This fictionalized story is based on the life of Mary Ann Patten, who went from sea captain's wife to skipper of her husband's ship when he fell ill. He recovered enough to make her life even more difficult. Entertaining and fascinating.
The young lieutenant takes up special orders direct from Nelson himself which bring news of a mission close to his own heart. In a daring foray, under the very nose of the French Mediterranean fleet, Ramage is to sail his tiny cutter close in to the Italian shore and rescue a party of stranded aristocrats from Napoleon's fast-advancing army. First of a series.
This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against a thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.
When his parents are murdered, 17-year-old Jack O'Reilly joins the crew of the Perdido Star, facing "storms, shipwreck, hostile and friendly natives, and enemy vessels," eventually leading a renegade band called the Right Honourable Brotherhood of Shipwrecked Men.
In the West Indies, where war, piracy, smuggling, and slave running are the order of the day, the hero of this tale advances from midshipman to lieutenant to a command of his own: the audacious little Wasp.
Oliver Tressilian helped defeat the Spanish Armada only to be betrayed by his half-brother, forcing him to become a fugitive. Now a pirate off the Barbary Coast and follower of Islam, Captain Tressilain, the Sea-Hawk, finds adventure and romance in his new life.
In 1780, 17-year-old Alan Lewrie is rebellious and close to being a libertine, so much so that his father believes a bit of naval discipline will turn the boy around. Fresh aboard the king's ship ARIADNE, Midshipman Lewrie heads for the war-torn Americas, finding - rather unexpectedly - that he is a born sailor, equally at home on bawdy shore leave or afloat and in battle at sea.
First of a series.
In 1793, privateer Harry Ludlow finds himself aboard the navy's 74-gun Magnanime, with his younger brother James. In command is Oliver Carter, a captain with whom Harry has an unfortunate history. When James is found standing over the body of a dead officer, Harry's feud shifts into the background. But dark secrets start to surface on all sides.
First of the Privateersman series.
The thrilling account of the strange, eventful, and tragic voyage of His Majesty's Ship Bounty in 1788-1789, which culminated in Fletcher Christian's mutiny against Captain Bligh.
