Seaflower

Book excerpt: Internationally bestselling author Julian Stockwin's seafaring hero, young Thomas Kydd, comes of age in this epic naval adventure set in the Great Age of Sail. Writing in the sweeping tradition of Patrick O'Brian and C. S. Forester, acclaimed author Julian Stockwin continues the saga of Seaman Thomas Paine Kydd as he moves up the ranks of the Napoleonic-era British navy. The year is 1794. Kydd and the other shipwrecked sailors have returned to England for the court-martial of the sole surviving officer of Her Majesty's frigate Artemis. Kydd was on duty the thirteenth of April as quartermaster of the starboard watch. He knows what happened that dreadful night. His evidence can destroy an officer's career. Kydd is devastated by the loss of his ship, and he's shocked when he's not allowed to tell the court his story. Instead, Kydd and his good friend Nicholas Renzi are forcibly shipped off to the Caribbean. After many lonely months at sea, they don't even have a chance to go ashore to see family and friends. New adventures await, however, as both Kydd, a man of humble origins gradually rising through the ranks, and Renzi, whose exalted family heritage remains a tantalizing mystery, discover the pleasures and hazards of a lush new land. The journey will take Kydd from a dockyard in Antigua to a life-and-death struggle on the high seas aboard the plucky naval cutter Seaflower. While war between England and Revolution-torn France escalates, Kydd's mettle under fire -- as a sailor and a man -- receives the ultimate test. Set at the dawn of a new century, Seaflower gives us the primal forces of nature at sea where they are at their most untamed and exhilarating. This is classic storytelling at its powerful best.