Reefs and Shoals - An Alan Lewrie Naval Adventure

The Invasion Year is the seventeenth tale in Dewey Lambdin's smashing naval adventure series.

For a fellow like Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, who despises the French worse than the Devil hates Holy Water, it's hellish-hard to gain a reputation for saving them, not once but twice, when the French refugees from Haiti surrender to England rather than the vengeful ex-slave armies in November of 1803!

After that, it could be "all claret and cruising" in the Caribbean, but for a home-bound sugar convoy, one so frustrating as to make even the happy-go-lucky Alan Lewrie tear his hair out, kick furniture, and curse like . . . well, like a sailor!

Back in England for the first time in two years, there are honors from the Crown for gallant service . . . a lot more than he expected from King George III, who was having a bad morning, then a chance to move in Society after an introduction to an intriguing daughter of a peer. But then come secret orders to experiment with several types of "infernal engines of war," which might delay or postpone the dreaded cross-Channel invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte, his huge army, and his thousands of invasion craft. For the rest of 1804, Alan Lewrie and his crew of the Reliant frigate will deal with things more dangerous to them than they may prove to be to the French!

THE SIXTEENTH TALE IN DEWEY LAMBDIN’S CLASSIC NAVAL ADVENTURE SERIES

December 1801. The Peace of Amiens end the long war with Napoleon Bonaparte’s France, but Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is appalled by its consequences. First, he’s been in the Navy since 1780 (most unwillingly, most of the time!) and at sea for the better part of nine years, since 1793, so what is a dashing and successful frigate captain to do with himself, if he’s ashore on half-pay, and if so, for how long?

Second, and even worse, is where will Lewrie twiddle his thumbs and be bored to death until the war begins again, as he’s sure it will? Will he idle in expensive, exciting London, or go home to his rented farm in Anglesgreen in Surrey, and rejoin his wife and in-laws who (mostly) despise him like the Devil hates Holy Water, where he knows as much of agriculture and animal husbandry as his two pet cats do of celestial navigation?

Peace and domesticity are hellish-hard on the rakehells!

Yet by the spring of 1802, Lewrie and his Caroline have somewhat reconciled (again) and are off to make a go of a second honeymoon – in Paris, France, of all places! But Lewrie’s notion to return the swords captured from deceased French officers to their kinfolk gets turned into a formal presentation at a levee in the Tuileries, and a face-to-face rencontre with the First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte. Lewrie can’t help spurring him into a “kick-furniture” rage, and he and Caroline must flee for their lives, with aid from the most unlikely source imaginable.

When war breaks out again in May of 1803, Lewrie has fresh orders, a new frigate, and a chance to punish and pursue the French, but it’s no longer for Duty or King and Country – now it’s personal!

January 1801, and Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, known as “St. Alan the Liberator” for freeing (stealing!) a dozen black slaves on Jamaica to man his frigate years before, is at last being brought to trial for it, with his life on the line. At the same time, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia are forming a League of Armed Neutrality, to Napoleon Bonaparte’s delight, to deny Great Britain their vital exports, even if it means war. England will need all her experienced sea dogs, but … even Alan Lewrie?

            Ultimately Lewis is acquitted, but he’s also ignored by the Navy, so it’s half-pay on “civvy street” for him, and with idle time on his mischievous hands, Lewrie is sure to get himself in trouble---again!---especially if there are young women and his wastrel public school friends involved…and they are! A brawl in a Panton Saint brothel, a drunk, infatuated young Russian count, precede Lewrie’s summons to Admiralty and the command of the Thermopylae frigate to replace an ill captain as the fleet gathers to face down the League of the North, and its instigator, the mad Tsar Paul.

            Lewrie must take the Thermopylae into the Baltic in the dead of winter, alone and with no support, to scout the enemy fleets and iced-in harbours, deal with a fellow officer who is less of a friend than he thought, and be saddled with a pair of Russian noblemen as a last-minute peace delegation, but if the wily Foreign Office spy-master, Zachariah Twigg, sent them, what else might their mission be?

            All that and the Battle of Copenhagen, too, and it’s broadsides at close quarters, and treachery for Lewrie, forcing him to use all his wiles to survive!