Overview

Wrenched by tragedy from a peaceful and respectable middle-class home in Victorian London, Hannah Kemball finds herself accompanying her father, Captain “Cracker Jack” Kemball, aboard the tea-clipper Erl King on a voyage to China. It is 1869. In shanghai and Foochow, the crack British tea-clippers are loading the season’s tea, preparing for the annual race to bring their valuable cargoes and the fortunes of their swaggering crews halfway around the world to the London market. Unfortunately for Hannah, only one thing matters t the iron-willed captains about to pit their skills against the perils of three oceans: to be the first to make it home. Overconfident of victory, Captain Kemball strikes a wager with the sinister Captain Richards of the Seawitch. The stakes: Hannah’s hand in marriage. The race is on, and as the sails unfurl, so do the dangers for Hannah aboard her father’s ship. As the fastest sailing vessels ever built storm across the world’s oceans, she learns that this is a race with no rules, and that murder, mayhem and deceit are all part of the game.

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9781574090802

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The sea scenes rate high marks; and the historical background is inlaid with an abundance of well-chosen detail. Altogether, this is a feast for maritime fiction buffs. * Booklist *

Brilliantly told, the story catches every nuance| A convincing and compulsive seafaring story. Oxford Times The sea scenes rate high marks; and the historical background is inlaid with an abundance of well-chosen detail. Altogether, this is a feast for maritime fiction buffs. Booklist

Author Information

"Captain Richard Martin Woodman retired in 1997 from a 37-year nautical career. Woodman's Nathaniel Drinkwater series is often compared to the work of the late Patrick O'Brian. Woodman is the author of some two dozen nautical novels, as well as several nonfiction books. Unlike many other modern naval historical novelists, such as C.S. Forester or O'Brian, he has served afloat. He went to sea at the age of sixteen as an indentured midshipman and spent eleven years in command. His experience ranges from cargo-liners to ocean weather ships and specialist support vessels to yachts, square-riggers, and trawlers. Said Lloyd's List of his work: ""As always, Richard Woodman's story is closely based on actual historical events. All this we have come to expect—and he adds that special ambience of colourful credibility which makes his nautical novels such rattling good reads."""

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