The Black Ship & Mutiny on the Spanish Main - Dudley Pope & Angus Konstam

  

This is a bit of a first here on JJ's as I thought I would attempt to present a double-bill for a book review, the first being 'The Black Ship' by Dudley Pope which I have just finished reading, and the other account, 'Mutiny on the Spanish Main' by Angus Konstam, which I listened to on Audible whilst reading the former; both titles dealing with the mutiny aboard HMS Hermione in 1797 and its subsequent cutting out from the port of La Guaira in modern day Venezuela after the mutineers who had bloodily murdered the captain and almost all of their officers, handed the ship to the Spanish in return for protection from retribution by the British Royal Navy, thus adding treason to their charge list.

I have to say that I didn't know quite what to expect with The Black Ship as my familiarity with Dudley Pope is most obviously through his novel writing and his most famous creation in naval fiction, Captain Horatio Hornblower, a character I first came to know through one of my English teachers who chose to read the books to our class as part of some of my very first English literature classes, and of course I fell in love with the daring-do recounted in those stories, read by my teacher who was quite obviously a fan of the genre.

Editors Note

As Ion, quite rightly points out below in the comments, Dudley Pope was not responsible for any Hornblower novel, despite my affection for them from a past life and as he quite rightly points out, Nicholas Lord Ramage was indeed his creation, a series I have read and enjoyed, but despite that, my mind said one thing and my fingers typed something completely different, 'mea culpa', and I intend to leave my amended faux pas here to prove that it is not unknown for me to write and speak absolute nonsense, just ask my wife, and that the last man who was perfect died over 2,000 years ago, a thought that I desperately cling to each and every day.

That said, I know my original comment about not knowing what to have expected with 'The Black Ship' still stands for the very same reason if for an entirely different cause and that my admiration for the creation of Patrick O'Brian remains unchanged.

The drawings of His Majesty's 32-gun frigate Hermione

However as I matured in my reading tastes via Alexander Kent and the Bolitho stories to eventually end up with Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin series of books, I came to view Pope as a bit formulaic, lacking the depth portrayed in O'Brian's works which in mine and many others opinions stand head and shoulders above the rest.

This view together with my appreciation of when The Black Ship was first written, with the first edition hitting the bookshelves back in 1963, made me wonder how relevant it would be to today's audience.

The other part of my thinking focussed on the fact that the book had seen two subsequent republishing's in 2003 and 2009, mine being the latter, a paperback edition from Pen & Sword, which would suggest a relevance that was soon revealed to me on my starting to read how the book came about and Pope and his wife's work to see it published.

Additionally O'Brian's novels have an historical underpinning that creates much of the depth alluded to, part of which is his main character, Captain Jack Aubrey's association with actual historical characters and ships, with the frigate HMS Surprise playing a starring role, along with characters he meets who took part in the cutting out operation that made the culmination of the Hermione story so compelling to age of sail enthusiasts over the centuries since that black night of the 21st September 1797.

Hermione's initial area of operations in 1794, Prince's Port and Cape St Nicholas are shown on the western side of Hispaniola/San Domingo. The Mona Passage, where Hermione would conduct her last patrol before the mutiny, is between San Domingo and Puerto Rico.

Alongside my reading of Pope's work, it happened that I was deep into an 'All at Sea' painting project, and like many wargamers I like to listen to something while I paint, and Audible plays a big part in my listening, and so I thought I would really immerse myself into the Hermione story by getting a copy of Angus Konstam's look at this famous nautical yarn, with Angus' name very familiar to anyone in the hobby and certainly in the realm of naval history writing with lots of titles written by him in the catalogue of the Osprey publishers and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of listening, reading and modelling as an experience.

For those unfamiliar with what was the most bloody mutiny in Royal Navy history, the Hermione was the lead ship of her class of six frigates, herself launched in Bristol in 1782 in response to the needs of the Royal Navy busy fending off the navies of France, Spain and the Dutch in the American War of Independence, but joining the force as that war was reaching its conclusion and a cessation of hostilities, which would see Hermione paid off in 1785 and effectively put in 'mothballs' until late 1792 when the ship was prepared for another war brewing, namely that against Revolutionary France the following year.

