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Strike the Red Flag
(2017)(The second book in the Lieutenant Oliver Anson Thriller series)
A novel by David McDine
Red flags flutter at the mastheads of the Channel Fleet ships gathered at the Spithead anchorage.
It is 1797, and unrest is spreading – to Plymouth, backdrop to Francis Drake’s Armada heroics two centuries earlier, and to the Nore, the great anchorage at the gateway to London. For the downtrodden sailors whose pay has not been increased for a hundred years it is time to strike for better pay and conditions. But, according to the Articles of War, akin to holy writ on board His Majesty’s ships, it is mutiny. And at a time when Britain is at war with Revolutionary France and threatened with invasion, the nation is plunged into grave peril.
Young Lieutenant Oliver Anson is awaiting transfer to duties aboard a frigate in the Mediterranean. Any ideas of idleness while he waits are swept aside when he is ordered to travel to Portsmouth on a mysterious mission. What are the contents of the papers he is to deliver personally to the flag officer there? Who among his fellow travellers on the express Royal Mail coach would try to steal them? How can he survive a more dangerous attack after being despatched to the Nore on a further secret assignment?
David McDine’s Strike the Red Flag skilfully uses actual events in the Royal Navy’s history as the backdrop to some great swashbuckling fiction which remains true to social history,while examining the idea of duty. His knowledge and evocation of the period is impressive, and his pitch-perfect phrasing recreates a fascinating world now lost to us.
David McDine, OBE, is a former Admiralty information officer, Royal Navy Reserve officer and Deputy Lieutenant of Kent, and the author of Unconquered: The Story of Kent and its Lieutenancy. He also wrote The Normandy Privateer, another naval adventure featuring Lieutenant Oliver Anson, of which Strike the Red Flag is a prequel.
Genre: Historical
It is 1797, and unrest is spreading – to Plymouth, backdrop to Francis Drake’s Armada heroics two centuries earlier, and to the Nore, the great anchorage at the gateway to London. For the downtrodden sailors whose pay has not been increased for a hundred years it is time to strike for better pay and conditions. But, according to the Articles of War, akin to holy writ on board His Majesty’s ships, it is mutiny. And at a time when Britain is at war with Revolutionary France and threatened with invasion, the nation is plunged into grave peril.
Young Lieutenant Oliver Anson is awaiting transfer to duties aboard a frigate in the Mediterranean. Any ideas of idleness while he waits are swept aside when he is ordered to travel to Portsmouth on a mysterious mission. What are the contents of the papers he is to deliver personally to the flag officer there? Who among his fellow travellers on the express Royal Mail coach would try to steal them? How can he survive a more dangerous attack after being despatched to the Nore on a further secret assignment?
David McDine’s Strike the Red Flag skilfully uses actual events in the Royal Navy’s history as the backdrop to some great swashbuckling fiction which remains true to social history,while examining the idea of duty. His knowledge and evocation of the period is impressive, and his pitch-perfect phrasing recreates a fascinating world now lost to us.
David McDine, OBE, is a former Admiralty information officer, Royal Navy Reserve officer and Deputy Lieutenant of Kent, and the author of Unconquered: The Story of Kent and its Lieutenancy. He also wrote The Normandy Privateer, another naval adventure featuring Lieutenant Oliver Anson, of which Strike the Red Flag is a prequel.
Genre: Historical
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