Midshipman Bolitho: Richard Bolitho - Midshipman, Midshipman Bolitho and the Avenger and Band of Brothers

by Kent, Alexander | Fiction & related items
Published 03/01/2008 by Cornerstone (Arrow Books Ltd) in the United Kingdom
Paperback | 448 pages
198 x 130 x 29mm | 318g

Richard Bolitho -- MidshipmanOctober 1772, Portsmouth. And sixteen-year-old Richard Bolitho waits to join the Gorgon ordered to sail to the west coast of Africa and to destroy those who challenge the King's Navy. For Bolitho, and for many of the crew, it is a severe and testing initiation into the game of seamanship. Midshipman Bolitho and the 'Avenger'December 1773, Falmouth. The young Bolitho looks forward to a family Christmas in Cornwall while the Gorgon is refitted. But Cornwall is the treacherous stamping ground of smugglers and wreckers. After the murder of a revenue office, Bolitho is swept aboard his brother's cutter Avenger on a dangerous mission of hide and seek.

Band of Brothers1774 - the new year seems to offer Richard Bolitho and his friend Martyn Dancer the culmination of a dream. Both have been recommended for promotion, although they have not yet gained the coveted lieutenant's commission. But a routine passage from Plymouth to Guernsey in an untried schooner becomes, for Bolitho, a passage from midshipman to King's officer, tempering the promise of the future with the bitter price of maturity.