Captain, later Admiral Sir Hyde Parker - George Romney circa 1760
To quote Pope 'faced with mutiny he advocated 'imposing discipline' by the terror of punishment in this momentary crisis . . . '

On the 10th March 1793, Hermione sailed to Port Royal, Jamaica under the command of Captain John Hills to begin her service in the Caribbean under the overall command of Vice-Admiral of the Red, Sir Hyde Parker, which would see Hermione participating in the attack on Port-au-Prince in June 1794, protecting troop transports for a British attack on the French territory.

Cape Nicolas Mole - Colonel Coote Manningham

Port-au-Prince was captured by the British along with a large number of merchant ships, before being forced to evacuate the port and retire to Cape Nicolas Mole at the western end of Santo Domingo, now modern day Haiti, eventually becoming Parker's main base of operations as he relocated his command there from Jamaica.

A plan of Cape Nicolas Mole circa 1794

Cape Nicolas was a mosquito infested anchorage and 'Yellow Jack', better known today as Yellow Fever, took its toll, and by September 1794 Captain Hills along with many of the Hermione's had died of it, Hills replaced by Captain Philip Wilkinson, himself replaced by Captain Hugh Pigot in February 1797, the year of the Spithead and Nore mutinies.

Pigot was the second son Admiral Hugh Pigot, starting his naval career as an admiral's servant in 1782, a midshipman by 1784, commissioned lieutenant by 1790 and achieved post-captain rank by 1794, taking command of the 14-gun sloop Swan.

Whilst in command of the Swan he managed to ram a merchant ship, Canada, in the English Channel in May 1794, evading censure by placing the blame on the master of the merchant.

By September 1794 he was in command of the 32-gun frigate HMS Success during which, over a period of nine months he ordered 85 floggings from which two men died.

HMS Success 32-guns, seen here depicting her attack and destruction of the Spanish 34-gun frigate Santa Catalina of Cape Spartel, 16th March 1782, later to be commanded by Captain Hugh Pigot from 1st September 1794.

In 1795 he was involved in another collision, this time with the Mercury, an American merchant ship that was part of the convoy he was tasked to escort. He again blamed the master of the merchantman, later claiming that he thought the American had deliberately collided with his ship to leave the rest of the convoy unescorted as they passed the privateer infested coast of French Santo Domingo.

The incident caused a major diplomatic confrontation with the Americans, when it came to their attention that, in his rage, Pigot had the American master seized and flogged, but was effectively protected by Admiral Hyde Parker, who sought to deal with the issue locally and with his court-martial allowing Pigot to get away with an apology; and with Parker arranging for him to exchange command of the Success to the Hermione, as his former command was due to return home for a much needed refit, but Pigot's return with it, likely to land him in even 'hotter water' with the Admiralty, still dealing with the repercussions for his causing the diplomatic rupture with the Americans, themselves seething at the perceived snub to one of their citizens by a haughty British Royal Navy captain.

Flogging with the cat-o'-nine-tails.
The experience of being flogged differed from one man to another with one commenting, 'Nothing but an O, a few O my Gods, and then you can put your shirt on.' While another man, a soldier, flogged with a lighter cat than used by the navy commented, after the first two or three strokes, 'The pain in my lungs was more severe, I thought, than on my back, I felt as if I would burst in the internal parts of my body . . . I put my tongue between my teeth, held it there, and bit in almost two pieces. What with blood from my tongue, and my lips, which I had also bitten, and the blood from my lung, or some other internal part , ruptured by the writhing agony, I was almost choked, and became black in the face.'

