He was taken from his farm at the point of a cudgel. Now the King's coat is the only thing keeping him alive.
Torn from his wife and children and pressed into His Majesty's Navy, Massachusetts farmer Jeremiah Carter has already survived the hurricane, the wreck, and the long road back to sea. Delivered at last to Halifax, he is rated master's mate of the Phoenix, a heavy forty-four-gun frigate bound for the war in Europe.
But the coat sits ill on an American. Short of hands, the Phoenix must fill her ranks the way Carter was filled, and he is sent to press honest fishermen from their boats, doing to other men the very thing that was done to him. Resented by the crew he stole and mistrusted by the King's own hands, he sets himself to earn a commission by right, studying his navigation by the light of a guttering dip while France enters the war on his own country's side.
From the fog of the Grand Banks to the great grey Rock of Gibraltar, from the weary blockade of Toulon to a desperate two-against-one frigate action, Carter must decide what he owes the flag he never chose, the shipmates he never wanted, and the green fields and the woman waiting an ocean away.
Some men win their coat before a board of captains. Carter will win his in blood.
The saga of the pressed man continues.
Genre: Thriller
Torn from his wife and children and pressed into His Majesty's Navy, Massachusetts farmer Jeremiah Carter has already survived the hurricane, the wreck, and the long road back to sea. Delivered at last to Halifax, he is rated master's mate of the Phoenix, a heavy forty-four-gun frigate bound for the war in Europe.
But the coat sits ill on an American. Short of hands, the Phoenix must fill her ranks the way Carter was filled, and he is sent to press honest fishermen from their boats, doing to other men the very thing that was done to him. Resented by the crew he stole and mistrusted by the King's own hands, he sets himself to earn a commission by right, studying his navigation by the light of a guttering dip while France enters the war on his own country's side.
From the fog of the Grand Banks to the great grey Rock of Gibraltar, from the weary blockade of Toulon to a desperate two-against-one frigate action, Carter must decide what he owes the flag he never chose, the shipmates he never wanted, and the green fields and the woman waiting an ocean away.
Some men win their coat before a board of captains. Carter will win his in blood.
The saga of the pressed man continues.
Genre: Thriller
Used availability for Perry Comer's To Wear a King's Coat