Julian Stockwin - Victory

review by Brian Lowen live on show 16th august 2012
The latest book in paperback of the ongoing saga of Kydd and his friend Renzi in the glorious days of fighting sail in the early 1800s.

Kydd started as a conscripted seaman, but most unusually for those times when it was important who you knew, not what you knew, he has risen through the ranks until in this book he is appointed Captain of his own ship – the frigate L’Aurore, a French ship that has been captured in battle.

The frigate is being fitted out as an English ship in Portsmouth harbour and Captain Kydd is impatiently waiting for the work to be finished so that he can set sail to join Nelson’s fleet blockading the French fleet in their ports in France and Spain. He has great difficulty in finding enough men to man his ship so hits on the audacious plan, with the help of the harbour authority, of purloining the crew of a frigate just returned from the West Indies.

It was normal for a crew to be paid off at the end of a long voyage so as you might expect the crew are very sullen and mutinous at having to put to sea again without seeing their loved ones. Kydd eases the situation somewhat by allowing all the women of various sorts to spend a last night on board the ship with the crew.

Stockwin gives lots of interesting detail of what it takes to get one of those old sailing ships ready for sea and eventually they set off to join Nelson’s fleet. Here again we are given details of how Kydd knocks his new crew into an efficient fighting force.

Meanwhile, Kydds great friend Renzi has been appointed as the Captain’s private and confidential secretary. Renzi is a learned man who has been writing a non fiction book comparing peoples of the world but has been stunned to learn that nobody wants to publish it as it is not commercially viable. He has set his heart on winning the hand of Kydd’s sister, Cecilia, but feels that as he is not a successful writer, he is not worthy of her. She, of course, is in love with him and cares not about whether he is a success or not. You feel like banging their heads together, but as the situation is not resolved by the end of the book, we shall have to wait for the next book in the series to see if they finally get together.

It was the duty of the frigates in those days to be the eyes and ears of the fleet while the fighting was left to the man o’ wars.

The French eventually set sail and Nelson chases them across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean and back again until he eventually brings them to battle at Trafalgar.

Each book in this series is as good as the last. It is pleasing to find that Stockwin can still write interesting and informative stories, even after 10 books in this series, and if you are keen on this type of novel then I can thoroughly recommend it.