Captain Lord Ramage and the gallant crew of the Calypso head back from Devil's Island with two captured French frigates in tow. But dark tidings await in Barbados. Ramage finds no word of his wife, Sarah, whom he last left on the brig Murex, thousands of miles away in the English Channel. Now, instead of being free to sail with all haste for home, Ramage is ordered to command a convoy of some seventy merchant ships, which he must laboriously shepherd back to England. His only comfort is the presence of his old friend, Sydney Yorke, and Yorke's lovely sister, Alexis, owners of one of the merchantmen. But on the way to England, a frigate flying British colours inexplicably fires upon the Calypso. The bizarre sequence of events that follows leads Ramage to a full court martial in Plymouth-presided over by none other than his old nemesis, Rear-Admiral Goddard. Now Ramage must clear his name or face a sentence of death!
Dudley Pope is well known, both as the creator of the Ramage novels and as a distinguished naval historian. Pope falsified his age in order to enlist in the British Merchant Navy during World War II. In action, his ship was torpedoed and he spent 14 days at sea in an open lifeboat. After being discharged due to the injuries he received, he worked as the naval and defense correspondent at the London Daily News. He turned to writing fiction at the urging of C. S. Forester, who viewed Pope as his creative heir. Author of ten scholarly works as well as the 18 books in the Ramage series, Dudley Pope died in 1997.
