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Author

Dudley Pope

24 fiction · 1 non-fiction

Dudley Pope (1925–1997) was a British naval historian and historical novelist whose writing was shaped by extensive personal experience at sea. Born near Ashford in Kent, he joined the Merchant Navy at sixteen during the Second World War. In 1942 his ship, Silverwillow, was torpedoed while sailing in an Atlantic convoy, leaving him with serious spinal injuries that troubled him for the rest of his life. After being invalided out, Pope became a journalist and eventually naval correspondent for the London Evening News. He also began researching naval history, publishing studies of the Second World War and later becoming particularly knowledgeable about Nelson’s navy and the sailing warships of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. C. S. Forester encouraged him to turn this expertise to fiction, and Pope became one of the leading twentieth-century writers of historical naval adventure.

His principal historical fiction is the eighteen-volume Lord Ramage series, beginning with Ramage, which follows the fictional Royal Navy officer Nicholas Ramage through the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. The sequence includes Ramage & the Drumbeat, Ramage & the Freebooters, Governor Ramage R.N., Ramage’s Prize, Ramage & the Guillotine, Ramage’s Diamond, Ramage’s Mutiny, Ramage and the Rebels, Ramage’s Signal, Ramage at Trafalgar and Ramage and the Dido. Pope also wrote the Ned Yorke novels, beginning with Buccaneer, set in the seventeenth-century Caribbean world of English settlers, Spanish power, privateers and buccaneers. His historical novels are distinguished by detailed accounts of seamanship, navigation, gunnery, naval discipline and life aboard sailing warships, with fictional adventures closely integrated into the genuine maritime conflicts of the period.

Periods and events

Barbary Corsairs and Mediterranean Captivityc. 1450–1830 CE Battle of the Atlantic1939–1945 Battle of Trafalgar1805-10-21 Caribbean Campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars1793–1802 CE Caribbean Campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars1803–1815 CE Peace of Amiens1802–1803 CE Resumption of War with France1803–1805 CE Royal Navy in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars1793–1815 CE

Historical fiction

Historical fiction series by Dudley Pope (2 series)

The Lord Ramage Novels in Order

by Dudley Pope 18 books 4.5(8,858)

The Lord Ramage Novels follow Nicholas Ramage from an unexpected lieutenant's command in 1796 to command of a seventy-four-gun ship of the line in 1806. Across eighteen novels he serves through the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, fighting in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, dealing with mutiny and court…

Ned Yorke in Order

by Dudley Pope 4 books 4.3(279)

The four Ned Yorke novels follow a Royalist planter and seaman through the struggle for power in the Caribbean after England's capture of Jamaica in 1655. Buccaneer begins with Yorke driven from Barbados into private war; Admiral, Galleon and Corsair expand his role until he is commanding the…

Historical fiction

Standalone historical fiction by Dudley Pope (2 books)

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Non-fiction

Non-fiction by Dudley Pope (1 book)

Reference works, biographies and other non-fiction are kept separate from the historical fiction above.

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