The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea

The sea has never been a gentle place, and in Alfred Ollivant's rousing tale it is no different. Young Kit Caryll answers the call of adventure and his family's legacy in the British Navy, joining the crew of the sloop Tremendous as a midshipman. But before he can find his sea legs, a mysterious figure known as the Galloping Gentleman arrives at the harbor on a grey horse, exhausted beyond measure, and the consequences of that arrival will shape Kit's entire future. Ollivant captures the brutal camaraderie of a warship's crew: men who drink, fight, and dance themselves into exhaustion between battles, who transform a privateer into something between a madhouse and a coffin. The novel pulses with the urgent machinery of naval warfare, the code of honor that binds sailors to each other and to their ships, and the crucible where boys become men. This is adventure fiction that doesn't prettify the ocean or the men who sail it, but finds something noble in the weathering.