The Hermione was at the time of Pigot's arrival an effective command but one not entirely content with their former captain, Philip Wilkinson, who had an unenviable discipline record himself, seeing him flog thirteen of his crew over ten months to October 1795, with 408 lashes administered between them and with two men receiving 72 lashes in one punishment, this at a time when captains were not supposed to issue an order for more than 24 lashes without seeking permission from a commander, a rule frequently ignored by commanders of flag rank and below.

However if the 'Hermiones' were discontent with their former captain's style of man-management they were soon to be accustomed to a much worse one with the arrival of Pigot, bringing with him his unsettling practice of marking out 'favourites' with his selection of former 'Successes' to accompany him to his new command, as was the custom, seeing many of those he had selected compelled to continue under his service because of the prize money they were due and reliant on him to pursue a quicker payout to them than if they had returned to the UK under Wilkinson.

The two distinct groups of crew established on the Hermione under Pigot would lead to further discontent and mistrust between those favoured by the captain and those not, but eventually both groups would unite behind their joint mistrust and mutual terror of the tyranny he established with his brutal enforcement of the naval code of discipline enshrined in the Articles of War read out to the crew when a new captain took command of his ship and before every punishment muster.

In Pope's account the picture of Pigot and the Hermione before and after his arrival is carefully and forensically constructed, shining a light on the factors that would begin to entwine and that would eventually create the circumstances for his crew to decide that they had no other option that to rid themselves of the tyranny that seemed to know no bounds and could arbitrarily be directed at any of them, officers or men at any time

Line and profile drawing of another class, the Active Class 1778, of 12-pounder 32-gun frigates that included HMS Ceres under the command of Robert Otway in May 1797 when she narrowly escaped being wrecked whilst sailing in company with HMS Hermione.

Pigot is portrayed as a man who was completely and utterly out of his depth when it came to leading and inspiring men to willingly follow his commands, but relied instead on a harsh unrelenting regimen of brutality that brooked no opposition from any man under his command, and when challenged by one of his junior officers, would see him double-down on a situation where he was exposed in his unfairness and inability to concede his error and make amends without his losing face, as he saw it.

The only officer able to bring any restraint to the man was his able first lieutenant John Harris, not one of Pigot's favourites, and a capable officer who had served under Wilkinson and would fall foul of his new commander one night in May when acting as the officer of the watch on Hermione, in company with HMS Ceres, Pigot commanding the two frigates and sailing north of the Gulf of Triste in search of Spanish prizes

The Gulf of Triste is centre bottom of the coastline south-west of Curacao off which Hermione and Ceres were cruising in May in search of Spanish prizes, when the latter went aground.

Pigot went below leaving Harris with orders for the course to follow to enable the two British frigates to pass that night some twelve to fifteen miles north of Point Tucacas avoiding coastal mangrove cays, little islands that could ground the two vessels.

Pigot remembered to allow for five degrees of compass variation in his course orders, but failed to allow for the well known coastal drift caused by the circular prevailing current in the bay that he had been warned about by his ship's master Edward Southcott, and failed to alert Harris of the need to keep a watch for any sign of land.

As a result, it was Harris that spotted what he thought was land in the dark, and alerted the watch to make an abrupt change of course, with the master, on arriving from below claiming he saw land about a mile off and with Harris calling the captain and firing a signal gun to Ceres, sailing closer to the shore, to alert her to the danger, too late to prevent the latter running aground.

Ceres would be refloated and returned to service in due course but in the ensuing court martial, Pigot offered up Harris as the scape-goat, the man who had salvaged a situation created by him and that should have seen him standing before a court martial, instead of his proposing that his first lieutenant had been negligible in his command of the watch that caused the grounding of the Ceres.

Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Rodney Bligh

Fortunately for Harris, the court martial was overseen by Hyde-Parker's deputy, as was customary, namely Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Rodney Bligh, Pigot being a protégé of Hyde-Parker whilst Harris was a protégé of Bligh, and a tense relationship existing between the senior British commander and his deputy.

