Product details
- ISBN 9781493075164
- Weight: 263g
- Dimensions: 133 x 192mm
- Publication Date: 08 Nov 2023
- Publisher: Globe Pequot Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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It is the summer of 1964 during the Far Eastern war euphemistically called ‘Confrontation’. A British Royal Marine patrol has orders to penetrate Indonesian Borneo to locate a river thought by Allied intelligence to be being used by the Indonesians to build up supplies before launching a major attack on Sarawak. Charged with this mission, Lieutenant Charles Kirton makes a most extraordinary discovery amid the dense mangrove swamps bordering a river in Borneo. Not only does this discovery enable Kirton to fulfill his mission but it is quite coincidentally intensely personal and unpleasantly macabre. From this highly-charged opening sequence, the story flashes back a century to 1867, revealing the truth behind this strange event, when young Henry Kirton, Second Officer of the auxiliary steamship River Tay, is dumped ashore in Singapore, badly injured by a fall from the rigging of his ship. Woodman’s compelling tale has echoes of Joseph Conrad.
Captain Richard Martin Woodman retired in 1997 from a 37-year nautical career. His Nathaniel Drinkwater series is often compared to the work of the late Patrick O'Brian. Woodman lives in Harwich, England, and 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."
