Ramage's Trial, Vol. 14 »

Dudley Pope, a naval defense correspondent of the London Evening News, progressed to writing carefully researched naval history. C.S. Forester urged Pope to try his hand at fiction and saw the younger writer as his literary heir. Pope began what was to become an impressive series with Ramage (1965) and, over the next 24 years, produced 17 more novels tracing Lord Ramage's career. Pope died in 1997.

Captain Lord Ramage returns from Devil's Island to find his wife missing. Instead of being free to sail with all haste for home, Ramage is ordered to shepherd a lumbering convoy of merchant ships back to England. On the way, a bizarre sequence of events leads Ramage to a full court martial in Plymouth.