The Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventures are being published in audio format, one book at a time, and the first nine are already out there and being enjoyed. Meanwhile, David Lane Pusey has completed his narration of the tenth Book, Nor’west By North, and it’s now available from the usual places (Amazon, Audible, iTunes).
By late 1759 it is clear that France is losing the Seven Years War. In a desperate gamble, the French Atlantic and Mediterranean fleets combine to dominate the Channel and cover a landing in the south of England, but they are annihilated by Admiral Hawke at Quiberon Bay. Meanwhile, a diversionary landing is planned in the north of Britain, and it sails from Dunkirk before news of the disaster at Quiberon Bay can reach its commander. The ill-fated expedition sets out to circumnavigate Britain in an attempt to salvage something from the failed strategy.
George Holbrooke, newly promoted to post-captain and commanding the frigate Argonaut, joins a squadron sent to intercept the French expedition. The quest takes him to Sweden, the Faroes, the Western Isles of Scotland and then to Ireland and the Isle of Man. The final act is played out at a secluded anchorage in the Bristol Channel.
Nor’west by North is the tenth Carlisle and Holbrooke novel. The series follows Carlisle and his protégé Holbrooke through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American colonies prior to their bid for independence.
For those of you who prefer the printed word, Book 16 in the Carlisle & Holbrooke series (no name yet) is in production and (if the stars align and the tide is high) will be published in Kindle and paperback before the end of the year.
The summer 2024 edition of Quarterdeck magazine is now available, and George Jepson, the editor and publisher, was kind enough to write a generous review of my latest book, Old Bahama Straits. You can read it on page 33 of the magazine alongside a host of other articles on all sorts of nautical fiction and non-fiction. The magazine is free to download, follow the link below:
The fifteenth book in the Carlisle & Holbrooke series of naval adventures is now available. It’s titled Old Bahama Straits, which is the name of the channel between the north coast of Cuba and the islands of the Bahamas. It’s an easy passage in the twenty-first century, with the help of satellite navigation, echo sounders and digital charts, but in the eighteenth century it was considered dangerous for substantial vessels, and unthinkable for large groups of ships. Nevertheless, it was attempted by a British naval squadron and an invasion fleet, intent on taking the war to the Spanish Empire in the West Indies. Old Bahama Straits tells the dramatic story of one of the century’s most remarkable feats of navigation, and one of the final acts of the Seven Years War.
Old Bahama Straits features Captain Edward Carlisle in command of the fourth rate ship-of-the-line Dartmouth. Both ship and captain have fought through seven years of war, and each is in need of rest and refit, but there’s none of either to be found when empires clash in the turquoise waters of the Old Bahama Straits.
You’ll also find a true account of a hero of the Spanish Navy whose conduct in the face of overwhelming odds is an inspiration to all military people, regardless of their nationality.
Old Bahama Straits was published yesterday in Kindle and Paperback formats, but it might take a few days to be available in your regional Amazon store.
AUDIO EDITIONS
David Lane Pusey is narrating the whole series, book-by-book, and producing them in audio format. He’s presently working on #10 Nor’west By North which given a fair wind will be available towards the end of the summer. The audio book of Old Bahama Straits will follow in its due sequence.
The Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventures are being published in audio format, one book at a time, and the first eight are already out there and being enjoyed. Meanwhile, David Lane Pusey has completed his narration of the ninth Book, Ligurian Mission, and it’s now available from the usual places (Amazon, Audible, iTunes).
It’s the summer of 1760 and the British navy reigns supreme on the oceans of the world; only in the Mediterranean is its mastery still seriously challenged. Admiral Saunders is sent with a squadron of ships-of-the-line to remind those nations that are still neutral of the consequences of siding with the French.
Edward Carlisle’s ship Dartmouth is sent to the Ligurian Sea. His mission: to carry the British envoy to the Kingdom of Sardinia back to its capital, Turin, then to investigate the ships being built in Genoa for the French.
He soon finds that the game of diplomacy is played for high stakes, and the countries bordering the Ligurian Sea are hotbeds of intrigue and treachery, where family loyalties count for little.
Carlisle must contend with the arrogance of the envoy, the Angelini family’s duplicity and a vastly superior French seventy-four-gun ship whose captain is determined to bring the Genoa ships safely to Toulon.
Ligurian Mission is the ninth Carlisle and Holbrooke novel. The series follows Carlisle and his protégé Holbrooke through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American colonies prior to their bid for independence.
For those of you who prefer the printed word, Book 15 in the Carlisle & Holbrooke series ‘Old Bahama Straits’ will be published in Kindle and paperback in May 2024.
Now here’s a thought for the New Year. David Lane Pusey has completed his narration of Niagara Squadron, and it’s now available from all the usual places (Amazon, Audible, iTunes).
Fort Niagara is the key to the American continent. Whoever owns that lonely outpost at the edge of civilisation controls the entire Great Lakes region.
