Commodore Isaac Donland has fought the sea and the enemy both — but never at the same time, until now.
Fresh from an Atlantic crossing, Captain Isaac Donland barely has time to embrace his wife and daughter before the Admiralty summons him to London. Within days he is given a broad pendant and a small squadron — his own sixty-four gun Hampshire, a frigate, and two sloops — with orders to strangle the flow of timber, iron, and guns feeding the French shipyards at Lorient.
What begins as a patrol soon becomes something far more dangerous. A cutting-out expedition ends in bloody retreat. A captured lieutenant, driven by his own father's execution, hands Donland the truth about the enemy's defenses — and a chance to even the odds. A gale scatters the squadron across the Bay of Biscay, and when two French frigates find Hampshire sailing alone, there is no one left to call for help.
Through storms, boarding actions, and the quiet costs of command — the wounded coxswain who won't leave his son's side, the young lieutenant torn between a girl's letter and a captain's trust, the wife waiting through a cold English winter — Donland must hold his ship, his squadron, and his own resolve together long enough to bring them all home.
Written in the tradition of the great age-of-sail adventures, No Friend In Sight is a story of duty, family, and the narrow margin between victory and disaster on a hostile coast.
Genre: Thriller
Fresh from an Atlantic crossing, Captain Isaac Donland barely has time to embrace his wife and daughter before the Admiralty summons him to London. Within days he is given a broad pendant and a small squadron — his own sixty-four gun Hampshire, a frigate, and two sloops — with orders to strangle the flow of timber, iron, and guns feeding the French shipyards at Lorient.
What begins as a patrol soon becomes something far more dangerous. A cutting-out expedition ends in bloody retreat. A captured lieutenant, driven by his own father's execution, hands Donland the truth about the enemy's defenses — and a chance to even the odds. A gale scatters the squadron across the Bay of Biscay, and when two French frigates find Hampshire sailing alone, there is no one left to call for help.
Through storms, boarding actions, and the quiet costs of command — the wounded coxswain who won't leave his son's side, the young lieutenant torn between a girl's letter and a captain's trust, the wife waiting through a cold English winter — Donland must hold his ship, his squadron, and his own resolve together long enough to bring them all home.
Written in the tradition of the great age-of-sail adventures, No Friend In Sight is a story of duty, family, and the narrow margin between victory and disaster on a hostile coast.
Genre: Thriller
Used availability for Perry Comer's Donland: No Friend in Sight