Pearce struggles to repair the damaged HMS Larcher in Palermo while protecting Emily from abandonment and scandal. A faster enemy drives him into an Italian bay, where he is forced to burn his ship and face a court martial for its loss.
Admiral Hotham exploits the crisis by sending the Pelicans against the pirate Mehmet Pasha. Pearce must survive captivity, distrust within his crew and a mission designed as much to remove him as to serve the fleet.
Pearce’s court-martial gives Hotham a legal means of controlling an officer he already distrusts. The pirate mission therefore combines public naval duty with private calculation: success may clear Pearce’s name, but failure conveniently removes him. The Mediterranean setting exposes the overlap between formal warfare, corsair violence and personal patronage inside the eighteenth-century naval world.
Julian Stockwin
29 books
Richard Woodman
37 books
Adrian Westbrooke
9 books
Christopher Nicole
49 books