Bligh was well aware of Harris' competency and also the character of Pigot, not fooled by the latter's attempt to place blame firmly on his subordinate, he questioned Pigot closely over his orders given to Harris and enabled Harris to make it clear that he was the only person on watch that had seen land and had acted in a timely fashion that had saved the situation from one that could have easily ended up with the loss of both ships.

To Pigot's undoubted embarrassment, Harris was cleared of the charge of negligence, and even more embarrassingly, emphasised in an underlined written verdict stating that under Harris, every necessary arrangement was made and such a 'good lookout kept.', unsurprisingly seeing John Harris immediately quit the Hermione and transfer to Admiral Bligh's ship the 74-gun Brunswick.

With Harris gone, the crew of the Hermione now had no one to temper their mercurial commander's whim, and life became 'a precarious existence at the mercy of a wilful and capricious captain whose smiles quickly became intemperate outbursts of uncontrollable rage.' 

Brig-Sloop Diligence 16-guns
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Diligence_%281795%29

At 16.30 on Wednesday August 16th under the orders of Sir Hyde-Parker, Pigot led a small squadron consisting of the Hermione, Renommée 32-guns and brig Diligence 16-guns, to patrol the Mona Passage for seven weeks and then return to the Mole, a frigate commanders dream come true it seemed with land on both sides of the passage in Spanish hands, and the main highway from the Spanish Main to the Atlantic, potentially rich with prizes.

The squadron arrived off the southern end of the passage on the 1st September, sweeping down it in squally weather, taking a Spanish schooner from Puerto Rico and sending her off with a prize crew aboard, then taking a 6-gun Spanish packet ship in a 'spirited action' a few days later on the 6th, and impressing some British seamen found aboard a French cartel ship bound for the Mole a week later, thus replacing some of those men sent off as prize crews, and with those coming aboard Hermione being the last names to be entered on her muster role before the mutiny.

On the 19th September a sudden squall caught the Renommée, damaging her masts and spars so badly that she was ordered by Pigot to return to the Mole for repairs, leaving Hermione and Diligence to complete the patrol alone.

On the evening of the 20th, both ships were sailing with topsails only and the order came to reef down for the night, with Pigot conducting affairs alongside his new first lieutenant, from his quarterdeck in his usual fashion, speaking trumpet in hand, ready to issue forth terrifying threats to any man not performing with the required smartness and speed, and with his topmen expected to handle their work as if under the gaze of the Commander-in-Chief himself.

What followed were a series of events described by Pope as recounted by members of the crew who witnessed them and gave their accounts at their own court martials that would see a reefpoint on the mainmast improperly tied, with the midshipman in charge David Casey ordering a man back to tie it off properly, only to be met with 'the most abusive and un-officer like language' from his enraged captain, and calling the unfortunate young midshipman 'a damn'd lubber, a worthless good for nothing.'

The young Casey would bravely attempt to respectfully reply to his captain in defence of his men that would see him put under arrest and be brought for punishment the next morning, if he did not go down on his knees before Pigot and beg his pardon for his contemptuous and disrespectful conduct the previous evening, to which he respectfully refused and was immediately tied to a bar on the capstan and flogged with twelve lashes of the cat.

Following this he stood to attention, blood running down his back to be told by his captain that he was to leave the midshipman's mess and do no more duty, and to be prepared to leave the ship at the first opportunity.

As this tale of misrule was unfolds, the account by Pope is delivered with all the skill of the artful novelist he undoubtedly was, with the tension aboard the Hermione almost palpable among each page as he develops the narrative, and with this outrageous behaviour to one of his own officers and a clear breech of fairness witnessed by the crew, the bubble was set to burst.

Five days later they would come across an American schooner and after a brief chase and inspection the Hermione and Diligence were caught in an evening squall, that would see topmen rapidly scrambling aloft to reef topsails, with Pigot issuing threats in the normal way and with his rage turned towards the men on the mizzen mast for not working quickly enough, bellowing to them, 'I'll flog the last man down.'