Pitt’s grand strategy for 1759 is to launch a three-pronged attack on Canada. One army will move north from Lake Champlain, a second will sail up the St Lawrence to capture Quebec, and a third force will strike across the wilderness to Lake Ontario and French-held Fort Niagara.
Commander George Holbrooke is seconded to command the six hundred boats to carry the army through the rivers and across Lake Ontario. That’s the easy part; he also has to deal with two powerful brigs and two schooners that guarantee French naval superiority on the lake.
Holbrooke knows time is running out to be posted as captain before the war ends and promotions dry up; his rank is the stumbling block to his marriage to Ann, waiting for him in his hometown of Wickham Hampshire.
Niagara Squadron is the eighth Carlisle and Holbrooke novel. The series (fourteen books so far) follows Carlisle and his protégé Holbrooke through the Seven Years War and will continue into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American colonies in the 1760’s.
Edward Carlisle & George Holbrooke wish you a happy and peaceful New Year
My family is both British and American, so we celebrate Thanksgiving even though were at the far side of the world (almost). It has to be on the Saturday after, because the Thursday isn’t a holiday here, so I can’t show our table for this year but here’s a picture from 2022. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
It’s been a long time coming but yesterday I published Book 14 in Kindle and Paperback. It’s called An Upright Man; I won’t spoil it be telling you the meaning of the title. What I can say is that it’s set in the dying days of the Seven Years War when the French King wanted to put pressure on Britain in advance of peace negotiations. He needed a rapid success and he’d already found that land operations couldn’t achieve that. His chosen target was a small but economically significant colony of Britain, and he sent his boldest naval commander to capture it, destroy its infrastructure, and depart before the already stretched British navy could react. The story reveals how far the strategy succeeded, and the part that Captain George Holbrooke of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Argonaut played in this drama, and if you yearn for a true French naval hero then you’ll find him in this book.
An Upright Man is available in Kindle and Paperback formats in all of the regional Amazon markets.
David Lane Pusey is working hard to narrate the whole series and I’m presently reviewing Book 8 Niagara Squadron which given a fair wind will be available before Christmas. The audio book of An Upright Man will follow in due course
While we celebrate the 218th anniversary of Lord Nelson’s victory off Cape Trafalgar, how many people now remember the other naval battle that happened on a previous 21st October?
It was in 1757, the second year of the Seven Years War, and things were not going well for Britain or for her navy. Mobilisation had been slow and only six months earlier Admiral Byng had been executed on the quarterdeck of a ship-of-the-line in for ‘not doing his utmost’ in defending Minorca from a French squadron. A naval victory was needed to steady the country and reassure Britain’s allies, and it came in the faraway Caribbean off Cape François (now Cap Haitien in Haiti.)
A French battle squadron had been sent to bring home an important convoy that had gathered at Cape François. The Comte de Kersaint had a strong force of four of the line and three frigates while Captain Arthur Forrest had a blockading squadron comprising his own ship Augusta, a fourth rate of sixty guns; Dreadnought, another sixty-gun fourth rate commanded by Maurice Suckling (you can perhaps see where this is leading now); and Edinburgh, Captain Langdon’s sixty-four-gun third rate.
Wikipedia has a useful description of the action after de Kersaint tried to bring his convoy out of Cape François:
I won’t repeat it all here, but the conclusion was that Forrest’s squadron out-manoeuvred and out-fought de Kersaint’s ships and the French convoy had to turn back to Cape François. It was just the victory that King George needed, and the country’s faith in its navy was restored.
After Cape François, Maurice Suckling (remember him?) didn’t take part in any more notable actions during his long naval career. If it weren’t for his role in bringing his nephew, Horatio Nelson, to sea, his name would have sunk into obscurity long ago.
Forty-eight years after the Battle of Cape François to the very day, on the morning of the twenty-first of October 1805, off Cape Trafalgar, the combined fleets of Spain and France were in sight. Vice Admiral Lord Nelson was heard by Victory’s surgeon to remark that, ‘the twenty-first of October was the happiest day in the year among my family,’ and several times in the days before Trafalgar he said to Captain Hardy and Doctor Scott, ‘the twenty-first of October will be our day.’
Nelson had no important naval connections other than his maternal uncle, of whom the whole family was immensely proud. His family annually feasted the anniversary of the Battle of Cape François, and it’s entirely reasonable to imagine that it was the story of that action that led Nelson to choose the navy. For Nelson chose the navy, he wasn’t pushed into it. More-or-less out of the blue he asked his father to write to Maurice Suckling asking if he would take young Horatio to sea. Suckling famously replied, ‘What has poor Horace done, who is so weak, that he above all the rest should be sent to rough it at sea? But let him come, and the first time that we go into action, a cannon-ball may blow off his head, and provide for him at once.’ Suckling took Nelson as a youngster into his ship Raisonnable, a sixty-four-gun third-rate ship-of-the-line.
