Napoleonic Sea

The Napoleonic Wars saw fighting on an unprecedented scale in Europe and the Americas. It took the wealth of the British Empire, combined with the might of the continental armies, almost two decades to bring down one of the world's greatest military leaders and the empire that he had created. Napoleon's ultimate defeat was to determine the history of Europe for almost 100 years. From the frozen wastelands of Russia, through the brutal fighting in the Peninsula to the blood-soaked battlefield of Waterloo, this book tells the story of the dramatic rise and fall of the Napoleonic Empire.

In the long ebb of empire and memory, Aubrey’s Honour charts the final passages of two men who were never merely characters, but forces of nature shaped by war, friendship, and the sea itself. Told with the grace, gravity, and grit that fans of O’Brian’s world have come to revere, this book does not seek to inflate the legend — it seeks to understand the men beneath it. Admiral Jack Aubrey, once the thunder of the quarterdeck, now stalks the halls of power with a sailor’s unease and a tactician’s eye. Dr. Stephen Maturin, naturalist and spy, walks more quietly, but never without...

1794.Captain Nicholas Cruwys brings the frigate Topaze home to England from the Mediterranean. By spring she must be ready for the Channel Fleet. France is starving, a great grain convoy is crossing the Atlantic to feed her, and Lord Howe means to meet the fleet that will come out of Brest to protect it. What follows is a season of hard sea service: a new company to be made into a fighting one, cruises on the French coast, and scouting work ahead of the fleet as the two great forces search for one another in the open Atlantic — until a sudden vacancy in the line of battle hands Cruwys a ...

The first volume of the Episodios Nacionales — the great historical novel cycle of Spain October 1805. Off the coast of Cádiz, the combined fleets of Spain and France sail out to meet the British under Nelson. By nightfall, the Spanish navy will have ceased to exist as a fighting force, and an empire that has ruled the seas for three centuries will have lost them forever. Gabriel Araceli is fourteen years old. An orphan from the slums of Cádiz, he has been taken into the household of Don Alonso Gutiérrez de Cisniega, a retired naval officer who cannot bear to miss the coming battle. ...

IN HARM’S WAY The year is 1802. The peace is a rumor. The sea is a killing ground. Captain Robert Harrison sails from Portsmouth in the thirty-two gun frigate H.M.S. Falcon with orders that are simple and merciless. Report to the Leeward Islands Station. Patrol from Cayenne to Trinidad. Destroy all enemy shipping bearing French or Spanish colors, naval vessels and merchantmen alike. What follows is sixty days on the most dangerous coast in the Atlantic world. The coast of the Spanish Main offers no mercy and asks for none. Fever takes men without warning and without remedy. The rivers are...

Commodore Isaac Donland has fought the sea and the enemy both — but never at the same time, until now. Fresh from an Atlantic crossing, Captain Isaac Donland barely has time to embrace his wife and daughter before the Admiralty summons him to London. Within days he is given a broad pendant and a small squadron — his own sixty-four gun Hampshire, a frigate, and two sloops — with orders to strangle the flow of timber, iron, and guns feeding the French shipyards at Lorient. What begins as a patrol soon becomes something far more dangerous. A cutting-out expedition ends in bloody retreat....

The French Revolution of the late 1790s was one of the critical events in the history of Europe. It was the defining moment—a historic landslide that ushered the world into a completely new different epoch. Alas, all such changes come at a great cost. In the wake of the revolution, a series of large scale conflicts ensued, which are collectively known as the Napoleonic Wars. Their magnitude, their ferocity, and the loss of lives they caused were unprecedented up to that time.

April 1778. England is at war, and the Navy wants boys. Gerry Pellew is twelve years old, raised soft in Bath, and terrified. His father, the legendary Admiral Lord Pellew, has one instruction for the captain of the seventy-four-gun *Alexander*: train him, and show him no slackness. His brother has one piece of advice: never show your feelings, and for God's sake do not cry. The sea will test both within the year. From the smoke and slaughter of Ushant, where Gerry must perform a last terrible kindness for his dearest friend, to lee shores and fevers, fog duels and night boardings, the ...

The 26th Kydd adventure from veteran writer Julian Stockwin. Following his recovery after a savage wounding in America, Kydd returns to England to re-assume command of his ship-of-the-line, Thunderer, which is sent to the remote station of Bermuda. 'Paints a vivid picture of life aboard the...

