Donland’s Squadron
England is not yet at war with France in 1803.
Post Captain Isaac Donland has been given a new command — the sixty-four gun Excellent, laid up in ordinary at Spithead — and orders that tell him very little of what he is sailing toward. France and Spain are building something on the Isthmus of Panama. The Admiralty needs to know what it is, how advanced it is, and whether it can be stopped.
With a squadron of four ships and a Royal Engineer named Colonel Stoddard aboard, Donland sails south and west into waters that are growing more dangerous by the week. There are French frigates on patrol, three thousand forced laborers dying in the jungle, and intelligence suggesting that France has developed a new explosive capable of doing what no blasting powder has done before — cutting a canal through the mountains that divide the Atlantic from the Pacific.
A canal would change everything. Two oceans, one passage, and whoever holds it holds the balance of naval power for a generation.
Donland has his orders: observe, report, and if the work is too far advanced — destroy it.
From the gray Channel to the blue Caribbean, from the drawing rooms of the Admiralty to the red clay shores of Limon Bay, Donland’s Squadron is a story of seamanship, intelligence, and the hard choices that fall to a post captain who has been told to finish a job without starting a war.
Genre: Thriller
England is not yet at war with France in 1803.
Post Captain Isaac Donland has been given a new command — the sixty-four gun Excellent, laid up in ordinary at Spithead — and orders that tell him very little of what he is sailing toward. France and Spain are building something on the Isthmus of Panama. The Admiralty needs to know what it is, how advanced it is, and whether it can be stopped.
With a squadron of four ships and a Royal Engineer named Colonel Stoddard aboard, Donland sails south and west into waters that are growing more dangerous by the week. There are French frigates on patrol, three thousand forced laborers dying in the jungle, and intelligence suggesting that France has developed a new explosive capable of doing what no blasting powder has done before — cutting a canal through the mountains that divide the Atlantic from the Pacific.
A canal would change everything. Two oceans, one passage, and whoever holds it holds the balance of naval power for a generation.
Donland has his orders: observe, report, and if the work is too far advanced — destroy it.
From the gray Channel to the blue Caribbean, from the drawing rooms of the Admiralty to the red clay shores of Limon Bay, Donland’s Squadron is a story of seamanship, intelligence, and the hard choices that fall to a post captain who has been told to finish a job without starting a war.
Genre: Thriller
Used availability for Perry Comer's Donland's Squadron