In March 1818, Captain Adam Bolitho takes command of the frigate Onward. With his stalwart coxswain Jago and the midshipman David Napier, Adam must accept both the challenge of commanding His Britannic Majesty's Ship onward, confronting old enemies and rivals to forge an alliance against corsairs and privateers in the Mediterranean.

In another thrilling Richard Bolitho adventure, the navy prepares for action at sea against a growing fleet of American and French privateers, as the American Revolution rages on the mainland.

The year is 1774 and Bolitho, now a newly appointed third lieutenant, joins the Destiny at Plymouth. The frigate is dispatched on a secret mission far south to Rio and then the Caribbean where they face the hazards of conspiracy, treason and piracy.

1778: The year the American War of Independence became an all-out struggle for freedom from British rule -- and the year young Richard Bolitho took command of the Sparrow, a small, fast and well-armed sloop of war.

"H.M.S. Phalarope" is ordered to the Caribbean but the most deadly enemy is already aboard her.
"January 1782, Portsmouth" His Britannic Majesty's frigate "Phalarope" is ordered to the assistance of the hard-pressed squadrons in the Carribean. Aboard is her new commander Richard Bolitho. To all appearances the "Phalarope" is everything a young captain could wish for. But beneath the surface she is a deeply unhappy ship her wardroom torn by petty greed and ambition, her deckhands driven to near-mutiny by senseless ill-treatment

"From the Paperback edition.""

1784: His Majesty's frigate Undine weighs anchor to begin a voyage to India with her new Captain, Richard Bolitho on a mission to safeguard trade and colonial development in little-known areas of the East Indies.

As 1794 draws to a close Richard Bolitho, commanding the old seventy-four-gun ship of the line Hyperion, leaves Plymouth to join a squadron blockading the rising power of Revolutionary France. After six months of repairs his ship is ready to fight again, but her company is mostly raw and untrained.

Pirates and savage South Sea Islanders are nothing compared to the greatest of all threats.
"October 1789, New South Wales" Into Sydney, capital of Britain's infant colony, sails the frigate "Tempest." She is one of His Majesty's ships employed in policing the new southern trade routes. Her captain is Richard Bolitho, who hopes to be ordered home to England. Instead he is despatched on a mission to the islands of the Great South Sea, where he must face hazards of fickle winds, pirates and savage islanders. But he is menaced by deeper fears; the men of the Bounty have mutinied in these...

Bolitho and the crew of the Hyperion are trapped by the French near a dry Mediterranean island. The great ship-of-the line s battered hull begins to groan as her sails snap in the hot wind."

Amid rumours of a French armada massing in the Mediterranean, Commodore Bolitho must seek out the enemy. A fleet, even a nation could depend on his decisions and he accepts the challenge as the price of his career.