1 Flying jib

      2 Jib

      3 Fore topmast staysail

      4 Fore staysail

      5 Foresail, or course

      6 Fore topsail

      7 Fore topgallant

      8 Mainstaysail

      9 Main topmast staysail

      10 Middle staysail

      11 Main topgallant staysail

      12 Mainsail, or course

      13 Maintopsail

      14 Main topgallant

      15 Mizzen staysail

      16 Mizzen topmast staysail

      17 Mizzen topgallant staysail

      18 Mizzen sail

      19 Spanker

      20 Mizzen topsail

      21 Mizzen topgallant

      Illustration source: Serres, Liber Nauticus.

       Courtesy of The Science and Technology Research Center, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundation

      Author’s Note

      Great men can afford anachronism, and indeed it is rather agreeable to find Criseyde reading the lives of the saints or Hamlet going to school at Wittenberg; but perhaps the ordinary writer should not take many liberties with the past. If he does, he sacrifices both authenticity and the willing suspension of disbelief, and he is sure to receive letters from those with a greater love of precision than himself. Only the other day a learned Dutchman reproached me for having sprinkled eau de Cologne in the forepeak of HMS Shannon in my last book: the earliest English reference to eau de Cologne, said he, quoting the Oxford Dictionary, is in a letter of Byron’s dated 1830. I believe he was mistaken in assuming that no Englishman ever spoke of eau de Cologne before that time; but his letter made me uneasy in my mind, all the more so since in this present book I have deliberately kept Sir James Saumarez in the Baltic some months after he had taken the Victory home and struck his flag. In the first draft I had relied on the Dictionary of National Biography, which maintained the Admiral in command for my chosen period: but then, checking in the memoirs of one of his subordinates, I found that in fact another man had taken his place. Yet I did want to say something about Saumarez, an outstanding example of a particular type of sea-officer of that time, deeply religious, extremely capable, and a most effective diplomat, so as I really could not rearrange the calendar any more I decided to leave things as they were, although out of some obscure feeling of respect for that noble ship I omitted all reference to the Victory. The historical sequence, therefore, is not quite exact; but I trust that the candid reader will grant me this amount of licence.

      Chapter One

      The long harbour of Halifax in Nova Scotia on a long, long summer’s day, and two frigates gliding in on the tide of flood under their topsails alone: the first, since she had belonged to the United States Navy until a few days before, wore the Stars and Stripes under a white ensign; the second showed no more than her own shabby colours, for she was HMS Shannon, the winner in that short and bloody action with the Chesapeake.

      The Shannon’s crew already had some notion of the welcome they should receive, because news of the victory had spread and dories, yachts, privateers’ boats and small craft of all kinds had met them beyond the distant harbour’s mouth, sailing along with them, waving their hats and bawling out ‘Bravo – huzzay – well done, Shannon – huzzay, huzzay!’ The Shannons took no great notice of the civilians, apart from a distant acknowledgement, a discreet wave from the watch below; but the small craft took great notice of them, and although the casual observer saw little to exclaim at in the Shannon herself, with most of her rigging new set up, a fresh suit of sails bent to her yards, and her paintwork at least as trim as it was when she set out from this same port some weeks ago,