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Historical person

Home Riggs Popham

1762–1820

Home Riggs Popham was a Royal Navy officer, strategist and innovator whose career was repeatedly controversial. He helped develop a numerical signal code later used for Nelson’s message at Trafalgar, served in expeditions against the Cape and, without clear authorisation, launched the 1806 attack on Buenos Aires.

Although court-martialled and reprimanded, he continued to receive commands and later took part in operations supporting the Spanish uprising against Napoleon. Home Riggs Popham was born in Gibraltar and died in Cheltenham.

Julian Stockwin’s Betrayal makes Home Riggs Popham the driving historical figure behind the unauthorised 1806 expedition from the Cape to the Río de la Plata, an ambitious gamble that pulls Kydd into operations far beyond the original South African campaign. Conquest shows the successful seizure of the Cape that gave Popham the base from which that project became possible. Dewey Lambdin’s Hostile Shores follows the same strategic sequence from the capture of the Dutch colony across the South Atlantic towards Spanish America. In Stockwin’s Tyger, Popham’s court-martial has direct consequences for Kydd, whose outspoken evidence costs him the command he expected and sends him to a troubled ship instead.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Home Riggs Popham (2 series)

Thomas Kydd in Order

by Julian Stockwin 27 books 4.2(24,001)

The Thomas Kydd series follows a Guildford wig-maker pressed into the Royal Navy in 1793 and traces his rise from inexperienced landsman to admiral. Across twenty-seven novels, Kydd learns the work of the lower deck, crosses to the quarterdeck and commands increasingly important ships during the French Revolutionary…

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Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures in Order

by Dewey Lambdin 25 books 4.3(61,103)

The Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures follow a reluctant young rake forced into the Royal Navy in 1780 and carried through the final years of the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. Alan Lewrie develops from an inexperienced midshipman into a resourceful captain, commodore…

All books in this series