Book 1

Gone to Sea in a Bucket

by David Black

Published 1 November 2015
Like all young men of a certain age, Harry Gilmour had his own notion of how a naval battle should be. This wasn’t it.

Norway, 1940: Sub Lieutenant Harry Gilmour’s first encounter with battleship action is not the adventure he had hoped for. Faced with a thankless task and ill equipped to handle it, Gilmour’s inexperience leads to a damning allegation. His future hangs in the balance.

But then Lieutenant Peter Dumaresq steps in to offer him a lifeline—an advanced navigation course that will take him aboard a crack submarine, HMS Pelorus, under the command of a Royal Navy hero. Faced with a possible court martial, Harry chooses life underwater. Once aboard, however, Harry is confronted for the first time by the full horror of submarine warfare. If he can just overcome his fears, it will be the making of him.

Because survival itself is the challenge now. For Harry and the rest of the crew, the next depth charge could be the one that sinks them.

Spring, 1941. France has fallen but the Free French naval forces are in no mood to surrender. Royal Navy Sub-Lieutenant Harry Gilmour is also ready for action, despite the horrors of his first taste of submarine warfare.

When he is appointed as British Navy Liaison Officer aboard the Free French submarine Radegonde, he finds it anarchic, disorientating—and very French. Within its claustrophobic confines, suspicion and misunderstanding are rife.

So when Radegonde is sent on a mission to Martinique, it’s vital that these proud men learn to work together, especially as it seems everyone from Churchill to de Gaulle—not to mention Hitler—has a stake in the outcome.

Will Harry be able to navigate these dangerous waters safely and return with hard-won wisdom, or will old enemies arise to sink him?