The threat had disastrous consequences for his topmen, as three of them in their haste plunged screaming downwards to the deck below, with one of the bodies catching the back of and injuring the Master, Edward Southcott, and seeing Pigot contemptuously observe the three bodies sprawled grotesquely on the deck only a few feet away before issuing the order to, 'Throw the lubbers overboard.'

This contemptuous behaviour from their captain brought forward murmurs of protest from men on the mainyard that pierced the shocked silence from the rest of the ship's company, causing Pigot to glance up screaming aloud, 'Bosun's mates! Bosun's Mates! Start all those men!' this issuing an immediate response from said bosun's mates scrabbling aloft and smashing the rope starters down on the heads and elbows of the offending men as they were forced to endure the beating whilst desperately maintaining their grip of the yard.

September the 20th 1797 appears to have been the straw that finally broke the camels back as far as the Hermiones were concerned about allowing their lives to be ruled by Captain Hugh Pigot any more, and the next evening with the Hermione and Diligence in pursuit of a schooner privateer, and sailing apart in the darkness, endeavouring to head off their prey from different directions the next morning, an orgy of murder and mayhem started at about 23.00, when maintopman David Forester climbed into the maintop to inform the two men on watch to come down as they were about to take the ship.

Ironically in their desire to rid themselves of tyranny the ringleaders of the mutiny would unleash a tyranny all of their own making when in the following twenty-four hours, republican cries of liberty would accompany the most brutal murders of their officers and shipmates, many of whom offered no resistance and left the captain, eight officers, the captain's clerk, and two midshipmen, dead and the bodies thrown overboard, some still alive when they hit the water.

The mutineers on arrival in the Spanish harbour of La Guaira convinced the governor to offer them safe passage with a story about how they had released Captain Pigot in a boat with his officers just as the Bounty mutineers had released Captain Bligh. A simple check of Hermione's boats would have revealed a full compliment and undermined this story that soon fell about as common gossip picked up the true account.

The story that follows the mutiny shifts to the 'Now What?' situation a hastily, rum fuelled explosion of violence had left the crew in, with ringleaders, joined by crew now seeing themselves caught up in the revolt despite not actively supporting it and those determined to stand apart as loyal to the crown, and they arrived at plan to take the ship south to La Guaira on the Spanish Main, to hand the ship over to Spain in return for immunity from being handed over to the British authorities, forcing all members of the crew to swear under duress an oath of silence as to the true account of what had occurred, whilst telling the Spanish that they had put all the officers alive in a boat after they had taken the ship, HMB Bounty style.

Needless to say the British Admiralty and indeed public were outraged at the mutiny, even more so when the details of exactly how bloody it had been became common knowledge and immediately all Royal Navy bases and commanders were put on alert to identify and apprehend mutineers likely trying to ply their trade at sea as privateers or merchantmen, relying on the testimony of those first crewmen caught who were supporters rather than active participants and were willing to turn King's Evidence as well as those crew who were prisoners of the Spanish and later returned under exchange terms.

The resultant pursuit of Hermione mutineers lasted ten years and led to political repercussions for the American government, keen to secure the rapid growth in their mercantile trade with Britain since the War of Independence by cooperating in extraditing British sailors apprehended in the states, but conscious of public indignation at handing over these former British seamen now claiming US citizenship, to a Royal Navy still held in contempt by a lot of Americans following the war with Britain, not to mention the infringements at sea, with RN captains impressing American sailors into their navy with scant regard to claims of being US citizens. 

In the end the Royal Navy managed to apprehend thirty-three mutineers and executed twenty-four of them and transported one to Australia, but this still left six of the most bloody ringleaders never found and brought to justice, with the last execution taking place in 1806 of James Hayes, fourteen year old at the time of the mutiny and the doctor's servant who took an active part in his murder of his master and was executed on October 17th from the yard of the former Spanish first rate, Salvador del Mundo, in the Hamoaze, Plymouth.

