The Wine Dark Sea (Soundings Series)

"Such is O'Brian's power to possess the imagination that I found I was living in his world as much as my own." Alan Judd, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH. At the opening of their voyage, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are in pursuit of a privateer sailing under American colours through the Great South Sea. Stephen is charged with setting the revolutionary tinder of South America ablaze to relieve the pressure on a British government which, already engaged in a death-struggle with a Europe dominated by Napoleon, has blundered into a war with the young United States. After a series of hair-raising actions, they reach the objective of Stephen's clandestine operations, but the land shows itself as uncertain an element as the ocean...