It's 1798, and Lewrie and his crew of the Proteus frigate have their work cut out for them. First, he has rashly vowed to uphold a friend's honour in a duel to the death. Second, he faces the horridly unwelcome arrival of HM Government's Foreign Office agents (out to use him as their cat's-paw in impossibly vaunting schemes against the French). And last, he must engineer the showdown with his arch foe and nemesis, the hideous ogre of the French Revolution's Terror, that clever fiend Guillaume Choundas!
Captain Alan Lewrie returns for his tenth roaring adventure on the high seas. This time, it's off to a failing British intervention on the ultra-rich French colony of Saint Domingue, wracked by an utterly cruel and bloodthirsty slave rebellion led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, the future father of Haitian independence. Beset and distracted though he might be, it will take all of Lewrie's pluck, daring, skill, and his usual tongue-in-cheek deviousness, to navigate all the perils in a sea of grey.
Following the footsteps of Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey, whose ripping adventures capture thousands of new readers each year, comes the heir apparent to the mantle of Forester and O'Brian: Dewey Lambdin, and his acclaimed Alan Lewrie series. In this latest adventure Lewrie is promoted for his quick action in the Battle of Cape St.
In the seventh novel in this exciting series, Alan Lewrie is now commander of his own ship, HMS Jester, which participates in the spectacular British victory over the French at the famous battle known as the Glorious First of June. From there Lewrie is dispatched to the Mediterranean to inform Admiral Hood of the French defeat. Under Hood's inspired leadership, Lewrie assists in the conquest of Corsica, but Hood is soon replaced by the maddeningly cautious Admiral Hotham.
A farmer, a bloody farmer! Knee-deep in dung and fathoms from the nearest port, Alan Lewrie, swashbuckling naval warrior turned family man, longs for battle. And when it comes, a battle royal it is! Called to the H.M.S. Cockerel, a sleek frigate captained by a malaria-stricken tyrant, First Officer Lewrie soon vaults to command, taking Cockerel from the lush pleasures of the Kingdom of Naples to a smoking cauldron called Toulon.
