Richard Bolitho
19 primary works • 31 total works
In March 1814, Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho returns to England from several months on the North American coast. The news of Napolean's defeat and abdication has stunned a navy and a nation bled by years of European conflict.
February 1806, and Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho carries the news of Trafalgar to southern Africa, where he is to aid the ground forces in any way he can, to retake Cape Town from the Dutch.
It is December 1815 and Adam Bolitho's orders are unequivocal. As captain of His Majesty's frigate Unrivalled of forty-six guns, he is required to 'repair in the first instance to Freetown, Sierra Leone, and reasonable assist the senior officer of the patrolling squadron'. But all efforts of the British anti-slavery patrols to curb a flourishing trade in human life are hampered by unsuitable ships, and the indifference of a government more concerned with old enemies made distrustful allies, and the continuing belligerence of the Dey of Algiers, which threatens to ignite a full-scale war. For Adam, also, there is no peace. Lost in grief and loneliness, his uncle's death still unavenged, he is uncertain of all but his identity as a man of war. The sea is his element, the ship his only home, and a reckless, perhaps doomed attack on an impregnable stronghold his only hope of settling the bitterest of debts.
Continues the adventures of Richard Bolitho, this time during the Battle of Copenhagen where Lord Nelson leads the British to victory over the Danish fleet.
Now Commodore of a newly formed squadron, in a British fleet stretched to the limit, Richard Bolitho faces one of the toughest commissions of his career: to ascertain the fighting strength of the French - then seek, find, and bring them to battle.
Home from the sea on leave in Cornwall, a 17-year-old midshipman becomes involved with smuggling, murder, and "wrecking."
In 1817 every harbor and estuary in Antigua is filled with ghostly ships, superfluous in the aftermath of war. In this uneasy peace, Adam Bolitho is offered the 74-gun Athena, a notoriously "unlucky" ship, and as flag-captain to Vice-Admiral Sir Graham Bethune he once more follows his destiny to the Caribbean.
A historical sea story featuring Captain Adam Bolitho who, still grieving for his uncle, Sir Richard, is given command of the newly commissioned frigate 'Unrivalled' and ordered to the Mediterranean, where every landfall will remind him and those close to him of what he and England have lost. From the author of SWORD OF HONOUR and THE ONLY VICTOR.
In this, the long awaited conclusion of Alexander Kent's midshipman trilogy, the new year of 1774 seems to offer Richard Bolitho and his friend Martyn Dancer the culmination of a dream. Both have been recommended for promotion, although they have not yet gained the coveted lieutenant's commission. But a routine passage from Plymouth to Guernsey in an untried schooner becomes, for Bolitho, a passage from midshipman to King's officer, tempering the promise of the future with the bitter price of maturity.