The Cutting Out of HMS Hermione, 25th October 1799 - Nicholas Pocock (RMG).
I think this is my favourite rendition of the cutting out of the Hermione (Santa Cecilia), by Pocock, wonderfully capturing the drama of the fight to secure the ship under the Spanish fortress guns as the HMS Surprise lies off shore in the darkness beyond.

The finale to this story is retaking of the former Hermione, now renamed by the Spanish as the Santa Cecilia and allowed, through astonishing Spanish bureaucracy, to languish in La Guaira for two years until heads were finally banged together to get the ship repaired, rearmed with Spanish ordnance, and made ready to serve the King of Spain against Britain's Royal Navy.

News of the readiness to activate the new frigate reached Admiral Sir Hyde Parker who for obvious reasons was keen to remove this blot on his service record in the Caribbean and thus made plans for one of his most effective and successful frigates, the HMS Surprise 28-guns, formerly the French corvette Unité of 32-guns, under the command of Captain Edward Hamilton to cruise the likely passage routes the Santa Cecilia was expected to take when she left La Guaira and take her at sea.

Captain Sir Edward Hamilton

Hamilton and his crew had proved themselves very adept at cutting out operations in their activities under Parker's command since joining his squadron in July 1797 and was keen to repeat this method of attack on the Santa Cecilia, but Parker insisted that he should intercept her at sea instead.

As it transpired, despite waiting several days on patrol in October 1799, carefully avoiding being seen by other ships, the Santa Cecilia had still not appeared and so Hamilton decided to close on the harbour and make sure his prey was still there and had not managed to slip away. Unfortunately for him he was spotted by a Danish merchantman who he was forced to divert from its intended passage in to La Guaira with some well aimed shotts across the bow, forcing him to revert to his previous plan to cut the Spanish frigate out before the return of the merchant and his likely warning of a British frigate sat outside the port.

The taking of the Santa Cecilia, 25th October 1799

The action to send in boats and cut the Santa Cecilia out from under the guns of the Spanish forts guarding the frigate is a classic boat action that, at one stage saw the British boarders up against three times their number of Spanish sailors, as they arrived to clamber up the sides of the enemy frigate, take the top deck and captain's cabin, before descending below onto the main gundeck to take the fight to the bulk of the Spanish crew, this whilst others cut her cables and lowered furled topsails to enable her to be manoeuvred out of the harbour towards an awaiting Surprise as the Spanish fortress gunners hit her with several shot, one below the water line and another hitting her mainmast.

The surprise and ferocity of the audacious British attack lived up to the name of their ship and the bulk of the Spanish crew at first focussed on firing their broadsides at some imaginary warship that had slipped into the harbour until, realising there were enemy above them on their own quarterdeck, they attempted to come up and restore the situation, only to be met by fusillades from the Royal Marines accompanied by grenades tossed down the hatches followed up by an assault below that accompanied by the movement of their ship out from under the protection of their fortress guns convinced the Spanish crew to surrender the ship.

The success of the recovery of the Hermione restored and made reputations and reminded Admiral Hyde Parker that the taking in of captured ships into the Royal Navy was an Admiralty prerogative and not his, but overlooking his presumption, soon put him back in his place by altering his decision to rename the Santa Cecilia, Retaliation, his response to his indignation at the Spanish for not apprehending the mutineers in the first place, but with the Admiralty preferring to name their returned ship, the Retribution to remind anyone else thinking of committing bloody mutiny and treason aboard one of His Majesty's Ships that the long arm of the Royal Navy would reach out to hunt them down.

The story of the mutiny on HMS Hermione is a truly ripping yarn in the annals of the long history of the Royal Navy and has everything that makes for a dramatic story, and one that no doubt caught the eye of the great story teller Dudley Pope, who did a magnificent job in pulling together the testimony's of those involved and the official records of the event from both the British, Spanish and American sources as well as forensically digging into the discipline records of the captains involved, namely Philip Wilkinson and Hugh Pigot to compare and contrast their approaches neither exemplary, but the latter totally inadequate to lead men, with an almost childish attitude to those under his command that rewarded favourites and broke good men who had already demonstrated their worth under better commanders.

