Jack Archer

by G. A. Henty

First published 1883

Amazon Gutenberg EPUB

2.5(5)

Jack Archer leaves school to become a midshipman just as Britain enters the Crimean War. Naval service takes him to the eastern Mediterranean and Gallipoli before he becomes involved in the land campaign, witnessing the battles of the Alma, Balaklava and Inkerman and the long siege of Sevastopol.

Capture carries Jack away from the British lines and into a different kind of adventure involving imprisonment, disguise and escape through Russian territory. He eventually makes his way back to the front as the siege enters its final stages. The novel combines a young sailor's coming-of-age story with the major episodes of the Crimean campaign, including the logistical failures, severe weather and confused operations that made the war as dangerous away from battle as in combat.