From Powder Monkey to Admiral: A Story of Naval Adventure
From Powder Monkey to Admiral: A Story of Naval Adventure
Three boys. One ship. A fortune to be made or lives to be lost. Jack, Tom, and Bill board the frigate Foxhound as powder monkeys, the lowest rank on any warship, the boys who sprint gunpowder to the cannons while enemy shot tears the deck apart. They come from different worlds: Jack is a fisherman's son, Bill a London orphan, Tom a runaway from a solicitor's household. But on the rolling deck of a 19th-century man-of-war, they share the same brutal education: seasickness and cruelty, camaraderie and courage, the deafening roar of battle. Kingston writes with the vivid immediacy of someone who knew these ships intimately, painting the press-gangs, the press of bodies in the gun-deck, the desperate mathematics of naval warfare. This is the story of how boys become men, and how one might just rise from cabin boy to admiral. It endure as a time capsule of Victorian aspiration, when a boy could climb from the lowest rung to the highest command through sheer force of will. For readers who loved Hornblower, who crave salt spray and standing rigging, who believe the best adventures happen aboard wooden ships in distant waters.