Without the Battle of Cape François, Nelson may have chosen the church as a career. It would have been the obvious choice for the third son of a country parson, particularly so as neither of his elder brothers chose the cloth. Instead, he went to sea and achieved immortality at Cape St. Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen and finally at Trafalgar where he lost his life giving his country its greatest naval victory.
If you subscribe to a causal interpretation of history, then you can spin all sorts of interesting alternative histories, with Horatio Nelson spending his years writing sermons and baptising babies, rather than leading majestic fleets into action amid the thunder of great guns!
So, on this twenty-first of October, as we toast ‘The Immortal memory’ spare a thought for Arthur Forrest and his little squadron that fought and won in faraway Hispaniola and laid the foundations for the greatest of victories nearly half a century later.
You can read a dramatized account of the battle of Cape Francois in ‘The Jamaica Station’ the third of thirteen (so far) Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventures, written by myself.
The release of the Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventures in audiobook format continues with the publication of the seventh in the series – Rocks and Shoals– which is available from Amazon, Audible and iTunes.
Like books three, four, five and six, Rocks and Shoals is narrated by David Lane Pusey, who this time reads the story of the assault on Quebec in 1759, during the Seven Years War.
With the fall of Louisbourg in 1758, the French in North America were firmly on the back foot. Pitt’s grand strategy for 1759 was to launch a three-pronged attack on Canada. One army would move north from Lake Champlain, and another smaller force would strike across the wilderness to Lake Ontario and French-held Fort Niagara. A third, under Admiral Saunders and General Wolfe, would sail up the Saint Lawrence, where no battle fleet had ever been, and capture Quebec.
Captain Edward Carlisle sails ahead of the battle fleet to find a way through the legendary dangers of the Saint Lawrence River. An unknown sailing master assists him. James Cook has a talent for surveying and cartography and will achieve immortality in later years.
There are rocks and shoals aplenty before Carlisle and his frigate Medina are caught up in the near-fatal indecision of the summer when General Wolfe tastes the bitterness of early setbacks.
The series follows Carlisle and his protégé George Holbrooke through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American colonies in the 1760s.
You can find the audiobook edition of Rocks and Shoals (and the previous books) on Amazon, Audible and iTunes; just search for the title of the book or my name – Chris Durbin. You can also find all thirteen of the Carlisle and Holbrooke series on Amazon in Paperback, Kindle, and Kindle Unlimited editions.
The manuscript of book fourteen is under way but as it concerns a little-known event in the seven years war, it’s taking more research time than I had hoped.
Meanwhile, David Lane Pusey has started narrating book eight, Niagara Squadron, and I hope that will be available in audio format around the end of the year.
The fifth book in the Carlisle & Holbrooke series of Naval Adventures is now available as an AUDIOBOOK
Click the picture above to go to Amazon USA
The release of the Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventures in audiobook format continues with the publication of the fifth in the series – The Cursed Fortress– which is now available from Amazon, Audible and iTunes.
Like books three and four, The Cursed Fortress is narrated by David Lane Pusey, who this time reads the story of Britain’s expedition to Louisbourg to clear the way for the invasion of French-owned Canada during the Seven Years War.
Louisbourg stood at the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, massive and impregnable, a permanent provocation to the British colonies. It was Canada’s first line of defence, guarding the approaches to Quebec, from where all New France lay open to invasion. It had to fall before a British fleet could be sent up the St. Lawrence. Otherwise, there would be no resupply and no line of retreat; Canada would become the graveyard of George II’s navy. A failed attempt on Louisbourg in 1757 had only stiffened the government’s resolve; the Cursed Fortress must fall in 1758. Captain Carlisle’s frigate joins the blockade of Louisbourg before winter’s icy grip has eased. Battling fog, hail, rain, frost and snow, suffering scurvy and fevers, and with a constant worry about the wife he left behind in Virginia, Carlisle will face his greatest test of leadership and character yet.
The series follows Carlisle & Holbrooke through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American colonies in the 1760s.
You can find the audiobook edition of The Cursed Fortress (and the previous four books) on Amazon, Audible and iTunes; just search for the title of the book or my name – Chris Durbin. You can also find all thirteen of the Carlisle and Holbrooke series on Amazon in Paperback, Kindle and Kindle Unlimited editions.
And the plans for the rest of 2023? I hope that books fourteen and fifteen will be released in paperback and Kindle, and books six, seven and eight will be released as audiobooks.
You can also download a copy from your local Amazon marketplace (Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK, USA) by going directly to the appropriate website and searching for ‘The Cursed Fortress.’
Welcome to the Carlisle and Holbrooke naval adventures. The series follows Edward Carlisle, a native of Williamsburg, Virginia, and his protégé George Holbrooke of Wickham, Hampshire, as they navigate the political and professional storms of the Seven Years War through to the War of American Independence.
