives in Harpswell, Maine, with Lisa and their four children, Elizabeth, Nathaniel, Jonathan, and Abigail.

Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction from the American Library Association in 2004 for his novel, Glory In The Name: A Novel of the Confederate Navy.

[5] He won the 2009 Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature for George Washington's Secret Navy.