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Richard Bolitho -- Midshipman October 1772, Portsmouth. And sixteen-year-old Richard Bolitho waits to join the Gorgon ordered to sail to the west coast of Africa and to destroy those who challenge the King's Navy. For Bolitho, and for many of the crew, it is a severe and testing initiation into the game of seamanship. Midshipman Bolitho and the 'Avenger' December 1773, Falmouth. The young Bolitho looks forward to a family Christmas in Cornwall while the Gorgon is refitted. But...

1784: at a time when most of the fleet is laid up, His Majesty's frigate Undine weighs anchor at Spithead to begin a voyage to India and far beyond. As her new captain, Richard Bolitho is glad to go, despite the nature of his orders and the immensity of the voyage - for he is leaving an England still suffering from the aftermath of war. But he is to learn that signatures on proud documents do not necessarily make a lasting peace, and finds himself involved in a conflict as ruthless as the...

1777: the revolution in America has erupted into a full-scale war. The navy's main task is to prevent military supplies from reaching Washington's armies and to destroy the fast-growing fleet of French and American privateers. As a junior officer Bolitho is often bewildered by swiftly changing events, but in a ship of the line, under a hard and determined captain, he has little opportunity for uncertainty. At a time of shortages and sudden death even a lieutenant can find himself...

1774: Bolitho is now a newly appointed third lieutenant joining the 28-gun frigate Destiny at Plymouth. It is a far step from midshipman's berth to wardroom - and, at a time when most of the fleet is laid up, Bolitho is considered fortunate. Bolitho's promotion is tinged by personal sadness, but his new captain soon points out that Bolitho's loyalty is to him, the ship and His Britannic Majesty - in that order. Despatched on a secret mission far south to Rio and then to the...

1778: a seminal year for the young Richard Bolitho... The American War of Independence changes to an all-out struggle for freedom from British rule - and Bolitho takes command of the Sparrow, a small, fast and well-armed sloop of war. As the pace of war increases, the Sparrow is called from one crisis to another - and when the great fleets of Britain and France convene on the Chesapeake, Bolitho has to throw aside the early dreams of his first command to find maturity in a sea battle that might...

1794: as the year draws to a close Richard Bolitho, commanding the old Hyperion, leaves Plymouth to join a squadron blockading the rising power of Revolutionary France. After six months of repairs his ship is ready to fight again, but her company is mostly raw and untrained. Unfortunately, Bolitho finds himself under a commodore who is no match for the French admiral, Lequiller, whose powerful squadron uses guile and ruthless determination to elude him and vanish into the Atlantic. Hyperion...

1789: NEW SOUTH WALES. Into Sydney, capital of Britain's infant colony, sails the frigate Tempest. She is one of His Majesty's ships employed in policing the new southern trade routes. Her captain is Richard Bolitho, who hopes to be ordered home to England. Instead he is despatched on a mission to the islands of the Great South Sea, where he must face hazards of fickle winds, pirates and native islanders. But he is menaced by deeper fears: the men of the Bounty have mutinied in these...

1774: The new year seems to offer Richard Bolitho and his friend Martyn Dancer the culmination of a dream. Both have been recommended for promotion, although they have not yet gained the coveted lieutenant's commission. But a routine passage from Plymouth to Guernsey in an untried schooner becomes, for Bolitho, a passage from midshipman to King's officer, tempering the promise of the future with the bitter price of maturity. Will he rise to the occasion?

1782: British Captain Richard Bolitho is ordered to take the frigate Phalarope to the Caribbean, where the hard-pressed royal squadrons are fighting for their lives against the combined fleets of France and Spain and the upstart American privateers. It should have been a proud moment for so young and junior a captain - but the Phalarope has already been driven to near mutiny and she is regarded with shame and suspicion. But Bolitho is no ordinary man and his efforts to give the ship back her...

Portsmouth, 1782. His Britannic Majesty's frigate, Phalarope, is ordered to assist the hard-pressed squadrons in the Caribbean. Aboard is her new commander-Richard Bolitho. To all appearances the Phalarope is everything a young captain could wish for, but beneath the surface she is a deeply unhappy ship-her wardroom torn by petty greed and ambition, her deckhands suspected of cowardice under fire and driven to near-mutiny by senseless ill-treatment.

This story is set in the winter of 1773, in and around the West Country of England. Midshipman Bolitho's ship, the Gorgon, is laid up for refit, and he with some other 'young gentlemen' is allowed home for Christmas. Bolitho, now seventeen, returns to his family in Falmouth, taking with him his best friend and fellow midshipman, Martyn Dancer. Bolitho soon discovers that all is not well in Cornwall. There are rumours of an increase in smuggling, even of witchcraft, and when a...

In September 1800 Richard Bolitho, a freshly appointed rear-admiral, assumes command of his own squadron – but, as the cruel demands of war spread from Europe to the Baltic, he soon realizes that his experience, gained in the line of battle, has ill-prepared him for the intricate manoeuvring of power politics. Under his flag the Inshore Squadron has to ride out the bitter hardship of blockade duty and the swift, deadly encounters with the enemy. An old hatred steps from the past to pose a...