The Imposter Lieutenant Brent: The Assassin Lieutenant Brent has a secret that could see him hanged—he's not who he claims to be. After assuming the identity of a dying naval officer in a Moorish prison, he's spent three years carefully building a life in His Majesty's Navy, dreaming of the day he can return to England and marry Emily, the woman he loves. But when Captain Timmons summons him with chilling words—"I want you to kill a man"—Brent's carefully constructed world threatens to collapse. Timmons knows the truth about his identity, and he's willing to keep it secret... for a ...

At the beginning of the 19th century, British global military power oppressed, outgunned and eventually invaded the young United States of America during the War of 1812. How did America prevail against such odds? With ships, guns and the fierce desire for freedom that lived in the hearts of American sailors. Many of these men were not even Americans yet. Some came from Ireland, including Jack Gallagher. “Gallagher's Prize” begins in southern Ireland when English law breaks up an Irish Catholic family's farmland and a young man longs for the sea. During his many adventures, Jack visits ...

The nineteenth novel in Julian Stockwin's acclaimed Captain Kydd series. 1808. Parted from his new bride, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd is called away to join the Northern Expedition to Sweden, now Britain's only ally in the Baltic. Following the sudden declaration of war by Russia and with the...

She had taken thirty-two prizes and crossed an ocean no American warship had ever crossed. Her captain knew exactly what was rotting inside her foremast — and exactly what would happen if the truth ever reached the log. Captain David Porter has run the USS Essex through fourteen months of Pacific war without support, without orders, and without a single defeat. But the ship that made his name is dying from the inside, and the man hunting her — Captain James Hillyar of HMS Phoebe — is the same officer Porter once spared when he had him dead to rights. Now the two ships lie at anchor in...

'In Stockwin's hands the sea story will continue to entrance readers across the world' - Guardian 1808. With the Peninsula in turmoil, Napoleon Bonaparte signs a treaty to dismember Portugal and put his brother, Joseph, on the throne of Spain. Meanwhile, Nicholas Renzi, the Lord Farndon...

Unputdownable naval action from the master of the sea story. 'In Stockwin's hands the sea story will continue to entrance readers across the world' (Guardian) November 1807. Captain Sir Thomas Kydd must sail to Lisbon to aid the Portuguese Royal Family's evacuation in the face of Napoleon's...

What if Napoleon had changed the world with a single signature—not of a treaty, but of a marriage contract? 1803. Europe stands at a crossroads. In the history we know, Napoleon Bonaparte sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States and later married an Austrian princess. In The Blood Alliance, he chooses a different path: a dynastic union with the Spanish Infanta, María Luisa of Bourbon. With one decision, the foundations of the 19th century are shattered: The Louisiana Purchase is suspended. The young American Republic sees its dream of continental expansion strangled as France ...

In this seminal story of naval life during the Napoleonic wars, Frederick Marryat's young hero embarks upon a life at sea and finds it to be a rough school indeed. Simple's trials and triumphs, with his faithful mentor, Terence O'Brien, at his side, mirror Marryat's personal experiences. Among the exciting events depicted are the hand-to-hand combat of "cutting-out" missions, the devastating hurricane off St. Pierre, and a mutiny aboard the Rattlesnake.

Brent knows the price of deception: death. Yet, after enduring the horrors of Muslim pirate captivity and the brutal life of a galley slave, impersonating a dead midshipman is his only path to survival—and a life beyond the nightmares. Rescued by a British man-of-war, Brent must navigate a treacherous sea of lies and doubt, convincing a skeptical world of his stolen identity. His dream of becoming a naval officer hinges on an audacious rescue mission. Brent is the only one who knows the secret entrance to the very pit that haunts his sleep. Can he lead the charge to save four vital men, ...

Will come later

It’s 1809,the super frigate HMS Relentless is supporting the British Army fighting in the Iberian Peninsula. It has been four years since the by now famous, battle of Trafalgar. At the time, popular opinion had it that it was the end of Napoleon, they failed to take into account the fact that he was still undefeated on land, indeed was still adding laurel leafs to his usurped crown. The French and Spanish Fleets were in a state of recovery, licking their wounds after the Royal Navy had taught them a lesson in seamanship and naval warfare that had amazed the World, and it had taught them ...