"It is 1811 and Napoleon's French Empire dominates Europe. Desperate to stem the encroaching French tide and avert war with the emerging power of the United States, the Royal Navy orders captain Nathaniel Drinkwater to the Chesapeake Bay to heal the rift between London and Washington."--Back cover.

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...

Captain John Mackinnon and his ship, the Matthew Flinders, are embarking on their last voyage. Both endangered species, they symbolize the irreversible, quiet decline of the British merchant fleet. But this journey to Hong Kong will prove to be anything but quiet. Internal tensions among the crew provoke unrest and lead to a navigation error, steering them right into the violent, destructive path of Typhoon David. Suddenly the crew of the Matthew...

"The year is 1813. captain Nathaniel Drinkwater succeeds Lord Dungarth as head of the Royal Navy's Secret Department. While the Grand Army of Napoleon faces defeat on the battlefields of Germany, the discovery of a secret treaty with America leads Drinkwater into forbidding fjords of Norway, and one of the most desperate mission of his career."--Back cover.

"It is 1814 and Napoleon has abdicated as Emperor of the French. ... Out of the ashes of defeat, France's greatest survivor, Talleyrand, prepares to restore his beateb country to the forefront of European politics."--Back cover.