The Judgement of His Peers

by Richard Woodman Book 2 in the Tales of the Sea series.

First published 2020

Amazon

3.7(189)

A group of retired sea captains reconstructs the career of Claude Bastable, a master mariner whose competence and reputation conceal a pattern of vanity and misconduct. Their discussion returns to the voyage on which his decisions caused avoidable deaths and left colleagues to carry the consequences.

The story unfolds as an informal maritime tribunal in which memory, friendship and professional standards compete. Rather than asking only whether Bastable broke rules, it examines how seafarers judge one another when legal responsibility, moral guilt and the instinct to protect the service do not coincide.