The Missing Merchantman

Edward Damerell has dreamed of nothing but the sea his entire life, and at last his apprenticeship aboard the merchant vessel Flying Cloud begins. But the open ocean offers darker currents than the tides that carry him from Weymouth harbor. A crisis over wages festers among the crew, and what begins as dissent swiftly hardens into something far more dangerous: a conspiracy teetering toward piracy, with Edward caught between loyalty to his shipmates and the duty drilled into him by his father, a retired naval officer left behind on the shore with his sister Eva. The adventure that unfolds tests not just Edward's courage but his very character, as he discovers that the line between honorable service and mutinous betrayal grows thinner with each passing day at sea. Collingwood writes with the intimate knowledge of a man who knows ships and the men who sail them, capturing both the romance and the brutal reality of maritime life in the age of sail. For readers who crave the vanished thrill of tall ships and dangerous voyages, who want to feel the salt spray and hear the creak of rigging before the engine room ever existed, this is a story that still delivers its old-fashioned pleasures with genuine conviction.