Sails on the Horizon

Chapter One

ONE

St. Valentine's Day, 1797

Eight leagues southwest of Cape St. Vincent, Portugal



"The f-flagship's signaling again, sir. 'engage the enemy,' I think it says." The adolescent midshipman stood in an oversized jacket and flapping trousers at the top of the forward ladderway, squinting into the distance along the line of British warships, each laboring more or less one cable's length behind the other, pointed toward a gap between two large Spanish squadrons. He fairly danced with excitement.

"Thank you, Mr. Bowles. You may come down now," said Charles Edgemont, the second lieutenant aboard His Britannic Majesty's sixty-four-gun ship of the line Argonaut. At twenty-five, Edgemont's career in the navy had already spanned thirteen years, seven as a midshipman himself and six as a commission officer. His responsibility with the ship at quarters was the upper gundeck and its twenty-eight brightly painted black twelve-pounder cannon, neatly aligned on their carriages, fourteen to a side. The smallish and outdated Argonaut, captained by Sir Edward Wood, had taken her position as the last in the nearly mile-long fifteen-ship English lin ... read full excerpt from: Sails on the Horizon ebook