I admired the research, but the pacing was a little flat, in the great post-Hornblower sweepstakes. I found more fun reading his historical work "War in the Eastern Seas". I think that fiction was not CNP's métier. ( )

This is the third in Northcote Parkinson's Richard Delancey series, but the first I have read. Delancey is serving as a lieutenant during the great Spithead and Nore mutinies of 1797, then at the battle of Camperdown, and finally on the West coast of Ireland in 1798.

Northcote Parkinson, writing in the mid-1970s, is roughly contemporary with Patrick O'Brian's first few Aubrey-Maturin novels (Master and Commander was published in 1970). As a professional historian, he shares O'Brian's attention to technical and historical detail, but he doesn't come anywhere close to O'Brian's ear for eighteenth-century language, or his gift for characterisation. We get nice clear explanations of the strategic and tactical situations, and some insight into life in the Georgian navy, but there isn't enough here to make the reader particularly interested in Delancey as an individual. Even the author doesn't seem to be particularly interested in what happens to him outside his naval career. There is no love-interest, and when a long-lost relative turns up, nothing is done with him.

Even though Northcote Parkinson doesn't have either O'Brian's wit or C.S. Forester's flair as a story-teller, the book is short, perfectly readable, and doesn't contain any glaring anachronisms, which at least distinguishes it from 80% of all historical fiction. The American publishers McBooks may have a silly name, but they haven't entirely wasted their time in reprinting these stories. ( )