Book overview How do you maintain discipline on a ship when someone murders your first lieutenant—and a part of you agrees with their action? December 1796. It was a time of unrest and discontent for Britain, made even worse by the war with Revolutionary France and the possibility of imminent invasion. Fresh from the dockyard, HMS Pandora, a 28-gun frigate, is about to set sail to join the Mediterranean Fleet. For Captain Banks the harsh winter weather and threat of a French invasion are not his only problems. He has an untried ship, a tyrant for a First Lieutenant, a crew that contains at least one murderer, and he is about to sail into one of the biggest naval battles in British history—the Battle of Cape St. Vincent. “Alaric Bond has stepped into the first rank of writers of historic naval fiction.”