In 1912, Sub-Lieutenant Gerald Tregarthen expects nothing more than a leisurely sail aboard his friend's yacht when he departs Portsmouth Harbour on summer leave. Instead, he collides with a phantom vessel far ahead of its time, the Olive Branch, and finds himself captive to Captain Brookes, a man whose dream of universal peace has twisted into something far more dangerous than the war he seeks to prevent. Brookes believes that overwhelming naval supremacy can force the world into harmony, a paradox that traps Tregarthen in a nightmare of his own making. As mysteries accumulate around the Olive Branch and its enigmatic captain, including strange electrical phenomena encountered by the German cruiser Zietan, Tregarthen must choose: become complicit in Brookes's utopian terror, or find a way to resist. Westerman crafts an unexpectedly cerebral adventure, layering philosophical questions about power and peace beneath naval action that would satisfy any boy reader of the era. The result is a period piece that still provokes: can peace be achieved through the barrel of a gun?
