Monday, September 09, 2013

Admiralty Orders - "extraordinary for realism and historical accuracy"

A review – ADMIRALTY ORDERS: This novel is extraordinary for its realism and its historical accuracy. You'll never think of Gibraltar in the same way, having read this re-creation. M.C. Muir nails it in a most discomfiting sequence of events.
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, sickness and disease killed far more British seamen, marines and soldiers than did musketballs, cannonballs, mortars, sabers and bayonnets combined.
This story, based on fact, manages to create tension from the unpredictable ways of an invisible enemy much more powerful than the French or the Spanish Navies.
In this story the primary enemy is Yellow Fever, the cause and cure of which was not known until well into the 20th century.
The aloof Oliver Quintrell, captain of HMS Perpetual, finds himself perpetually at anchor, in quarantine off Gibraltar, while a fearsome disease threatens his men, the soldiers at the fort - and the one person on Earth he loves, who shouldn't even be on "the Rock." (Linda Collison)

Re-enactiment pic courtesy of Wikipedia
Book cover pic by M.C. Muir - Rock of Gibraltar, Nov 2013.

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