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.
Fresh from war in the Americas, young navy veteran Alan Lewrie finds London pure pleasure. Then, at Plymouth he boards the trading ship Telesto, to find out why merchantmen are disappearing in the East Indies. Between the pungent shores of Calcutta and teaming Canton, Lewrie-reunited with his scoundrel father-discovers a young French captain, backed by an armada of Mindanaon pirates, on a plundering rampage. While treaties tie the navy's hands, a King's privateer is free to plunge into the fire and blood of a dirty little war on the high South China Sea.
1781 Held by the British, the Chesapeake Bay port of Yorktown is under siege. Pounded by the American forces on land and the deadly warships of their French allies at sea, the once-proud city is aflame and near ruin. But on the horizon, the Royal Navy fleet, with heavily armed frigates, is poised to break through the French blockade. Aboard HMS Desperate, Midshipman Alan Lewrie sets his gunners to their lethal work firing broadsides of 24-pound shot at the enemy vessels.
1780: Seventeen-year-old Alan Lewrie is a brash, rebellious young libertine. So much so that his callous father believes a bit of navy discipline will turn the boy around. Fresh aboard the tall-masted Ariadne, Midshipman Lewrie heads for the war-torn Americas, finding-rather unexpectedly-that he is a born sailor, equally at home with the randy pleasures of the port and the raging battles on the high seas. But in a hail of cannonballs comes a bawdy surprise. . .
