The latest best-selling Bolitho novel from the master of the seas – the 25th volume in this phenomenally successful and well-loved series.

It is December 1815 and Adam Bolitho's orders are clear. As captain of His Majesty's forty-six gun frigate, Unrivalled, he is required to "repair in the first instance to Freetown, Sierra Leone and reasonably assist the senior officer of the patrolling squadron." But all the efforts of the British anti-slavery patrols to curb a flourishing trade in human life are handicapped. The patrols suffer from unsuitable ships, the indifference of a government more concerned with old enemies who have become distrustful allies, and the continuing belligerence of the Dey of Algiers which threatens to ignite a full-scale war.

For Adam, also, there is no peace. Lost in grief and loneliness, his uncle's death still unavenged, he's uncertain of everything but his identity as a man of war. The sea is his element, the ship his only home, and a reckless, perhaps doomed attack on an impregnable stronghold, his only hope of settling the bitterest of debts.