Pigot was a tyrant and probably deserved the end that was meted out to him, but his subordinates didn't, and the bloody murders that followed his demise were outrageous and wantonly cold blooded and the response by the Admiralty in the wake of the threat to national security in time of war by the fleet mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in the same year explains the ferocity and doggedness of the pursuit of those involved.

Admiral Sir Hyde Parker is notable for the tone he set in his command, which allowed and supported men like Pigot to perpetrate the tyranny that they did, knowing they had his backing, and his lack of ability, alongside his obvious faults in setting the right tone for command, would be fully exposed when he would be appointed to command the expedition to Copenhagen with a certain Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson as his subordinate, a man who demonstrated the complete opposite way of commanding and leading men that inspired devotion and love rather than fear and an unmatched faith in his ability to lead them to success. Parker would be exposed in this campaign and would never command again in the wake of it.

The account by Angus Konstam certainly captured all the drama of Pope's incarnation and the Audible edition moved along at a fine pace to accompany my time at the painting desk and compared very well with my book read, so I would be happy to commend both to those interested in these kind of accounts, with the slight caveat that the Audible account read by Sid Sagar had reference to a heteronym, or word that is spelt the same but is pronounced differently according to the context it is used in, thus referring to the bow of the Hermione pronounced bow as in 'bow-tie' rather than bow as to 'bow-down', which was mildly irritating, once I worked out what was being referred to.

So the Black Ship published by Pen & Sword, by Dudley Pope and now in its third edition 363 reading pages from the Contents to Index and consists of the following:

Contents

List of Illustrations (eleven in black and white)

Map of the Caribbean, Santo Domingo and Bay of Gonaves arounf Port au Prince and Cape Nicolas Mole.

Authors Note

Chapters

1.     Mr Jessup's Petition

2.     Islands of Death

3.     Taking the Strain

4.     In Father's Lee

5.     The Red Baize Bag

6.     The Favourites

7.     'At Your Peril . . .'

8.     A Pride of Prizes

9.     The Shipwreck

10.   A Snub for Pigot

11.   The Last Farewell

12.   Mr Casey's Crisis

13.   The Inevitable Hour

14.   Time for Murder

15.   The Dead and the Drunk

16.   'Kill them All'

17.   The Oath of Secrecy

18.   The White Flag

19.   Bad News for Sir Hyde

20.   The Cost of Freedom

21.   On Board a Corsair

22.   Southcott's Revenge

23.   Bureaucrats at Bay

24.   'Sack Bligh or . . .'

25.   The US President Helps

26.   Through the Gates

27.   The Surprise

28.   The Retribution

Appendices a, b, c, d, e.

Notes and Bibliography

Unpublished Material

Published Works

Index

My Audible edition of Mutiny on the Spanish Main by Angus Konstam and read by Sid Sagar is published by Osprey in book format and Bloomsbury on Audible and in the latter format is slightly over eight hours of listening, consisting of the following;

Opening Credits

Preface

Chapters

1.     The Hermione

2.     Crisis in the Caribbean

3.     The Seeds of Mutiny

4.     The Fortunate Son

5.     The Caribbean Honeymoon

6.     The Floating Powder Keg

7.     Murder in the Night

8.     The Evil that Men Do

9.     The Spanish Main

10.   The Man Hunt

11.   An International Incident

12.   The Surprise

13.   The Cutting Out

14.   Retribution

End Credits

The Black Ship published back in 2009 is readily available in paperback for under ten pounds and likewise  Mutiny on the Spanish Main for under £15 from Amazon and £16.99 on Audible although I got my copy on one of my monthly credits.

Next up, I have another adventure with Mr Steve, exploring historical sites, to write about, plus I've been having fun at the Naval Wargames Society Show at Yeovilton, and work proceeds on the Camperdown project.

More anon 

JJ