In 1798, the Royal British Navy withdrew from the Mediterranean to combat the threat of invasion at home. In their absence, rumors abound of a French Army gathering in the south of France under General Napoleon Bonaparte, and of a large fleet gathering to transport them. Alexander Clay and his ship, Titan, are sent to the Mediterranean to investigate. Clay verifies the troubling rumors but is unable to learn where the French fleet and the army will be heading. When Admiral Lord Nelson arrives from Britain with reinforcements, Clay and Titan join Nelson's fleet heading for Southern France. But on their arrival, they discover Bonaparte's fleet is gone, and Nelson, aware of the dangers of an ambitious and ruthless general, orders an all-out hunt for Bonaparte's armies before it is too late. As the Titan searches for Napoleon's forces, another threat has already gained passage on the ship. After engaging and destroying a Russian Privateer, the crew capture a mysterious stranger, claiming to be an English sailor who has been serving from childhood on Barbary ships. Shortly after he joins the ship, there begins a rash of thefts followed by the murder of another sailor. With the officers baffled as to who is behind this, it falls to Able Sedgwick, the Captain's coxswain and the lower deck to solve the crimes.
Philip K Allan is a British author. He still lives in the UK with his wife and his two teenage daughters. He has an excellent knowledge of the 18th century navy and believes the period has unrivalled potential for a writer. On the one hand there is the strange, claustrophobic wooden world of the period's ships and on the other hand there is the boundless freedom to move those ships around the globe wherever the narrative takes them. All these possibilities are fully exploited in the Alexander Clay novels. Philip's inspiration for the series was to build on the works of novelists like C.S. Forester and in particular Patrick O'Brian. His prose is heavily influenced by O'Brian's immersive style. He too uses meticulously researched period language and authentic nautical detail to draw the reader into a different world. But the Alexander Clay books also bring something fresh to the genre, with a cast of fully formed lower deck characters with their own back histories and plot lines in addition to the officers. Think Downton Abbey on a ship, with the lower deck as the below stairs servants.Learn more at philipkallan.com
